Mobile UPI  |   About UPI  |   UPI en Español  |   UPI Arabic  |   UPIU  |   My Account
Search:
Go

Music mogul Irving Green dead at 90

|
|
 
  
Published: July 4, 2006 at 11:36 AM

PALM SPRINGS, Calif., July 4 (UPI) -- The co-founder of Mercury Records, Irving Green, has passed away of natural causes at 90.

Green helped break barriers of color in popular music while still turning his small independent company into one of the music industry's major labels, The Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday.

He died at Desert Regional Medical Center in Palm Springs, Calif. said his grandson, Jonathan Ross.

"This is one of the pioneers, the last of the great entrepreneurs," said Lou Dennis, who was product manager a subsidiary of Mercury Records in the 1960s.

"Today the record companies are all owned by big conglomerates," Dennis said. "This is a guy that started a label in Chicago, and it became one of the major labels in the United States."

The Pacific Southwest Region of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences honored Green in April, for his multiracial promotion of musicians by inducting him into its Gold Circle.

The Mercury label had artists as diverse as Louis Armstrong and Sarah Vaughn to the Big Bopper, the Smothers Brothers and country-pickers Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs.

Topics: Earl Scruggs, Jonathan Ross, Lester Flatt, Louis Armstrong
© 2006 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Any reproduction, republication, redistribution and/or modification of any UPI content is expressly prohibited without UPI's prior written consent.

Order reprints
  
Join the conversation
Most Popular Collections
Protesters, police clash at NATO summit Notable deaths of 2012 2012 Billboard Music Awards
The 137th Preakness Stakes Annual Solar eclipse occurs in U.S. Chen Guangcheng arrives in the U.S.
Additional Entertainment News Stories
1 of 29
Members of the Army's Old Guard place flags at Arlington National Ceremtery
View Caption
U.S. flags are seen in the rucksack of a soldier with the Army's 3d U.S. Infantry Regiment, The Old Guard, as he places flags at gravesites in Arlington National Cemetery as part of the Flags-In Memorial Day ceremony on May 24, 2012 in Arlington, Virginia. American flags were placed at each of the more than 220,000 grave markers in honor of those who served and Memorial Day. UPI/Kevin Dietshc
fark
Meanwhile in North Carolina... Witth bonus irony for the town name
Happy 75th birthday to the Golden Gate Bridge, the most beautiful bridge in the world
Photoshop this frog jumping coach
China criticizes the U.S. on its "dismal" human rights record, citing police brutality, arresting...
Hey, why don't we have a gardening thread? BRING ON THE ORGANIC TROLLS
What happens when a precious little snowflake get his JD and goes to work on Wall Street? He sues...