Irving Green

Irving B. Green , also Irvin (his maiden name) or Irv, called Rip , (born February 6, 1916 in Brooklyn , † July 1, 2006 in Palm Springs , California ) was an American record producer, founder and president of Mercury Records .

Life

Green came from a poor background. He grew up on the West Side of Chicago and studied at St. Johns University for two years before the Great Depression forced him to drop out. First he worked in his father's painting business, then in a company that manufactured hydraulic presses and punched metal. Since these were also used in record production, he decided to publish shellac records himself. In 1945 he founded Mercury Records in Chicago from small beginnings, together with Berle Adams (1917–2009) and Arthur Talmadge . In addition to pop, they released jazz early on. Because of their limited resources as an independent label, they relied on promotions instead of radio broadcasts like the big record labels to initially be included in the repertoire of the jukeboxes . In addition, during the Second World War, when shellac was rationed, they pressed their plates into plastic, which also had the advantage that they did not break (in contrast to shellac). Successful musicians during his time at Mercury included Patti Page (Tennessee Waltz), Frankie Laine , Vic Damone , The Platters (Only You, The Great Pretender), Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs (Foggy Mountain Breakdown), Brook Benton , Lesley Gore (It's my party) and The Four Seasons and Jazz Dinah Washington , Sarah Vaughn and others.

He was one of those responsible for lifting the American Federation of Music's ban on live music performances on television in 1948. Soon afterwards, he convinced Ed Sullivan to present blues and jazz musicians on his TV show (especially those under contract with Mercury) and thus ensured that colored musicians from these fields appeared live on TV. When Nat King Cole had ratings problems with his show in 1957, he arranged for Frankie Laine to appear on his show without pay, possibly one of the first joint appearances by a black and white singer on television.

Green played a pioneering role in 1964 when he made Quincy Jones (who first came to Mercury around 1955 as arranger for Dinah Washington) as the first African American to become vice director and thus brought into the management of a major label. Jones had been with the label since 1955 and had previously been made A&R in the New York branch by Green in 1961 .

In his record company he was known for the fact that, unlike other large record companies, he gave the artists the copyright to their compositions and texts - he was only interested in the record releases and not in the rights to compositions or sheet music.

In 1962 he sold his record company to Philips , but managed it until 1967. Then he went into the real estate business, first in Iran, where he built 18,000 apartments in southern Iran with his partner Bill Levitt until he was evicted after the fall of the Shah in 1979 ( and his company nationalized), and then in Palm Springs , California (Landau Development). He is buried in Cathedral City , California.

In 1952 he was one of the founders of the Recording Industry Association of America. In 2006 he was inducted into the Gold Circle of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (Pacific-Southwest region) for his contributions to eradicating racial barriers in the music industry .

He was married and had two daughters.

Web links

• Irving Green at Spectropop
• Biography and photo at Find a Grave