A moment, please, to commemorate the passing of one of the real giants in American (and world) culture last Friday. A very nice tribute in last Saturday's New York Times gives most of the details, if you're not one of the cognoscenti -- you may not have known much about him, but you couldn't have lived in this country during the last 50 years without feeling his influence all around you. Wexler coined the phrase "rhythm and blues" to describe the black music being made in the late '40s (which had, prior to that time, been known mostly as "race music"), and he went on to shepherd the careers, and produce the music, by some of the greatest R&B artists ever - Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, the Drifters, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, among many others. [He even produced a Dylan album, "Slow Train Coming," which gets my vote as the best mid-period Dylan out there]. A Bronx-born Jewish white guy, he didn't just help bring a lot of great black music into the "main stream", he actually helped create a great deal of it -- Wexler was a true collaborator, helping to coax a sound and a vision onto vinyl (and the artists themselves, in everything I've read, have always generously credited him with helping them to find their "voice"). Listen to some pre-Wexler Ray Charles, or pre-Wexler Aretha, and you'll get the idea. What a life!