IE 11 is not supported. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser.

A&M Records founders to be honored

Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss, who founded A&M Records, will be honored by the Recording Academy with the President’s Merit Award for their contributions to popular music.
/ Source: The Associated Press

Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss, who founded A&M Records, will be honored by the Recording Academy with the President’s Merit Award for their contributions to popular music.

The duo will receive the award at a reception after the academy’s Grammy Awards event on Feb. 11.

“We are proud to pay homage to this amazing duo and celebrate their incredible accomplishments as one of the most respected and revered executive teams in music history,” Recording Academy President Neil Portnow said in a statement.

Alpert and Moss started A&M Records out of Alpert’s garage in the early 1960s, nurturing it into music’s largest independently owned label with a roster that included the Carpenters, Cat Stevens, Joe Cocker, Sting, Sheryl Crow and Janet Jackson.

Alpert and his Tijuana Brass was the label’s first signed act, selling more than 700,000 copies of “The Lonely Bull” to put A&M on the map.

Alpert and Moss sold A&M Records to PolyGram in 1989 and continued to run the label until mid-1993.

The duo received the Recording Academy’s Trustees Award in 1997 for their contributions to the field of recording. They also received a lifetime achievement award in the non-performing category from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Moss and his wife, Ann, owned Giacomo, who won the 2005 Kentucky Derby at 50-1 odds.