Jac Holzman (born September 15, 1931) is an American music businessman, best known as the founder, chief executive officer and head of record label
Elektra Records
Elektra Records (or Elektra Entertainment) is an American record label owned by Warner Music Group, founded in 1950 by Jac Holzman and Paul Rickolt. It played an important role in the development of contemporary folk and rock music between the 1 ...
and
Nonesuch Records
Nonesuch Records is an American record company and label owned by Warner Music Group, distributed by Warner Records (formerly called Warner Bros. Records), and based in New York City. Founded by Jac Holzman in 1964 as a budget classical label, Non ...
. Holzman commercially helped launch the CD and home video formats, as well as the pilot program which became
MTV
MTV (Originally an initialism of Music Television) is an American cable channel that launched on August 1, 1981. Based in New York City, it serves as the flagship property of the MTV Entertainment Group, part of Paramount Media Networks, a di ...
.
He was inducted into the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (RRHOF), sometimes simply referred to as the Rock Hall, is a museum
A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and othe ...
in 2011.
Biography
Early life
Holzman was born to a
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
family, the son of a Manhattan doctor. He founded
Elektra Entertainment
Elektra Records (or Elektra Entertainment) is an American record label owned by Warner Music Group, founded in 1950 by Jac Holzman and Paul Rickolt. It played an important role in the development of contemporary folk and rock music between the 1 ...
as a small independent folk label in his
St. John's College dormitory room in 1950, with $600 ($ in dollars). That same year the first record released was New Songs by
John Gruen
John Jonas Gruen (born Jonas Grunberg; September 12, 1926 – July 12, 2016) was an American art critic, art historian, author, photographer, and composer.Mark Segal, "John Jonas Gruen", '' The East Hampton Star'', August 4, 2016
Early life ...
, initially a flop but a big learning lesson, 500 copies were pressed with less than a quarter of them were sold.
He held Amateur Radio callsign K2VEH around this time. In 1968, he approved Elektra Record's Paxton Lodge, the experimental recording studio where
Jackson Browne
Clyde Jackson Browne (born October 9, 1948) is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and political activist who has sold over 18 million albums in the United States.
Emerging as a precocious teenage songwriter in mid-1960s Los Angeles, he h ...
first recorded. By 1957 Elektra was $90,000 ($ in dollars) in debt, but finally having success with folk artist
Theodore Bikel
Theodore Meir Bikel ( ; May 2, 1924 – July 21, 2015) was an Austrian-American actor, folk singer, musician, composer, unionist, and political activist. He appeared in films, including '' The African Queen'' (1951), ''Moulin Rouge'' (1952), ' ...
got them out of it.
Career
He signed such acts as
The Doors
The Doors were an American Rock music, rock band formed in Los Angeles in 1965, with vocalist Jim Morrison, keyboardist Ray Manzarek, guitarist Robby Krieger, and drummer John Densmore. They were among the most controversial and influential ro ...
,
Queen
Queen or QUEEN may refer to:
Monarchy
* Queen regnant, a female monarch of a Kingdom
** List of queens regnant
* Queen consort, the wife of a reigning king
* Queen dowager, the widow of a king
* Queen mother, a queen dowager who is the mother ...
(US only),
Love
Love encompasses a range of strong and positive emotional and mental states, from the most sublime virtue or good habit, the deepest Interpersonal relationship, interpersonal affection, to the simplest pleasure. An example of this range of ...
,
Josh White
Joshua Daniel White (February 11, 1914 – September 5, 1969) was an American singer, guitarist, songwriter, actor and civil rights activist. He also recorded under the names Pinewood Tom and Tippy Barton in the 1930s.
White grew up in the Sout ...
,
Tim Buckley
Timothy Charles Buckley III (February 14, 1947 – June 29, 1975) was an American musician. His music and style changed considerably through the years. Buckley began his career based in folk music, but his subsequent albums experimented with ja ...
,
Carly Simon
Carly Elisabeth Simon (born June 25, 1943) is an American singer-songwriter, memoirist, and children's author. She rose to fame in the 1970s with a string of hit records; her 13 Top 40 U.S. hits include "Anticipation" (No. 13), " The Right Thin ...
,
the Stooges
The Stooges, originally billed as the Psychedelic Stooges, also known as Iggy and the Stooges, was an American rock band formed in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1967 by singer Iggy Pop, guitarist Ron Asheton, drummer Scott Asheton, and bassist Dave ...
,
MC5
MC5, also commonly called The MC5, is an American rock band formed in Lincoln Park, Michigan, in 1963. The original line-up consisted of Rob Tyner (vocals) Wayne Kramer (guitar), Fred "Sonic" Smith (guitar), Michael Davis (bass), and Dennis ...
,
Harry Chapin
Harold Forster Chapin (; December 7, 1942 – July 16, 1981) was an American singer-songwriter, philanthropist, and hunger activist best known for his folk rock and pop rock songs. He achieved worldwide success in the 1970s. Chapin, a Grammy ...
, and
Bread
Bread is a staple food prepared from a dough of flour (usually wheat) and water, usually by baking. Throughout recorded history and around the world, it has been an important part of many cultures' diet. It is one of the oldest human-made f ...
to Elektra and discovered folk singer
Judy Collins
Judith Marjorie Collins (born May 1, 1939) is an American singer-songwriter and musician with a career spanning seven decades. An Academy Award-nominated documentary director and a Grammy Award-winning recording artist, she is known for her ec ...
. In 1964, Holzman served as executive producer for 13
stock sound effect
A stock sound effect is a prerecorded sound effect intended to be reused with an entertainment product, as opposed to creating a new and unique sound effect. It is intended to work within a sound effect library.
History
As far back as Ancient Gre ...
libraries titled ''Authentic Sound Effects'' which generated $1.5 million ($ in dollars) in sales giving Elektra further financial security,
that same year he also founded
Nonesuch Records
Nonesuch Records is an American record company and label owned by Warner Music Group, distributed by Warner Records (formerly called Warner Bros. Records), and based in New York City. Founded by Jac Holzman in 1964 as a budget classical label, Non ...
as a classical music budget label.
In 1970 he merged his
music
Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspect ...
interests with
Warner Communications
Warner Media, LLC ( traded as WarnerMedia) was an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate. It was headquartered at the 30 Hudson Yards complex in New York City, United States.
It was originally established in 1972 by ...
(then known as Kinney International) over a $10 million deal ($ in dollars) and continued his association with the labels he created for three additional years. While a part of the
Warner Music Group
Warner Music Group Corp. ( d.b.a. Warner Music Group, commonly abbreviated as WMG) is an American multinational entertainment and record label conglomerate headquartered in New York City. It is one of the " big three" recording companies and t ...
, Holzman helped to establish both the WEA Distributing Corp (Warner-Elektra-Atlantic Distributing Corp) and WEA International.
In 1973, Holzman was appointed senior vice president and chief technologist for WCI.
Holzman guided the company into
home video
Home video is prerecorded media sold or rented for home viewing. The term originates from the VHS and Betamax era, when the predominant medium was videotapes, but has carried over to optical disc formats such as DVD, Blu-ray and streaming me ...
and the first interactive
cable television
Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with broa ...
system,
QUBE
QUBE was an experimental two-way, multi-programmed cable television system that played a significant role in the history of American interactive television. It was launched in Columbus, Ohio, on December 1, 1977. Highly publicized as a revolutio ...
. Until 1972, he was a director of
Pioneer Electronics
commonly referred to as Pioneer, is a Japanese multinational corporation based in Tokyo, that specializes in digital entertainment products. The company was founded by Nozomu Matsumoto in January 1, 1938 in Tokyo as a radio and speaker repair ...
Japan, helping that company, and Warner Bros., adopt the
compact disc
The compact disc (CD) is a Digital media, digital optical disc data storage format that was co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings. In August 1982, the first compact disc was manufactured. It was then rele ...
and
Laserdisc
The LaserDisc (LD) is a home video format and the first commercial optical disc storage medium, initially licensed, sold and marketed as DiscoVision, MCA DiscoVision (also known simply as "DiscoVision") in the United States in 1978. Its diam ...
. Holzman was a member of the board of
Atari
Atari () is a brand name that has been owned by several entities since its inception in 1972. It is currently owned by French publisher Atari SA through a subsidiary named Atari Interactive. The original Atari, Inc. (1972–1992), Atari, Inc., ...
, one of the first videogame companies, which was acquired by WCI in 1976, during this time the revolutionary
Atari 2600
The Atari 2600, initially branded as the Atari Video Computer System (Atari VCS) from its release until November 1982, is a home video game console developed and produced by Atari, Inc. Released in September 1977, it popularized microprocessor- ...
was released.
In 1979, Holzman became the nexus between ex-Monkee
Michael Nesmith
Robert Michael Nesmith or Mike Nesmith, (December 30, 1942 – December 10, 2021) was an American musician, songwriter, and actor. He was best known as a member of the pop rock band the Monkees and co-star of the TV series ''The Monkees'' (1966 ...
and John Lack of Warner Cable. He persuaded Lack to meet with Nesmith who had been nursing an idea for a program he called
PopClips
''PopClips'' is a music video television program, the direct predecessor of MTV.
Former Monkee Mike Nesmith conceived the first music-video program as a promotional device for Warner Communications' record division. Production began in the s ...
. Holzman thought that Nesmith's notion of building a TV structure around that idea made real sense.
In 1982, following the death of President and founder Robert Gottschalk, Holzman took charge of
Panavision
Panavision is an American motion picture equipment company founded in 1953 specializing in cameras and lenses, based in Woodland Hills, California. Formed by Robert Gottschalk as a small partnership to create anamorphic projection lenses during ...
, a wholly owned subsidiary of Warner Bros. Discovery and turned that financially troubled company around.
In 1986 he formed FirstMedia, an investment firm which acquired
Cinema Products Corporation, the maker of the Oscar-winning
Steadicam
Steadicam is a brand of camera stabilizer mounts for Movie camera, motion picture cameras invented by Garrett Brown and introduced in 1975 by Cinema Products Corporation. It was designed to isolate the camera from the camera operator's movement ...
camera stabilization system.
In 1991, through FirstMedia, Holzman acquired the Discovery, Trend and Musicraft jazz labels from the estate of Albert Marx, which was also acquired by Warner Music Group in 1993.
After
Edgar Bronfman Jr.
Edgar Miles Bronfman Jr. (born May 16, 1955) is an American businessman who currently serves as a Managing Partner at Accretive LLC, a private equity firm focused on creating and investing in technology companies. He previously served as CEO of ...
and a group of investors acquired Warner Music Group from Time Warner Inc. in 2004, Bronfman brought Holzman back to WMG, reuniting him with the company that he had helped to found with
Ahmet Ertegun
Ahmet Ertegun (, Turkish spelling: Ahmet Ertegün; ; – December 14, 2006) was a Turkish-American businessman, songwriter, record executive and philanthropist.
Ertegun was the co-founder and president of Atlantic Records. He discovered and ch ...
and
Mo Ostin
Mo Ostin (born Morris Meyer Ostrofsky; March 27, 1927 – July 31, 2022) was an American record executive who worked for several companies, including Verve, Reprise Records, Warner Bros. Records, and DreamWorks. He was chairman and chief ex ...
. Although Holzman's work at Warner Music covers a range from mentoring executives and future planning, his first project was the creation of an on-line label,
Cordless Recordings Cordless Recordings is a netlabel owned by Warner Music Group. The label was founded in 2005 by Jac Holzman, who also founded Elektra Records and Nonesuch Records.
Affiliation with Rykodisc - present
In 2007, Warner Music Group's Rykodisc label ...
, introduced in late 2005. Cordless gave bands space to hone their art and grow without the expectations and cash outlays associated with a major label.
Current
In April 2016,
Steve Cooper, CEO of Warner Music Group, announced Jac Holzman as the Senior Technology Advisor to WMG: “a wide-ranging technology ‘scout’, exploring new digital developments and identifying possible partners.”
In June 2018, Holzman launched a new venture named Cosmic Ringtones & Sonic Realms... Your Universe Is Calling. Curated and produced by Holzman, the collection included a series of instrumental pieces composed, performed, and recorded by his son
Adam
Adam; el, Ἀδάμ, Adám; la, Adam is the name given in Genesis 1-5 to the first human. Beyond its use as the name of the first man, ''adam'' is also used in the Bible as a pronoun, individually as "a human" and in a collective sense as " ...
. The album was released on Holzman's FM Group Music label, distributed by
ADA
Ada may refer to:
Places
Africa
* Ada Foah, a town in Ghana
* Ada (Ghana parliament constituency)
* Ada, Osun, a town in Nigeria
Asia
* Ada, Urmia, a village in West Azerbaijan Province, Iran
* Ada, Karaman, a village in Karaman Province, ...
.
Awards and honours
In 2008, Holzman received the NARAS
Grammy Trustees Award The Grammy Trustees Award is awarded by The Recording Academy to "individuals who, during their careers in music, technology, and so on have made significant contributions, other than performance, to the field of recording". From 1983 onwards, per ...
.
On December 15, 2010, it was announced that Holzman would be awarded the
Ahmet Ertegun
Ahmet Ertegun (, Turkish spelling: Ahmet Ertegün; ; – December 14, 2006) was a Turkish-American businessman, songwriter, record executive and philanthropist.
Ertegun was the co-founder and president of Atlantic Records. He discovered and ch ...
Award (along with
Specialty Records
Specialty Records was an American record label founded in Los Angeles in 1945 by Art Rupe. It was known for rhythm and blues, gospel, and early rock and roll, and recorded artists such as Little Richard, Guitar Slim, Percy Mayfield, and Lloyd Pr ...
founder
Art Rupe) by the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (RRHOF), sometimes simply referred to as the Rock Hall, is a museum
A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and othe ...
.
Jac Holzman was inducted into the non-performer category of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on March 14, 2011, with the induction speech given by Doors member
John Densmore
John Paul Densmore (born December 1, 1944) is an American musician, songwriter, author and actor. He is best known as the drummer of the rock band the Doors, and as such is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He appeared on every recordi ...
.
Personal life
Holzman is the father of
Adam Holzman, a jazz-rock keyboardist who has played with
Miles Davis
Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926September 28, 1991) was an American trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. He is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the history of jazz and 20th-century music. Davis adopted a variety of music ...
; Jaclyn Easton, a writer and Internet entrepreneur; and Marin Sander-Holzman, an editor and filmmaker.
In 1973 he built a home in Hawaii, after having Elektra merged with Warner. The move was inspired by the movie
The Holiday
''The Holiday'' is a 2006 romantic comedy film written, produced and directed by Nancy Meyers. Coproduced by Bruce A. Block, it was filmed in both California and England and stars Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz as Iris and Amanda, two lovelorn ...
, where he spent most time reading instead of listening to music.
Works
*
See also
*
Follow the Music
*
Elektra Sound Recorders
Elektra Sound Recorders was Elektra Records's recording studio in Los Angeles, California, United States located at 962 La Cienega Boulevard. Electric Entertainment currently provides video production services at this location.
History
In 1958, ...
References
External links
Word 152 - 2010-10-21 - David Hepworth talks to Jac Holzman, on Elektra's 60th.RSS feed
Blast from the Past Seeks Next Big Thing
* https://web.archive.org/web/20121102123659/http://www.digitalmusicforum.com/west/speakers09.shtml
''Becoming Elektra'', Elektra’s early years by Mick Houghton
Follow the Music - Holzman & Daws
() (paperback, ).
Sound Opinions March 2011 interview with Holzman
{{DEFAULTSORT:Holzman, Jac
American music industry executives
St. John's College (Annapolis/Santa Fe) alumni
American record producers
20th-century American Jews
Elektra Records
Nonesuch Records
Living people
1931 births
21st-century American Jews