By The Campfire

August 20, 2008

I heard the man’s name a long time ago – I can’t remember exactly where – but the music he championed was the soundtrack of my life growing up.

I liked Ray Charles, to be sure. But Wilson Picket burned up a lot of 9-volt batteries in my silver AM radio. Every time we got into my father’s 1965 Impala coupe with the red interior and the under-the-dash air conditioner that would freeze the humidity of the Alabama summers into a Freon vapor, I would tune in the Big Bam to hear Aretha Franklin push a song from music to emotion in three beats. My father, a Hank Williams man, didn’t resist. I saw his fingers tapping the steering wheel more than a few times.

When Otis Redding poured his music out of those tiny, analog speakers, it would replace food in my life. I would have given my entire $4 a week paycheck washing windows at the Diana Shop if my skinny, white Southern voice could have sounded remotely like Otis Redding even on a bad day.

Later, in the 1970’s, I’d crank up Led Zeppelin and Carlos Santana in my brown Vega.
In the 80’s, Dire Straits was the first CD I ever bought.

Jerry Wexler brought this music to the masses (where I lived). He went from Billboard magazine to Atlantic Records in 1953 and used his creative genius to help turn what was once known as “Race Music” into R&B, coining that phrase, actually. He helped lead Soul to the top of the charts, calling the Atlantic sound “Immaculate Funk.” It was his calling.

Mr. Wexler was hardly perfect and talked candidly about his life in his autobiography. To him, music was ruthless business. He was abrasive yet generous and put millions of ears at the listening end of microphones that may never have been heard without him. He loved the music.

I read in the Sunday obits that Mr. Wexler died last Friday at 91 from heart failure. I think, however, that was a misprint. I just listened to Aretha Franklin sing “Chain of Fools” and Wilson Picket pound out “Land of 1,000 Dances," and it sounds like Mr. Wexler’s heart is beating just fine.

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