Janice Brooks
From:
Pleasant Gap Pa
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Posted 3 Jul 2006 2:45 pm |
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by Bruce Fessier
Palm Springs Desert Sun, July 2, 2006
Irvin Green, the Palm Springs-based co-founder of Mercury Records, was remembered by friends as a recording pioneer who helped break popular music's color barrier.
Green, 90, died of natural causes at 5 a.m. Saturday at Desert Regional Medical Center in Palm Springs said his wife, Pamela, who was by his side.
Green co-founded Mercury in 1944 and turned it into the first independent record company to become a major label by using alternative distribution sources.
While the four majors -- RCA, Columbia, Decca and Capitol -- promoted their mainstream music through network radio, Mercury distributed jazz, R&B and country western tunes not licensed for network radio through a jukebox network, allowing him to gain national distribution for music that previously had only regional success.
Mercury pioneered a "black sound" by promoting such black artists as Sarah Vaughan, Dinah Washington and the Platters. It recorded Louis Armstrong's first No. 1 hit in 1964 with "Hello, Dolly!"
It also scored hits by white pop singers such as Vic Damone and the Four Seasons and more folksy artists like Frankie Laine, Patti Page, and Flatt and Scruggs.
Mercury became the first major label to hire a black top executive when Green made Quincy Jones a vice president in charge of artists and repertoire. "Irvin has a broad taste," Jones said in an interview with The Desert Sun in February before Green's 90th birthday. "It was across the board and I think that's what we shared -- that diversified taste."
Green became one of the first inductees in the Gold Circle of the Pacific Southwest chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in April with other local residents such as Merv Griffin and Paul Burke.
Attracting success
Green was honored for his 1948 aid to Ed Sullivan in booking Mercury artists who were the first blacks to appear on a popular regional telecast.
He also arranged for Laine to sing on Nat "King" Cole's TV show in 1957, marking the first duet by a white and black man on national TV.
Rancho Mirage resident Jack Rael, who managed Patti Page when she became the first singer to overdub her voice on a national hit on "Tennessee Waltz" for Mercury, said Mercury's Chicago base helped Green attract artists who weren't accepted by major labels on the coasts.
"I went to Mercury because that was the only successful record company where I could drive my small car," said Rael, who was a Milwaukee-based musician before discovering Page in Tulsa, Ok.
Green said growing up among all types of people in the poor west side of Chicago gave him his egalitarian views.
"I was brought up in a mixed neighborhood," he said in an interview with The Desert Sun in January*, "and that stayed with me forever."
Green attended St. John's University in New York for two years before having to get a job during the Depression. He worked in his father's paint contracting business and went into sheet metal with a partner. They built hydraulic presses and made records.
When the U.S. entered World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt restricted shellac for use by the military, so Green's firm invented plastic records. They turned out to be sturdier than shellac and business boomed.
Green gave his first releases to jukebox operators and that got his recordings played in cities before they got on the radio.
With A&R man Mitch Miller finding hit songs for the likes of Laine and Page, Mercury soon opened an office in New York.
A true visionary
"Needless to say, he created what started out as a small independent label and blossomed into one of the major labels in the industry," said Len Levy, a Rancho Mirage resident who headed Epic Records from 1961 until just before Green merged Mercury with Polygram in 1969.
"As the head of that label, he had a major impact as pop music is concerned. He was involved in so many different facets, it's really hard to pinpoint or marginalize the things he did."
Jones said one of Green's many accomplishments was buying the Chappell music publishing catalog for $42 million in 1962 and selling it 12 years later for $110 million.
"It's worth about a half-billion dollars now," Jones said.
Green bought a 1936 multi-level home in Palm Springs in the early 1970s and began a new career as a builder. He teamed with Bill Levitt, who invented tract homes in Levittown, Penn., to build 18,000 homes in Iran with a new irrigation design.
The project collapsed when the Shah of Iran was deposed and Green had to flee Iran hiding in the back of a car. But he built a development company in Palm Springs, started Landau Development and finished 52 homes in Rancho Mirage last year alone.
He was still making weekly site inspections at his Landau homes in Cathedral City last spring.
Jones called him a visionary.
"It didn't matter what it was," Jones said. "He understood it."
Services will be at 11 a.m. Thursday at Temple Isaiah in Palm Springs followed by a public reception at his daughter Kelli Ross' Palm Springs home.
Besides Kelli and his wife, Pamela, Green is survived by his daughter Roberta Hunt from Wisconsin, three grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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Janice "Busgal" Brooks
http://www.myspace.com/busgaljan
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Al Marcus
From:
Cedar Springs,MI USA (deceased)
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Posted 3 Jul 2006 3:22 pm
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Janice-Thanks for posting this about Mr. Green and Mercury Records. His Musical Director , David Carrol(Nook) was always looking for something different from main stream.
They offered me a recording session contract if I moved to their office in Chicago in 1953.
I lived in Northern Michigan was teaching music and had a music store and home and family up there, and was playing very night . So, I couldn't see how I could do it at that time.
Capital Records had Alvino Rey , and he wanted me to do some Alvino Rey type arrangements, for Mercury. He was sure a pioneer in those early days....al
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My Website..... www.cmedic.net/~almarcus/
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