Sonny Lester

Sumner Lester (November 15, 1924 – April 28, 2018), better known as Sonny Lester, was an American Grammy-award-winning music producer from New York City. He started his career as a musician in a big band jazz ensemble before being drafted into the U.S. Army. During the war he earned a Purple Heart and worked under Henry Kissinger, who was an intelligence officer at the time.

Record label executive In 1966, Lester formed Solid State, the jazz division of United Artists Records, with arranger Manny Albam and recording engineer Phil Ramone. He later formed Groove Merchant in the early 1970s The label released albums by jazz musicians such as Chick Corea, Joe Williams, Dizzy Gillespie, When his distribution deal ran out in the mid-1970s, he launched LRC Records, continuing to release albums by jazz artists such as Jimmy McGriff, Jimmy Ponder, Joe Thomas and Brad Baker, which generally had a contemporary soul/disco flavor. The Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra, called simply "The Orchestra" on the first album, recorded all of their early and most influential albums for Solid State. The label was eventually consolidated into Blue Note Records

By 1993, The New York Times reported that his record company, Lester Recording Catalog (LRC, Ltd.), had "nearly 150 titles, and annual revenues are $3 million to $4 million."

LRC releases jazz records as CDs. In the early 1990s, Lester retained the rights to a number of records he produced in the 1960s and 1970s and reissued them as CDs on LRC.

Personal life and death Lester died in University Park, Florida on April 28, 2018, at the age of 93.