Ewart G. Abner Jr.; Recording Industry Executive

Ewart G. Abner Jr., the recording executive who released the first Beatles record in America on his Vee Jay label and later headed Motown Records, has died. He was 74.

Abner, known to his friends by his surname or simply as “Ab,” died Dec. 27 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles of pneumonia.

At the time of his death, he was executive assistant to Motown founder Berry Gordy for his Gordy Co. in Los Angeles, and executive vice president of Jobete Music Co. Inc. and Stone Diamond Music Corp. He also was vice chairman of the Motown Historical Museum in Detroit.

Always active in civil rights and minority education, Abner was a founder of the Black Music Assn. in 1978, and served as executive vice president.

“Our job is to educate,” he told The Times in discussing the organization in 1981. “On one level, we want to document the influence and contributions of blacks in shaping today’s contemporary music.

“But we also want to open more employment opportunities for blacks and to show the heads of record companies that it’s in their best interests to promote records by black artists with the same initial enthusiasm that they show in promoting records by white artists.”

Abner began his music industry career in Chicago in 1948, pressing 78 rpm “shellacs” for 85 cents an hour. In 1950 he joined Art Sheridan to start Chance Records, which featured two new groups, the Flamingos and the Moonglows.

In 1954, Abner moved to Vee Jay Records, the first African American-owned, full-line record label, first as general manager and later as president. In addition to releasing the Beatles’ first U.S. record, he developed such artists as the Four Seasons, the Impressions and Jimmy Reed.

Abner at the same time owned two popular Chicago jazz clubs, the Southerland Lounge and the Bird House.

Gordy brought Abner to Motown in 1967, initially as vice president of international management. Abner directed the careers of Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross and the Supremes, the Temptations, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, the Four Tops, Stevie Wonder and the Jackson 5.

From 1973 until he left in 1975, Abner was president of Motown.

For the next 10 years he was personal and business manager for Stevie Wonder, arranging his musical career and two marches to Washington, D.C., in support of establishing a Martin Luther King Jr. national holiday.

In addition to the Black Music Assn., Abner was active in B’nai B’rith, the Braille Institute, Hands Across America, the NAACP, the Urban League and We Are the World, among others. He earned the NAACP Image Award and was inducted into the Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame.

Survivors include his wife, Olivia Watson Abner, a brother, David, seven children, Billie Piantino, Diane Patterson, Chemin Ware, and Tony, Allison, Ewart G. III and Casey Abner, two grandsons and one great-granddaughter.

Memorial services are scheduled at 11:30 a.m. Thursday in the Church of the Recessional at Forest Lawn Glendale, 1712 S. Glendale Ave., Glendale.

The family has requested that any memorial donations be made to the National Medical Fellowship Abner Memorial Fund, Attn. Ruth Conner, 110 W. 32nd St., New York, N.Y. 10001, for scholarships.