Phil Walden
American businessman; music executive (1940–2006)
Phil Walden (January 11, 1940 – April 23, 2006) was the American co-founder of the Macon, Georgia-based Capricorn Records, along with former Atlantic Records executive Frank Fenter.
Biography
Walden received his undergraduate degree in economics from Macon's Mercer University (where he was a member of Phi Delta Theta and a ROTC cadet) in 1962. He served as Otis Redding's manager from 1959 until Redding's death in 1967. While a college student, he began his career as a booking agent and manager for R&B acts, hosting one of Redding's first shows at the University's Phi Delta Theta lodge in the early 1960s.
As he continued to build his business, Walden was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the United States Army through a deferred service program in the summer of 1963. He recruited his younger brother, Alan (then a sophomore at Mercer), to run Phil Walden Artists and Promotions and served in Germany as a personnel officer before returning to the company following the completion of his service in 1965. That year, Redding and Phil Walden co-founded the Redwal Music publishing company.
Walden's management of Redding and dozens of notable R&B acts in the 1960s (including Al Green, Sam & Dave and Percy Sledge) led to his early affiliation with Atlantic Records co-founder/producer Jerry Wexler, who specialized in the genre. Working with Wexler, Walden and Frank Fenter, who had run Atlantic Records' European offices in London, established Capricorn, an independent production outlet distributed by Atlantic/Atco Records and named for Wexler and Walden's astrological sign in Macon in 1969. Walden met guitarist Duane Allman (then under contract to Rick Hall, owner of FAME Studios) through Wexler and set about making him a star in his own right, precipitating the formation of The Allman Brothers Band.
The public source identifies “Phil Walden” as american businessman; music executive (1940–2006). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Phil, Walden and American.
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This entry incorporates text from “Phil Walden” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.