Jerry Wexler, 91; influential music producer coined 'rhythm and blues'

He next went to work for Billboard, the music industry trade magazine. Billboard's chart for black music was labeled "Race Records," but Wexler was offended by the term and suggested a change to "rhythm and blues."

"I liked the sound of 'rhythm and blues,' " he wrote in his autobiography. "It sung and it swung like music itself -- and I was happy when it stuck; it defined a new genre of music. The handle worked its way into our language and has managed to survive four decades."

Ertegun and partner Herb Abramson started Atlantic in 1947, specializing in the kind of jazz and rhythmic blues that fired Wexler's imagination. It was one of hundreds of scrappy independent labels looking to exploit niches that majors such as Columbia and RCA were overlooking.

Wexler's Billboard articles caught Ertegun's attention, and he offered Wexler a job. Wexler declined unless he could be a partner, and in 1953, Ertegun made him a minor partner.

As he would later do with Franklin, Wexler helped coax Ray Charles to new heights of success after he was signed to Atlantic. Wexler and Ertegun coproduced Charles' first No. 1 R&B hit, "I've Got a Woman," in 1955. As record executives, they pioneered independent production, hiring Los Angeles-based Leiber and Stoller to bring them new recordings that they could distribute.

"They came up with the phrase 'produced by' to put on records," Stoller said. "Before that, nobody talked about records being 'produced.' We just made records."

Early on, Stoller recalled, Wexler called him in for a session with blues singer Big Joe Turner. "He asked me to come and play piano, which I did. But I thought it was nutty, because I played on this song 'Teenage Letter' and Ray Charles was in the studio and he played on the other side. Why would they have me play if they have Ray Charles in the studio? But he liked the way I played piano."

Wexler tried to sign a vibrant young singer making waves in the South in 1956, offering $30,000 to bring him to Atlantic, but RCA Records upped the bid and ultimately landed Elvis Presley.

In the 1960s, Wexler also pioneered the idea of immersing singers in appropriate and musically rich environments by having them travel to record in Memphis, Tenn., and Muscle Shoals, Ala.

In his book, Wexler praised Ertegun as "the savviest and suavest executive in the history of American recorded music. . . . Like a good rhythm section, we swung as a unit."

But there were times when they fell out of sync. He became estranged from Ertegun after persuading him in 1968 to sell Atlantic to Warner Bros. for $17.5 million, considered a steal by many in the music business. It was one of the first independent labels to be bought by a corporation.

Wexler soured many other friendships with his tactics outside the studio.

"He was behind the New Orleans music scene," Mac "Dr. John" Rebennack said Friday. "In that kind of setting, he was a good guy. On the business side of it, he was not a good guy. That was true of the whole company."

When it was time to roll the tape, however, the bare-knuckles business shark typically gave way to the awe-struck music fan, and Wexler prized his rapport with musicians. He was known more for getting out of the way of musicians' natural talents than for imposing his own musical vision on them, as Phil Spector did.

"He was a craftsman in the studio," Ritz said. "With Aretha, he knew how to deconstruct her in order to reconstruct her, and he reconstructed her based on her own fundamental elements, which were the church and gospel music. If you listen to Willie Nelson's 'Phases and Stages,' or Dusty Springfield's 'Dusty in Memphis,' what really comes across is the rugged individuality of the artist."

Franklin knew Wexler's reputation as a combative egotist whose temper often raged, but when they were in the recording studio together, she said, "We never, ever had a moment like that. We had a compatibility about the music. We were always on pretty much the same page.

"I was not unhappy at Columbia," Franklin noted. "I was very happy at Columbia. I'd never recorded before, it was the first time I was signed to a record label, my music was being played on lots of stations, I was winning a lot of polls in places like Down Beat and Billboard. But I was a lot happier at Atlantic."

She had reconnected with Wexler in recent months for the completion of a long-abandoned film documentary about her 1972 Atlantic recording sessions that produced her highly praised "Amazing Grace" gospel album. The footage was shot by a young Sydney Pollack, and is planned for release next year, according to the film's coproducer, Alan Elliott.

"The secret of the music business, Jerry Wexler once told me, wasn't to go into the studio with a hit in mind, but with great music on your mind," Robert Hilburn, The Times' former pop music critic, said Friday. "He said, 'I've had my share of hits, thank God, but most hits are here today and gone tomorrow. Great music lasts forever. I wanted to make records that sounded as good 20 years from now as they did the day we went into the studio.' In retrospect, Jerry was being modest. His records still sound great after 50 years."

Wexler is survived by his third wife, playwright-novelist Jean Arnold; a daughter, Lisa; and a son, Paul. Another daughter, Anita, died in 1989 of AIDS complications. No funeral or memorial services have been announced.

randy.lewis@latimes.com