Jerry Wexler And Loving What You Do

By Armed Liberal on August 15, 2008 6:37 PM | 4 Comments

Jerry Wexler, who coined the term 'rhythm & blues' died yesterday.

I'm commenting on this because he was one of my dad's great friends from his youth - back in New York City in the 1930's where they worked at a 'race music' record store together along with a third buddy, a guy named Ralph Gleason.

Wexler went on to work at Billboard after the war, and along with Ahmet Ertegun, founded Atlantic Records. Gleason went on to found a jazz club with my dad after the war in San Francisco, and then became the music columnist for the SF Chronicle and then cofounded Rolling Stone. My dad went on to become an executive at a construction company, a job he had no love for but did very well at.

The lesson? Do what you love and success will come. I have told this story to my sons about a million times, and now, triggered by Wexler's death, I'm sharing it with you.

4 Comments

#1 from R Gould-Saltman | August 17, 2008 3:20 AM | Reply

. . . why aren't he and the Erteguns closer to true household names, and this wierd and wonderful story, as much a part of our popular culture as, say, Elvis and Johnny Cash pestering Sam Phillips for an audition?? Ray (the movie) hinted at it, though it made Ahmet out to be much more of a nerd than he really ever was. . .

Yep, opportunity knocks only once, and sometimes it knocks in the form of the Turkish ambassador's son, who really really loves "race music", and has borrowed some cash from his dentist to start a record company...

#2 from Mike | August 17, 2008 4:59 AM | Reply

Marc,
A big post on a record producer, Wexler, and nothing, at least nothing on a WoC site search, for Alexandr Solzhenitsyn?
Hopefully, the search missed something?
Otherwise, I'll just have to believe you've drank too deeply of the Unicorn's Kool-Aid!
BTW, I could not find a google quote from Obama, HIMSELF, on Alexandr Solzhenitsyn's passing!
Can you enlighten me?
Mike

#3 from Armed Liberal | August 17, 2008 5:21 AM | Reply

Mike -

donno - spelling issues?? Try this or this ...

A.L. , puzzled...

#4 from bgates | August 17, 2008 7:20 AM | Reply

AL, how can you derive that lesson from the juxtaposition of Wexler and your father, who you say did not love what he did but was also successful?
I would bet Pinch Sulzberger and George Bush both love what they do. Are they both successful?

Here are some quick tips for adding simple Textile formatting to your comments, though you can also use proper HTML tags:

*This* puts text in bold.

_This_ puts text in italics.

bq. This "bq." at the beginning of a paragraph, flush with the left hand side and with a space after it, is the code to indent one paragraph of text as a block quote.

To add a live URL, "Text to display":http://windsofchange.net/ (no spaces between) will show up as Text to display. Always use this for links - otherwise you will screw up the columns on our main blog page.

Name

Email Address

URL

Remember personal info?

Comments (You may use HTML tags for style)

Jerry Wexler And Loving What You Do

Categories:

4 Comments

Leave a comment