Jerry Moss, leading figure in the music industry who co-founded A&M Records with Herb Alpert – obituary

Jerry Moss, who has died aged 88, was a giant of the music industry, co-founder with the trumpeter Herb Alpert of A&M Records, the label that launched and guided the careers of a long line of musicians – from Britain, the likes of the Police, Cat Stevens, Joe Cocker, Peter Frampton, Supertramp and Joan Armatrading, and from the US, Carole King, the Carpenters, Janet Jackson and Sheryl Crow; within 10 years of its formation in 1962 it was the world’s largest independent record company.

The pair – who never signed a contract together, preferring to rely on mutual trust – had no difficulty in recruiting talent thanks to an “artists first” ethos that marked them out as oddballs in a relentlessly exploitative industry. One of their first big signings was Waylon Jennings, but when the country singer wanted to decamp to RCA Victor, who he felt were more in tune with his aspirations, A&M agreed to release him from his contract.

As Alpert recalled: “I looked at Jerry and said: ‘Man, this guy’s going to be a big star,’ and Jerry said: ‘I know it.’ And I got goosebumps thinking that if we could be that honest with our artists, we’re gonna be a big success.”

Jerome Sheldon Moss was born into a New York Jewish family on May 8 1935; he graduated from Brooklyn College in English, and after a stint in the US army he embarked on a career as a plugger, promoting the Crests’ 1958 hit 16 Candles.

In 1960 he moved to Los Angeles, where he met Herb Alpert, and they started a label together, initially called Carnival Records and operating out of Alpert’s garage. When they discovered that the name was already taken they combined the first letters of their surnames, and A&M was born.

With Alpert’s musical chops and Moss’s business head, it was an ideal combination. “I knew how to make records, but I didn’t know what to do with them,” the trumpeter said. “Jerry did. He sure did.”

Alpert’s own records formed part of the staple diet at A&M, and the label’s first album release was The Lonely Bull, credited to Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass – which originally consisted of Alpert himself, overdubbed and backed by the famed session musicians, the Wrecking Crew. A&M’s first No 1 single was Alpert’s cover of Bacharach and David’s This Guy’s in Love With You.

An exhaustive list of A&M signings would take up several paragraphs, but the likes of Joan Baez, Phil Ochs and Rita Coolidge all came on board, and the label carved out an early niche as a home for folk music.

There was a shift in direction in the late 1960s. “Man, we’re kind of known as an easy listening label,” Moss told Alpert, and after he attended the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, A&M took an adventurous turn, signing the likes of Captain Beefheart, Joe Cocker and the Flying Burrito Brothers.

The policy continued into the following decade, with out-and-out rockers such as Nazareth recruited. One of A&M’s biggest acquisitions was the guitarist Peter Frampton.

“What he was doing onstage wasn’t like the records – it was outrageously better,” said Moss. “I remember being at the mix of Frampton Comes Alive! and I was so blown away I asked to make it a double album.” It went on to become one of the bestselling live albums of all time, shifting 20 million copies over the years.

In 1977, when EMI sacked the Sex Pistols, A&M took them on, famously holding a mock signing ceremony outside Buckingham Palace. But by the end of the week they had thought better of it, leaving the Pistols to be taken on by Richard Branson’s Virgin label.

During the 1980s the A&M line-up expanded to include such acts as Suzanne Vega, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark and Bryan Adams. But by the late 1980s Alpert and Moss felt that they could not easily compete with the huge sums being splashed out by the major labels to lure the big names, and in 1989 they sold up to PolyGram for $500 million, remaining on the board for four years until falling out with the new owners. They also established Almo Sounds, whose acts would include the band Garbage, with their Scots singer Shirley Manson.

In 1998, when Polygram was bought by Seagram and merged into Universal Music Group, the A&M brand became hopelessly diluted, and Moss and Alpert sued over the breach of the integrity clause; they would have been mollified by the extra $200 million they received.

Moss gave away a sizable portion of his fortune, including $25 million to the Music Center in Los Angeles. In January this year a gala concert in his honour was held there, featuring performances by acts including Dionne Warwick and Peter Frampton. Herb Alpert paid tribute that night, saying: “I never met a nicer, honest, sensitive, smart and talented man than my partner Jerry Moss.”

A lucrative sideline for Moss was breeding and racing thoroughbred horses. In 2005 he collected a $1.6 million purse when his stallion Giacomo won the Kentucky Derby, the first leg of the Triple Crown. The horse was named after Sting and Trudie Styler’s third son, and at the Music Center Gala in January, the bassist and singer remarked: “Trudie and I put a thousand dollars on that horse, and we’re still living on the takings.”

Jerry Moss’s first wife was Helen Sandra Rusetos, with whom he adopted three children but subsequently divorced. He married, secondly, Ann Holbrook, but they parted in 2017. In 2019 he married Tina Morse, who survives him with his children.

Jerry Moss, born May 8 1935, died August 16 2023

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