Ewart Abner was born in Chicago in 1923, the son of a minister. After Englewood High School he enrolled in the pharmacy program at Howard University, left to serve in World War II, then switched course and earned an accounting degree from DePaul University in 1949. In 1950 he took charge of the finances at Chicago’s Chance Records, where he learned how a hit could bankrupt a small label that had to pay pressing plants and truckers months before distributors paid it. In 1954 he became part owner and general manager of Vee-Jay Records, and by 1961 he was its president, overseeing a roster that ran from John Lee Hooker and Jimmy Reed to Jerry Butler, Gene Chandler and the Four Seasons.
In January 1963, after Capitol Records repeatedly passed on the Beatles, EMI licensed them to Vee-Jay, which issued the early singles and the first American Beatles album, Introducing the Beatles. Abner left Vee-Jay that year after a dispute with his partners and in August 1963 formed Constellation Records with Art Sheridan and Bill Shepherd. Berry Gordy hired him at Motown in 1967 as vice president of international management, and he served as president of Motown Records from 1973 to 1975. He then spent a decade as Stevie Wonder’s personal and business manager, a period in which the two campaigned for the Martin Luther King Jr. national holiday.
- Abner studied pharmacy at Howard before the war and accounting at DePaul after it.
- Capitol eventually took back the Beatles rights and reissued the material Vee-Jay had released first.
- Abner’s 1973 to 1975 presidency at Motown coincided with Superstition, Touch Me in the Morning and Let’s Get It On.
- The episode describes Wonder’s concert tours used to gather petition signatures for the King holiday.
- Abner later served as vice chairman of the Motown Historical Museum and died in December 1997 at age 74.
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