Saul "Sol" Rabinowitz (April 26, 1924 – March 16, 2013) was an American music business executive. He was the founder and lead producer of Baton Records, an independent record label that recorded rhythm and blues music in New York City during the 1950s.

Biography

He was born in The Bronx, New York City, the son of a

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rabbi A rabbi () is a spiritual leader or religious teacher in Judaism. One becomes a rabbi by being ordained by another rabbi – known as '' semikha'' – following a course of study of Jewish history and texts such as the Talmud. The basic form o ...

and a Ukrainian mother, and trained as a printer before joining the Army Air Corps during World War II. He developed an interest in jazz and

blues Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the Afr ...

music, and began visiting clubs in New York. After the end of the war, he started work as a record salesman, before setting up Baton Records in 1954. His first record, "A Thousand Stars" by the Rivileers, was a regional hit. Over the next few years, the label was responsible for several moderate sized R&B hits, for The Hearts, Ann Cole - including the original version of " Got My Mojo Working" - and Noble "Thin Man" Watts.John Broven with Richard Tapp, ''Sol Rabinowitz's Baton Records'', Juke Blues #72, 2012, pp. 12-22Biography
Allmusic.com; retrieved April 12, 2013. He closed the business in 1959, setting up Sir Records, which was unsuccessful. In 1961 he joined

Columbia Records Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music, Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the North American division of Japanese Conglomerate (company), conglomerate Sony. It was founded on Janua ...

, and was responsible for the relaunch of the OKeh label, and for the development of the

Epic Epic commonly refers to: * Epic poetry, a long narrative poem celebrating heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation * Epic film, a genre of film with heroic elements Epic or EPIC may also refer to: Arts, entertainment, and medi ...

label. He was appointed a vice-president at CBS International in 1966, and set up a new division of the company in Greece before retiring in 1986. After his retirement he lived in Cary, North Carolina. He died in 2013 at the age of 88. Marv Goldberg & Marcia Vance, ''Baton Records''
retrieved March 28, 2014.

References

1924 births 2013 deaths 20th-century American Jews American people of Latvian-Jewish descent American people of Ukrainian-Jewish descent Record producers from New York (state) People from the Bronx Businesspeople from New York City 20th-century American businesspeople United States Army Air Forces personnel of World War II 21st-century American Jews {{Music-producer-stub