Berle Adams
Business Person
Berle Adams, 92; booking agent cofounded Mercury Records, helped launch N.Y. Jets...Dinah Washington, Tony Martin, Frankie Laine, and Vic Damone. In 1950, MCA president Lew Wasserman invited Mr. Adams to join MCA, then the world's largest talent agency. At MCA, Mr. Adams was primarily responsible for packaging new... In this article: Berle Adams, MCA, Mercury Records, Los Angeles, Irving Green, New York Titans, Universal Pictures, Woody Herman, Erroll Garner, and Elton John |
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Wikipedia | October 09, 2009
Berle Adams
...Adams to leave Chicago's bitter winters and move to Los Angeles. He resigned from Mercury Records and headed west with wife Lucy and young children Helen and Richard. In his new setting, Adams soon became the booking agent for singer...
In this article: Music Corporation of America, Chicago, Louis Jordan, and Decca Records
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The Hollywood Reporter - Music | August 27, 2009
Music, TV exec Berle Adams dies at 92
...Mercury Records; signed the Who, Neil Diamond and Bob Newhart; and was the driving force behind the TV hits "This Is Your Life" and "Queen for a Day. " During his two-decade stint with Lew Wasserman at MCA, Adams served as the agent for Jack...
In this article: MCA, Louis Jordan, Bob Newhart, Dinah Shore, Decca Records, Neil Diamond, Emmy Awards, and Norman Lear
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all about jazz | December 15, 2008
GENERAL: Frankie Laine: Jazz Spectacular
...quickly signed Laine to a Mercury recording contract. For his first single, Laine urged Adams to let him record a song he had heard a woman sing years earlier at a club in Cleveland. The obscure song was That's My Desire. Laine was backed...
In this article: Frankie Laine, Jazz Spectacular, Mitch Miller, Buck Clayton, Mercury Records, and Hoagy Carmichael
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OBITUARY: Berle Adams Dies at 92; CO-Founder of Mercury Records and an Mca Executive
...Vic Damone. His job was to recruit the talent to come and record for Mercury," said Gordon Cohn, who interviewed Adams extensively and assisted him in writing A Sucker for Talent," a 1995 book that Adams self-published for friends and family.
In this article: Mercury Records, MCA, Louis Jordan, Irving Green, Emmy Awards, Woody Herman, Erroll Garner, and The King
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www.latimes.com
Berle Adams dies at 92; co-founder of Mercury Records and an ...
Berle Adams, a onetime big-band booking agent who co-founded Mercury Records in ... Berle Adams dies at 92; co-founder of Mercury Records and an MCA executive ...
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www.boston.com
Berle Adams, 92; booking agent cofounded Mercury Records ...
LOS ANGELES - Berle Adams, a one-time big-band booking agent who cofounded Mercury Records in the 1940s and later became a senior executive at MCA before launching ...
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Mercury Records - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Berle Adams. Arthur Talmadge. Distributing label. Mercury Music Group (UK) ... 4 Current major Mercury Records labels and operations. 5 See also. 6 External links ...
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www.variety.com
Mecury Records co-founder Berle Adams dies - Entertainment ...
Co-founder of Mercury Records and longtime MCA VP and agent Berle Adams died Tuesday in Los Angeles following a long illness. He was 92..Music News, news from the ...
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cdn.emmys.tv
Academy of Television Arts & Sciences
Berle Adams, a longtime agent who co-founded Mercury Records died August 25, ... In 1945, he formed Mercury Records with partners Irving Green, Ray Greenberg and ...
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Description from Wikipedia:
Berle Adams (birth name: Beryl Adasky) was a music industry executive, best known as second in command at MCA.
He was born to Russian immigrant parents on the West Side of Chicago, Illinois, on June 11, 1917.
As a teenager at Chicago's Crane Technical High School, Adams became attracted to late night remote radio broadcasts of America's swing bands, including those of Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Charlie Barnet, Bob Crosby, Glenn Miller, and Benny Goodman.
While still at Crane, Adams began renting speaker systems and booking bands for his and other schools' proms and for neighborhood weddings, men's and women's benevolent organizations, fire department and chamber of commerce socials. (Musicians in those days earned $4 per sideman and $6 for the leader. Adams' fee was $6.50 a job.)
With a boost from young bandleader Al Trace, whose later recording of "Mairzy Doats" became No. 1 on the Hit Parade in 1944, Adams' fledgling career as a band booker flourished until the trade unions discovered his non-union free-wheeling and threatened to shut off his power in more ways than one.
Adams left the music business temporarily, married his neighborhood sweetheart Lucy Leven, and began selling life insurance door-to-door. (To get the job he had to be 21 so he convinced his school principal to write a letter verifying his birthdate as six months earlier than the actual date.) Insurance sales during the Depression proved less than satisfying. Adams talked his way into a job for tiny Varsity Records, attempting to gain space on the city's jukeboxes for the company's little-known artists in competition with stars who were recording for industry giants like RCA Victor and Decca.
A meeting with Art Weems, brother of bandleader Ted Weems and an agent for General Artists Corporation (GAC) resulted in Adams being hired by GAC as office boy at $20 a week.
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