Jac Holzman

Jac Holzman (born September 15, 1931) is an American music businessman, the founder, chief executive officer and head of record label Elektra Records and Nonesuch Records. Holzman helped commercially launch the CD and home video formats, as well as the pilot program which became MTV. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011. Biography Early life Holzman was born to a Jewish family, the son of a Manhattan doctor. He founded Elektra Entertainment 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, initially a flop but a big learning lesson; 500 copies were pressed with less than a quarter of them sold. He held Amateur Radio callsign K2VEH around this time. In 1968, he approved Elektra Records' Paxton Lodge, the experimental recording studio where Jackson Browne first recorded. By 1957, Elektra was $90,000 ($ in dollars) in debt, but finally having success with folk artist Theodore Bikel got them out of it. Career He signed such acts as the Doors, Queen (US only), Love, Josh White, Tim Buckley, Carly Simon, the Stooges, MC5, Harry Chapin, and Bread to Elektra and discovered folk singer Judy Collins. In 1964, Holzman served as executive producer for 13 stock sound effect 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 as a classical music budget label. In 1970, he merged his music interests with Warner Communications (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, Holzman helped to establish both the WEA Distributing Corp (Warner-Elektra-Atlantic Distributing Corp) and WEA International.