this livens up his legend a bit, as we learn what ""Wex" was up to in 1935!  Dave
  
After graduating from Manhattan's George Washington High School at age 15 in 1932, Wexler attended City College for two semesters before dropping out. He then enrolled at Kansas State College of Agriculture and Applied Science (later renamed Kansas State University).
       Wexler's grades suffered as he frequented Kansas City jazz clubs and juke joints more than 100 miles from the college campus to see performers such as Count Basie and Big Joe Turner.
     He returned to New York and worked with his father washing windows and hanging out with friends and smoking marijuana.
    In 1936, he fell in love with Shirley Kampf, and proposed marriage in 1941. The couple had three children and divorced 32 years later.
Wexler was inducted in the Army in 1942 and spent much of World War II processing test scores of Air Corps personnel.
In 1946, Wexler returned to Kansas and completed his undergraduate degree in journalism. Back in New York, he landed a reporting job at Billboard magazine in 1947 and stayed until 1951, when he became a promoter for a music publishing company.
He brought two songs to Mitch Miller, the newly hired pop music executive at CBS, who soon had hits at the top of the charts with ``Cry,'' recorded by Johnny Ray, and Hank Williams's ``Cold, Cold Heart,'' sung by Tony Bennett.


 

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To: livefromthehook@yahoogroups.com
From: jgrafmuller@...
Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2008 19:49:47 +0000
Subject: [livefromthehook] Re: RIP - Jerry Wexler