Along with being a great producer/arranger and one of the main architects of
the Southern California sound, Melcher should be credited with finally
bringing
Columbia out of MOR-sap into the rock era. Along with making the first Rock
records with Bruce Johnson, he was the company's first Rock A&R man, signing
the Raiders and The Byrds to the label.

Billy

At 06:46 AM 11/22/2004 -0500, you wrote:
>Personally, I rank Terry Melcher as one of the very most important people 
>in post WWII American Pop music, he had a huge influence on a lot of people 
>while staying relatively unknown.  And 62 is much to young to die of 
>anything, much less melanoma.
>
>My thoughts exactly when I scoured the internet news sources such as CNN and
USAToday and found nothing  on his passing... Thanks to Melcher the careers of
Bruce Johnston, Paul Revere, The Byrds and others received a very major boost
in the talent and production department... A true loss
>
>Miguel
>