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A&M Records Collection |
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(l-r) Jerry Moss, Sergio Mendes, Herb Alpert A number of the company's top artists are represented in these pages, but these are only a few of the hundreds of performers who found a home at A&M, including Joan Baez, the Captain and Tennille, the Flying Burrito Brothers, the Go-Go’s, Amy Grant, John Hiatt, Human League, Carole King, Kris Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge, Chuck Mangione, Nazareth, Iggy Pop, Billy Preston, Procol Harum, Simple Minds, 38 Special, Suzanne Vega, Rick Wakeman, and Paul Williams, among many, many others. 
(l-r) Karen Carpenter, Herb Alpert, and Richard Carpenter A&M signed the Carpenters in 1969, and shortly thereafter Alpert gave them the sheet music for the Burt Bacharach-Hal David song "Close to You." That song became their first gold single in 1970 and won a Grammy Award for best contemporary vocal performance by a duo, group, or chorus. 
Burt Bacharach Bacharach won his first Grammy Award in 1967 for instrumental arrangement on "Alfie," the title song for the 1966 film starring Michael Caine, which he recorded on his 1967 A&M album "Reach Out." He earned both a Grammy Award and two Oscars in 1969 for the score for "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid." |
Other A&M ArtistsEven in its first days in 1962, A&M worked with recording artists other than Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, and the company achieved some early success with releases from the Baja Marimba Band and the Sandpipers. A&M signed Sergio Mendes and Brasil '66 in 1965, and in 1966 Alpert produced the group's self-titled album, which went on to earn a gold albume for sales of more than one million dollars' worth of units. Lani Hall, one of the group’s vocalists, became Alpert’s second wife in 1974. 
One of the original Tijuana Brass studio musicians, Julius Wechter created the Baja Marimba Band to record his own songs. 
(l-r) Dino Airali, A&M promotion executive; Herb Alpert; Joe Cocker; Bill Anthony, Cocker's co-manager; and Gil Friesen, who was named vice president of administration and creative services at A&M in 1970 and president in 1977 
(l-r, front) Cat Stevens and Jerry Moss; (l-r, rear) Prince Rupert Lowenstein, noted music business lawyer Abe Somer, and Stevens's manager, Barry Krost Moss signed Stevens in the late 1960s through a licensing agreement with Island Records. Stevens' second album for A&M, "Tea for the Tillerman," firmly established his international reputation as a melodic, sensitive singer-songwriter and was the second in a string of eight consecutive gold albums.
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