Frank Fenter - Capricorn Records. Macon, Georgia. 1969 To 1983

Capricorn Records. Macon, Georgia. 1969 To 1983

In 1969, Frank Fenter and brothers Phil Walden and Alan Walden, former co-managers of Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, and other Stax artists, formed Capricorn Records with a distribution deal from Atlantic Records. Working with Phil Walden and Jerry Wexler, Frank Fenter negotiated the Capricorn deal with his mentor, Ahmet Ertegun Frank Fenter and Phil Walden envisioned a new kind of record company structure that would be vertically integrated. Capricorn Records would have loosely held subsidiary companies that encompassed all facets of the music business, including artist management, with Phil Walden and Associates; a booking agency, the Paragon Agency; a music publishing house, No Exit Music; and artist merchandising, with the Great Southern Company.

Frank Fenter took the helm of Capricorn Records while Phil Walden focused on artist management and together they helped popularize the genre of Southern Rock. At the height of Capricorn Record's success, Fortune magazine, the business periodical, went on to recognize Fenter as a "Promotional Genius". Singly or together, the two partners discovered and signed such recording artists as The Allman Brothers, The Marshall Tucker Band, Elvin Bishop, Wet Willie, Sea Level, The Dixie Dregs, Jonathan Edwards, Billy Thorpe, Stillwater and Alex Taylor. In 1975, Fenter negotiated with the South African apartheid government to have Capricorn Records recording artist Dobie Gray be the first artist to perform in front of a multi-racial audience in his native home of Johannesburg, South Africa.

Capricorn Records declared bankruptcy in late 1979, but, in 1983, Frank Fenter and Phil Walden restructured Capricorn Records and were ready to forge a comeback, however, in the middle of negotiating a distribution deal with Mo Ostin, the Chairman of Warner Bros. Records, Fenter died of a heart attack in the Capricorn office; with his death, the deal with Warner Bros. fell apart.

Frank Fenter died in Macon, Georgia, from a heart attack at the age of 47.