Berle Adams
Encyclopedia
Berle Adams was a music industry executive, best known as second in command at MCA
Music Corporation of America
MCA, Inc. was an American talent agency. Initially starting in the music business, they would next become a dominant force in the film business, and later expanded into the television business...
.
Early life
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
Tommy Dorsey
Thomas Francis "Tommy" Dorsey, Jr. was an American jazz trombonist, trumpeter, composer, and bandleader of the Big Band era. He was known as "The Sentimental Gentleman of Swing", due to his smooth-toned trombone playing. He was the younger brother of bandleader Jimmy Dorsey...
and Jimmy Dorsey
Jimmy Dorsey
James "Jimmy" Dorsey was a prominent American jazz clarinetist, saxophonist, trumpeter, composer, and big band leader. He was known as "JD"...
, Charlie Barnet
Charlie Barnet
Charles Daly Barnet was an American jazz saxophonist, composer, and bandleader.His major recordings were "Skyliner", "Cherokee", "The Wrong Idea", "Scotch and Soda", "In a Mizz", and "Southland Shuffle".-Early life:...
, Bob Crosby
Bob Crosby
George Robert "Bob" Crosby was an American dixieland bandleader and vocalist, best known for his group the Bob-Cats.-Family:...
, Glenn Miller
Glenn Miller
Alton Glenn Miller was an American jazz musician , arranger, composer, and bandleader in the swing era. He was one of the best-selling recording artists from 1939 to 1943, leading one of the best known "Big Bands"...
, and Benny Goodman
Benny Goodman
Benjamin David “Benny” Goodman was an American jazz and swing musician, clarinetist and bandleader; widely known as the "King of Swing".In the mid-1930s, Benny Goodman led one of the most popular musical groups in America...
.
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.)
Early career
With a boost from young bandleader Al TraceAl Trace
Albert J. Trace was a prolific American songwriter and orchestra leader of the 1930s, 40s and 50s whose peak of popularity was reached in the Chicago area during the height of the Big Band era....
, whose later recording of "Mairzy Doats
Mairzy Doats
Mairzy Doats is a novelty song composed in 1943 by Milton Drake, Al Hoffman and Jerry Livingston. It was first played on radio station WOR, New York, by Al Trace and his Silly Symphonists. The song made the pop charts several times, with a version by the Merry Macs reaching No. 1 in March 1944...
" 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.
Career
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.At GAC, Adams busied himself studying the one-night band booking practices of GAC's Joe Shribman and determined to become an agent. In one of his earliest efforts he managed to introduce bandleader Louis Jordan and his Tympany Five to Chicago café lounges in May 1941, and his career as agent was underway. He was 24 years old. The Jordan association lasted nine years and solidly established the careers of both men.
Over the next few years Adams represented clarinetist Jimmy Noone, saxophonists Ben Webster
Ben Webster
Benjamin Francis Webster , a.k.a. "The Brute" or "Frog," was an influential American jazz tenor saxophonist. Webster, born in Kansas City, Missouri, was considered one of the three most important "swing tenors" along with Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young...
and Coleman Hawkins
Coleman Hawkins
Coleman Randolph Hawkins was an American jazz tenor saxophonist. Hawkins was one of the first prominent jazz musicians on his instrument. As Joachim E. Berendt explained, "there were some tenor players before him, but the instrument was not an acknowledged jazz horn"...
, boogie woogie stylists Albert Ammons and Pete Johnson, Fats Waller, Art Tatum, and young saxophonist Illinois Jacquet. Adams booked road dates for Glenn Miller, Woody Herman, Charlie Spivak, Claude Thornhill, Nat King Cole, the Andrews Sisters, Joe Venuti, and Jimmy Dorsey until 1943, when he left GAC to become Jordan's personal manager and established the Berle Adams Agency.
Adams built Jordan's career, moving from club dates in Kansas City and Chicago's Savoy Ballroom to municipal auditoriums, ballrooms, warehouses in the South, black theaters such as Chicago's Regal Theater
Regal Theater, South Side (Chicago)
The Regal Theater, located in the heart of Bronzeville, was an important night club and music venue in Chicago.Part of the Balaban and Katz chain, the lavishly decorated venue, with plush carpeting and velvet drapes featured some of the most celebrated black entertainers in America.The Regal also...
, and eventually—in a breakthrough—major integrated urban theaters such as the giant State Theater in Hartford, Connecticut, the Paramount in New York City, the Oriental Theater in downtown Chicago, and the Golden Gate Theater in San Francisco. Everywhere the band sold out the house. Their recordings with Decca Records produced a stream of hits, including the first recording of "Caldonia," "Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens," "Is You Is Or Is You Ain't My Baby," and "Let the Good Times Roll." The Jordan band was at various times enhanced by the talents of Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan, Ruth Brown, Paula Watson, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and other gifted singers, all signed by Adams. In 1943 the Jordan band made a series of "soundies", three-minute black-and-white films each featuring one tune and followed with four feature films aimed at America's black audiences.
Founding
In 1944 Adams established the Champagne Music and Preview Music publishing companies and the next year he formed the Mercury Radio and Television Company, which became Mercury Records, with partners Irving Green, Ray Greenberg, and marketing-advertising whiz Art Talmadge of the Music Corporation of America (MCA).Mercury soon began recording Erroll Garner, Dinah Washington, Frances Langford, Glen Gray and the Casa Loma Orchestra, Tony Martin, and employing Mitch Miller and Norman Granz as producers. Miller persuaded actor John Garfield to narrate for the Mercury label Malcolm Child's children's tale of racial intolerance, "Herman Ermine in Rabbit Town," with music by Alec Wilder. The rare album is today a collector's item.
In 1947, Mercury recorded Frankie Laine
Frankie Laine
Frankie Laine, born Francesco Paolo LoVecchio , was a successful American singer, songwriter, and actor whose career spanned 75 years, from his first concerts in 1930 with a marathon dance company to his final performance of "That's My Desire" in 2005...
's version of a 1931 tune, "That's My Desire
That's My Desire (1931 song)
"That's My Desire" is a 1931 popular song with music by Helmy Kresa and lyrics by Carroll Loveday.The highest-charting version of the song was recorded by the Sammy Kaye orchestra in 1946, although a version of the song recorded by Frankie Laine has become better known over the years, being one of...
," and it became the legendary singer's first hit, leading to another, "Lucky Old Sun," and making Laine a national star. Other successes followed at Mercury, including 20-year-old Vic Damone's "I Have But One Heart," which launched the singer's career.
Television
In 1947, health problems induced 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 Kay Starr.
In 1950, Adams' career took a giant leap when Lew Wasserman
Lew Wasserman
Lewis Robert "Lew" Wasserman was an American talent agent and studio executive, sometimes credited with creating and later taking apart the studio system in a career spanning more than six decades...
, president of MCA, hired him to join the entertainment giant founded in the mid-1920s by Dr. Jules Stein.
Adams remained at MCA for 20 years. He began, simply enough, by booking for television and appearances in Las Vegas such stars as Jane Russell, Dinah Shore, Phil Harris, Jack Carson, and Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis.
Booking talent for local TV in Los Angeles led to assignments in network TV. Adams worked closely with Ralph Edwards ("The Ralph Edwards Show") in developing a creative packaging arrangement with NBC whereby the host talent—Edwards—formed a corporation and licensed a particular show with the network for a predetermined figure and paid the producer, director, and star guests, as well as all of the "below-the-line" or backstage personnel himself. The virtue of packaging lay in the creative control retained by the host and in tax advantages afforded corporations.
With Adams leading the way, Edwards moved on to "This Is Your Life,' which became a wildly successful show from 1952-61 and again a decade later, and to "Place the Face" and "It Could Be You." "Queen for a Day," with Jack Bailey as host, was Adams' next hit, running both as a daytime show and prime time entertainment from 1956-64 and enjoying a brief revival in 1969. Adams signed Tennessee Ernie Ford to an MCA contract and the deep-voiced singer's Tennessee Ernie Ford show played weekly on NBC from 1956-61, when the folksy star decided to retire while still at the top of his game.
Adams' chief responsibility for MCA became the packaging of new programs and negotiation of their contracts. In 1957 he went to Europe for the first time to create MCA's international TV division but still managed to keep his eye out for fresh talent that could be packaged for television. He signed stand-up comic Bob Newhart, booked him into clubs, and soon sold "The Bob Newhart Show" to NBC. The show ran for only one year but won a Peabody Award and an Emmy nomination.
The 1960s was the decade of greatest creative energy and achievement in Adams' career. He became the MCA agent for Jack Benny
Jack Benny
Jack Benny was an American comedian, vaudevillian, and actor for radio, television, and film...
, Rosemary Clooney
Rosemary Clooney
Rosemary Clooney was an American singer and actress. She came to prominence in the early 1950s with the novelty hit "Come On-a My House" written by William Saroyan and his cousin Ross Bagdasarian , which was followed by other pop numbers such as "Botch-a-Me" Rosemary Clooney (May 23, 1928 –...
, Eddie Fisher
Eddie Fisher
Edward Fisher may refer to:* Ed Fisher , American baseball player* Eddie Fisher , American singer* Eddie Fisher , American player* Ed Fisher , player...
, Dinah Shore
Dinah Shore
Dinah Shore was an American singer, actress, and television personality...
, Bud Yorkin
Bud Yorkin
Bud Yorkin is an American film and television producer, director, writer and actor.Yorkin was born Alan David Yorkin in Washington, Pennsylvania. He earned a degree in engineering from Carnegie Tech, now Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsbugh, Pennsylvania...
and Norman Lear
Norman Lear
Norman Milton Lear is an American television writer and producer who produced such 1970s sitcoms as All in the Family, Sanford and Son, One Day at a Time, The Jeffersons, Good Times and Maude...
, Andy Williams
Andy Williams
Howard Andrew "Andy" Williams is an American singer who has recorded 18 Gold- and three Platinum-certified albums. He hosted The Andy Williams Show, a TV variety show, from 1962 to 1971, as well as numerous television specials, and owns his own theater, the Moon River Theatre in Branson, Missouri,...
, Dorothy Dandridge
Dorothy Dandridge
Dorothy Jean Dandridge was an American actress and popular singer, and was the first African-American to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress...
, Canadian comedians Wayne and Schuster, Charles Laughton
Charles Laughton
Charles Laughton was an English-American stage and film actor, screenwriter, producer and director.-Early life and career:...
, and Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
. He convinced Marlene Dietrich
Marlene Dietrich
Marlene Dietrich was a German-American actress and singer.Dietrich remained popular throughout her long career by continually re-inventing herself, professionally and characteristically. In the Berlin of the 1920s, she acted on the stage and in silent films...
to star in a revue
Revue
A revue is a type of multi-act popular theatrical entertainment that combines music, dance and sketches. The revue has its roots in 19th century American popular entertainment and melodrama but grew into a substantial cultural presence of its own during its golden years from 1916 to 1932...
that would cross the country in 16 weeks.
He negotiated MCA's contract to represent the new American Football League and in 1963 helped long-time MCA colleague David A. ("Sonny") Werblin acquire the New York Titans franchise of the AFL from former announcer Harry Wismer. Werblin changed the team name to the Jets, two years later drafted Joe Namath out of the University of Alabama, and the Jets were on their way to the Super Bowl. A lifelong sports fan, Adams one day was attracted by the sight of a golfer on TV who seemed to be a natural showman. Working through pioneer sports agent and attorney Mark McCormack, Adams signed Arnold Palmer
Arnold Palmer
Arnold Daniel Palmer is an American professional golfer, who is generally regarded as one of the greatest players in the history of men's professional golf. He has won numerous events on both the PGA Tour and Champions Tour, dating back to 1955...
and Jack Nicklaus
Jack Nicklaus
Jack William Nicklaus , nicknamed "The Golden Bear", is an American professional golfer. He won 18 career major championships on the PGA Tour over a span of 25 years and is widely regarded as one of the greatest professional golfers of all time. In addition to his 18 Majors, he was runner-up a...
for a weekly one-hour nationally broadcast "Challenge Golf" show.
In 1962, after MCA had bought Decca Records
Decca Records
Decca Records began as a British record label established in 1929 by Edward Lewis. Its U.S. label was established in late 1934; however, owing to World War II, the link with the British company was broken for several decades....
, which owned Universal Pictures
Universal Pictures
-1920:* White Youth* The Flaming Disc* Am I Dreaming?* The Dragon's Net* The Adorable Savage* Putting It Over* The Line Runners-1921:* The Fire Eater* A Battle of Wits* Dream Girl* The Millionaire...
, the entertainment giant left the talent agency business for film and television production and distribution. Wasserman asked Adams, now an MCA vice-president, to streamline the film studio's 30 distribution offices around the world in the interest of economy. Adams visited each of the domestic and foreign offices and successfully reduced the number of offices to eight.
Adams negotiated the purchase of Leeds Music, bringing MCA the copyrights to such pop classics as "I'll Remember April
I'll Remember April (song)
"I'll Remember April" is a popular song. The music for the song was written by Gene de Paul, and the lyrics were written by Patricia Johnston and Don Raye....
," "I'll Never Smile Again," "The Girl from Ipanema
The Girl from Ipanema
"Garota de Ipanema" is a well-known bossa nova song, a worldwide hit in the mid-1960s that won a Grammy for Record of the Year in 1965. It was written in 1962, with music by Antonio Carlos Jobim and Portuguese lyrics by Vinicius de Moraes. English lyrics were written later by Norman Gimbel.The...
," "La Vie en Rose," and many other pop standards. He established a new MCA music company, UNI Records, and signed The Who, Neil Diamond, Elton John, and Olivia Newton-John to recording contracts. In England, under MCA's Decca label, Adams and MCA colleague Brian Brolly signed Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice to a contract to record the score of their early hit, Jesus Christ Superstar.
Adams convinced Ethel Merman
Ethel Merman
Ethel Merman was an American actress and singer. Known primarily for her powerful voice and roles in musical theatre, she has been called "the undisputed First Lady of the musical comedy stage." Among the many standards introduced by Merman in Broadway musicals are "I Got Rhythm", "Everything's...
, Danny Kaye
Danny Kaye
Danny Kaye was a celebrated American actor, singer, dancer, and comedian...
, Gene Kelly
Gene Kelly
Eugene Curran "Gene" Kelly was an American dancer, actor, singer, film director and producer, and choreographer...
, and Fred Astaire
Fred Astaire
Fred Astaire was an American film and Broadway stage dancer, choreographer, singer and actor. His stage and subsequent film career spanned a total of 76 years, during which he made 31 musical films. He was named the fifth Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute...
each to appear in television specials. An Evening with Fred Astaire won nine Emmys
Emmy Award
An Emmy Award, often referred to simply as the Emmy, is a television production award, similar in nature to the Peabody Awards but more focused on entertainment, and is considered the television equivalent to the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards .A majority of Emmys are presented in various...
.
The prospect of enhancing foreign sales of MCA's television productions took Adams, accompanied by his wife Lucy, to London, Paris, Rome, Lima, Mexico City, Toronto, Tokyo, and Sydney, where he opened offices for MCA and MCA 's one hour and 90 minute dramatic anthologies, action series, comedies, and musicals in those foreign markets. Everywhere he went he met with success, Lucy serving as charming and knowledgeable hostess in each foreign encounter.
In October 1969, Adams, now executive vice-president of MCA and second in company earnings only to Wasserman, found himself at the center of an internal power struggle within the company. Lew Wasserman urged "voluntary retirement," the magnate's euphemism for dismissal. Adams' 20-year career with MCA ended formally in early 1971.
BAC Inc.
He formed a corporation, BAC Inc., and for a couple of years following his termination, Adams served on the boards of KCET public television in Los Angeles and TelePrompTer. He was retained by ARA, Inc., as consultant and negotiated the sale of the Spectrum arena in Philadelphia.In 1973 Adams joined the William Morris Agency
William Morris Agency
WME is the largest talent agency in the world, with offices in Beverly Hills, New York City, Nashville, London, and Miami. WME represents elite artists from all facets of the entertainment industry, including motion pictures, television, music, theatre, publishing, and physical production...
and during a short interval there directed the marketing of events surrounding Hank Aaron's 715th home run, surpassing the career record of Babe Ruth
Babe Ruth
George Herman Ruth, Jr. , best known as "Babe" Ruth and nicknamed "the Bambino" and "the Sultan of Swat", was an American Major League baseball player from 1914–1935...
.
In 1978 he was executive producer for "The Brass Target," a feature film starring Sophia Loren, John Cassavetes, George Kennedy, Robert Vaughan, and Max von Sydow.
In his later active years as head of BAC Inc., Adams distributed the TV specials of George Burns, Dolly Parton, Neil Diamond, Goldie Hawn, Cher, Dean Martin, Liberace, and Nat King Cole, among others.
For 24 years he was the sole distributor of TV's Emmy Awards show to more than 100 countries.
Death
Lucy Adams died of cancer on April 1, 1990. Both she and her husband had, long before her illness, become interested in cancer research. Adams joined Cancer Research Associates, the support group of the University of Southern California's Norris Cancer Center and Hospital, and in 1985 he became the organization's president. The Adams family—Berle, his children Helen and Richard, and their families, have established the Berle and Lucy Adams Chair in Cancer Research at USC's Keck School of Medicine.In 1995, Adams privately published his autobiography, Sucker for Talent.
Mr Adams died in Los Angeles, he was 92 years old.