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Mercury co-founder dies
By CMU Editorial | Published on Friday 28 August 2009
Mercury Records co-founder Berle Adams has died at the age of 92. He died in LA after battling a long illness. Adams worked in an assortment of music business roles over the years, as well as enjoying success in the TV industry and acting as an agent for the likes of Jack Benny and Alfred Hitchcock.
Born in Chicago, Adams’ first experience of the music industry was as a band booker, first for school parties, and later for a string of community events. His first proper job was as a sales rep for Varsity Records, persuading jukebox owners to include the label’s music alongside those of much bigger record companies.
In his mid-twenties he took an office job at the General Artists Corporation and began working towards becoming a fully fledged agent, gaining credibility in that domain through his representation of bandleader Louis Jordan. He also booked dates for the likes of Glenn Miller, Nat King Cole and the Andrews Sisters via GAC, before quitting in 1943 to set up his own Berle Adams Agency, with Jordan his main client.
Soon after, he became involved in the launch of the Mercury Radio & TV Company, which subsequently became Mercury Records, and he helped steer some of the record company’s early success stories. That said, he only worked with Mercury for a few years, moving to LA in 1947 and returned to the life of a booking agent.
His big career leap came three years later when he was hired by MCA, where he continued to work as a booking agent for music acts, but also became a mover and shaker in the world of US television, and later the film industry following MCA’s acquisition of Universal Pictures. He subsequently helped MCA expand its music interests, and launched a new label within the entertainment conglom, UNI Records, which signed, among others, The Who, Neil Diamond, Elton John, and Olivia Newton-John.
He was essentially pushed out of MCA in the early seventies after an internal power struggle, leading to the creation of another Adam’s led company, BAC Inc, through which he pursued a wide range of music and TV projects for much of the rest of his life, particularly specialising in the creation and distribution of one-off TV specials for big time music stars.
He retired from both the TV and music industries some years before his death this month.
