Jerry Wexler. Courtesy of popentertainment.com.
By Kandia Crazy Horse
I am in utter shock at the fact that my lifelong hero, my much-cherished Jerry “Papa Dippermouth” Wexler (Jan. 10, 1917–Aug. 15, 2008) has gone to glory. Been thinking hard not only about my friend, his youngest daughter Lisa (of the great New York State band Big Sister), and my play-uncle/mentor Stanley Booth (one of his best friends), but all the unbroken circle of folks who loved and forever appreciate the magic Wexler produced during his paradigm-shifting career as a music journalist and (likely) the last of the great record men.
I have been weeping all this interminable weekend beginning with his death on Friday morn, Aug. 15 – Black Friday to me forever after. Of course, it is not as if Papa Dip was not poised at the end of his days. And, yes, he enjoyed a long and varied career the likes of which many music geeks of my generation envied (who didn’t want to be a producer at Atlantic Records between the titanic poles of Brother Ray Charles’ and Led Zeppelin’s arc’s therein?). Still, I cannot be consoled.
He wasn’t just the hallowed man who exposed me to the riches of King Solomon Burke and sent me Dusty in Memphis for deep listening or kindly shared personal revelations about my generation’s foremost soul icon Donny Hathaway – the man born Gerald Wexler in the boogiedown Bronx was the first person I was conscious of outside my kinpeople as being essential to how my world revolved. From the age of 2 ½ at least, I read his liner notes or saw his name credited on the back of Atlantic long-players, as the label’s iconic iconography circled round-and-round, and I knew in my deepest soul who and what I wanted to be.