Tony Martell is a veteran American music industry senior executive, and founder of the T.J. Martell Foundation.

Music industry career

Tony Martell’s music industry career spans the 1960s through the 1990s with experience as an A&R director, record label vice president, and record label head primarily with CBS Records

Sony Music Entertainment

Sony Music Entertainment ' is the second-largest global recorded music company of the "big four" record companies and is controlled by Sony Corporation of America, the United States subsidiary of Japan's Sony Corporation....

 (now Sony Music Entertainment

Sony Music Entertainment

Sony Music Entertainment ' is the second-largest global recorded music company of the "big four" record companies and is controlled by Sony Corporation of America, the United States subsidiary of Japan's Sony Corporation....

) and its subsidiaries. Martell was comfortable working with artists covering a wide range of musical styles including Jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

, Rock

Rock music

Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...

, Soul

Soul music

Soul music is a music genre originating in the United States combining elements of gospel music and rhythm and blues. According to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, soul is "music that arose out of the black experience in America through the transmutation of gospel and rhythm & blues into a form of...

, Pop

Pop music

Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...

, Blues

Blues

Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...

, and heavy metal

Heavy metal music

Heavy metal is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the Midlands of the United Kingdom and the United States...

.

In the 1960s and 70s Tony Martell helped direct the careers of such soul music icons as The Isley Brothers

The Isley Brothers

The Isley Brothers are a highly influential, successful and long-running American music group consisting of different line-ups of six brothers, and a brother-in-law, Chris Jasper...

, and The O'Jays

The O'Jays

The O'Jays are an American R&B group from Canton, Ohio, formed in 1963 and originally consisting of Eddie Levert , Walter Williams , William Powell , Bobby Massey and Bill Isles. The O'Jays were inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2004, and The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2005...

. In the 1980s Martell was instrumental in bringing both Stevie Ray Vaughan

Stevie Ray Vaughan

Stephen Ray "Stevie Ray" Vaughan was an American electric blues guitarist and singer. He was the younger brother of Jimmie Vaughan and frontman for Double Trouble, a band that included bassist Tommy Shannon and drummer Chris Layton. Born in Dallas, Vaughan moved to Austin at the age of 17 and...

 and Ozzy Osbourne

Ozzy Osbourne

John Michael "Ozzy" Osbourne is an English vocalist, whose musical career has spanned over 40 years. Osbourne rose to prominence as lead singer of the pioneering English heavy metal band Black Sabbath, whose radically different, intentionally dark, harder sound helped spawn the heavy metal...

 to Epic Records

Epic Records

Epic Records is an American record label, owned by Sony Music Entertainment. Though it was originally conceived as a jazz imprint, it has since expanded to represent various genres. L.A...

. He is credited as Executive Producer on over 50 albums for artists as diverse as Stevie Ray Vaughan, The Isley Brothers, The O'Jays, George Benson

George Benson

George Benson is a ten Grammy Award winning American musician, whose production career began at the age of twenty-one as a jazz guitarist....

, Gerry Mulligan

Gerry Mulligan

Gerald Joseph "Gerry" Mulligan was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, composer and arranger. Though Mulligan is primarily known as one of the leading baritone saxophonists in jazz history – playing the instrument with a light and airy tone in the era of cool jazz – he was also...

, Jim Hall

Jim Hall (musician)

James Stanley Hall is an American jazz guitarist.-Biography:Educated at the Cleveland Institute of Music, Hall moved to Los Angeles where he began to attract national, and then international, attention in the late 1950s...

, Lalo Schifrin

Lalo Schifrin

Lalo Schifrin is an Argentine composer, pianist and conductor. He is best known for his film and TV scores, such as the "Theme from Mission: Impossible". He has received four Grammy Awards and six Oscar nominations...

, Bill Withers

Bill Withers

William Harrison "Bill" Withers, Jr. is an American singer-songwriter and musician who performed and recorded from 1970 until 1985. Some of his best-known songs are "Lean on Me", "Ain't No Sunshine", "Use Me", "Just the Two of Us", "Lovely Day", and "Grandma's Hands"...

, Patti Austin

Patti Austin

-Life and career:Austin was born in Harlem, New York. She made her debut at the Apollo Theater at age four and had a contract with RCA Records when she was only five. Quincy Jones and Dinah Washington have proclaimed themselves as her godparents....

, George Duke

George Duke

George Duke is a multi-faceted American musician, known as a keyboard pioneer, composer, singer and producer in both jazz and popular mainstream musical genres. He has worked with numerous acclaimed artists as arranger, music director, writer and co-writer, record producer and professor of music...

, Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes

Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes

Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes were an American singing group, one of the most popular Philadelphia soul groups of the 1970s. The group's repertoire included soul, R&B, doo-wop, and disco...

, Eumir Deodato

Eumir Deodato

Eumir Deodato is a Brazilian pianist, composer, record producer and arranger, primarily based in the jazz realm but who historically has been known for eclectic melding of big band and combo jazz with varied elements of rock/pop, R&B/funk, Brazilian/Latin, and symphonic or orchestral music.Mainly,...

, and Stanley Turrentine

Stanley Turrentine

Stanley William Turrentine, also known as "Mr. T" or "The Sugar Man", was an American jazz tenor saxophonist.-Biography:Turrentine was born in Pittsburgh's Hill District into a musical family...

.

In the 1980s, Martell was head of the imprint label CBS Associated Records

Sony Music Entertainment

Sony Music Entertainment ' is the second-largest global recorded music company of the "big four" record companies and is controlled by Sony Corporation of America, the United States subsidiary of Japan's Sony Corporation....

, which was part of the E/P/A label group (Epic/Portrait/Associate). Martell continued his work with Ozzy Osbourne and also signed The Fabulous Thunderbirds

The Fabulous Thunderbirds

The Fabulous Thunderbirds are an American, Grammy-nominated Blues rock band, formed in 1974.-Career:After performing for several years in the Austin, Texas blues scene, the band won a recording contract with Takoma/Chrysalis Records, and later on signed with Epic Records.Their first two albums,...

, Electric Light Orchestra

Electric Light Orchestra

Electric Light Orchestra were a British rock group from Birmingham who released eleven studio albums between 1971 and 1986 and another album in 2001. ELO were formed to accommodate Roy Wood and Jeff Lynne's desire to create modern rock and pop songs with classical overtones...

, Joan Jett

Joan Jett

Joan Jett is an American rock guitarist, singer, songwriter, producer and actress.She is best known for her work with Joan Jett & the Blackhearts including their hit cover "I Love Rock 'n' Roll", which was #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 from March 20 to May 1, 1982, as well as for their other popular...

, and Henry Lee Summer

Henry Lee Summer

Henry Lee Summer is an American rock singer, songwriter, musician, and Record producer from Brazil, Indiana best known for his hit singles "I Wish I Had A Girl" and "Hey Baby".-Career:...

 among others to the label.

T.J. Martell Foundation

In 1973 Martell’s teenage son T.J. Martell was diagnosed with leukemia and died in 1975 at the age of nineteen. Tony Martell began fundraising efforts for cancer research with a concert in New York City featuring friends Duke Ellington

Duke Ellington

Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington was an American composer, pianist, and big band leader. Ellington wrote over 1,000 compositions...

, Benny Goodman

Benny Goodman

Benjamin David “Benny” Goodman was an American jazz and swing musician, clarinetist and bandleader; widely known as the "King of Swing".In the mid-1930s, Benny Goodman led one of the most popular musical groups in America...

, and Ella Fitzgerald

Ella Fitzgerald

Ella Jane Fitzgerald , also known as the "First Lady of Song" and "Lady Ella," was an American jazz and song vocalist...

and soon established the T.J. Martell Foundation in memory of his son.

For over thirty years the foundation has been one of the primary charitable organizations associated with the music industry and a leader in funding for innovative leukemia, cancer, and AIDS research (having raised over $225 million dollars). The T.J. Martell Foundation maintains offices in New York, Los Angeles, and Nashville; and sponsors events nationally and internationally.

Currently Martell is retired from the music industry and is involved in the work of the foundation, but his legendary status and long-standing relationships to artists and executives within the music community are invaluable assets to the foundations work.