Jerry Wexler (January 10, 1917 – August 15, 2008) was a music journalist turned music producer, and was one of the main record industry players behind music from the 1950s through the 1980s. He coined the term "rhythm and blues", and was integral in signing and/or producing many of the biggest acts of the last 50 years, including Ray Charles, the Allman Brothers, Chris Connor, Aretha Franklin, Led Zeppelin, Wilson Pickett, Dire Straits, Dusty Springfield and Bob Dylan. Wexler was inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. (More from Wikipedia)
Janis Ian is a singer-songwriter who was only 13 when she wrote and recorded her first single about an interracial romance (perhaps the first song about that topic ever), "Society's Child (Baby, I've Been Thinking)". The history of this song is bathed in controversy, and "Society's Child" was released three different times between 1965 and 1967; ultimately, the song reached #14 on the charts in the summer of 1967 and eventually sold 600,000 copies. Years later, the President of Atlantic Records, Jerry Wexler publicly apologized to Janis Ian for refusing to release the single and returning the master recording to her; "Society's Child" finally came out on Verve/Forecast Records.
(January 2014)
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Bob Dylan also asked Jerry Wexler to produce the record; a genuine legend in the recording industry, he is the man who coined the term "rhythm and blues". Wexler recalls the encounter (as taken from Wikipedia): "Naturally, I wanted to do the album in Muscle Shoals — as Bob did — but we decided to prep it in L.A., where Bob lived. That's when I learned what the songs were about: born-again Christians in the old corral. . . . I liked the irony of Bob coming to me, the Wandering Jew, to get the Jesus feel. . . . [But] I had no idea he was on this born-again Christian trip until he started to evangelize me. I said, 'Bob, you're dealing with a sixty-two-year-old confirmed Jewish atheist. I'm hopeless. Let's just make an album.'"
(August 2014)
