Company Town : Morris Turns Around and Gets New Job

It didn’t take long for former Warner Music U.S. chief Doug Morris to land a new job.

A few hours after Time Warner fired Morris on June 21, the 56-year-old industry veteran got a call from Seagram Chief Executive Edgar Bronfman Jr., who offered a deal to run a multimillion-dollar joint-venture label at MCA Music Entertainment.

MCA Music Chairman Al Teller announced the pact with Morris on Monday, shortly after news broke that Bronfman had hired former CAA President Ron Meyer to run MCA Inc.

Teller and Bronfman have moved aggressively to capitalize on the chaos at the Warner Music Group, courting four ousted Warner executives and thus seizing what industry watchers say is a rare opportunity to bolster the company’s credibility in the creative community.

MCA already sits on top of the nation’s strongest country music division, and industry executives say the group will soon boast of an executive team that rivals the best in the business.

Morris, who worked at Warner Music for 17 years and who rebuilt its Atlantic division into one of the most profitable units in the record industry, said he plans to have a full-service label up and running at MCA before January.

“I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to start over at a corporation where creativity will dominate the culture,” said Morris, who chose the MCA gig after rejecting proposals from Sony, Viacom and PolyGram. “I believe that Edgar Bronfman brings a soulful presence to this organization, and my goal is to create a label here as vibrant as the one I was recently forced to leave behind.”

Morris was fired by Time Warner during a period when the Warner Music Group--which includes the Atlantic Group, Elektra Entertainment and Warner Bros. Records--had almost two dozen albums in the Top 50 and nearly twice the market share of its nearest competitor. The Atlantic Group alone cornered a 9.58% share of the U.S. market--just a sliver short of MCA Music’s total domestic take of 10.26%.

“We moved aggressively to court Doug and quickly bring him into the family,” said Teller, who is also pushing hard to expand MCA’s horizons on the international front. “The only way to win in this business is to hire incredibly talented people and to create an environment for them to flourish. My ultimate goal is to make MCA the No. 1 music company in the world.”

Competitors were surprised that MCA moved so swiftly to bring Morris into the fold--particularly in light of Morris’ pending $50-million breach-of-contract lawsuit against Time Warner.

Music executives speculated that the move indicates that Seagram, which also holds a 15% stake in Time Warner, does not give much credence to Warner’s allegation that Morris was fired because he failed to disclose information regarding an investigation of missing compact discs.

MCA’s other recent recruits include former Elektra Entertainment Chairman Robert Krasnow, who recently signed a label deal with MCA Entertainment that is similar to Morris’. And sources speculate that highly regarded Warner Music veterans Mo Ostin and Lenny Waronker will soon resurface at DreamWorks SKG, the entertainment combine founded by Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen that has a distribution deal with MCA.

The MCA executive ensemble now also includes Geffen Records Chairman Eddie Rosenblatt, Almo Sound chiefs Jerry Moss and Herb Alpert, and budding Uptown Entertainment chair Andre Harrell. In addition, MCA has inked distribution pacts with a host of hip independent labels such as 510 and Radioactive, which delivered a No. 1 album last year from the rock act Live.

Response to the new MCA-Morris pact was favorable on Wall Street as well as in the music industry.

“It’s a nice addition to the portfolio,” said Harold Vogel, entertainment analyst at Cowen & Co. “It would seem that they can attract a lot of artists that they normally might not attract very quickly.”