Brown Moore Meggs (October 20, 1930October 8, 1997) was an American writer and music executive with Capitol Records. Meggs is known for signing the Beatles to their first distribution contract in the United States. He started the music magazine TeenSet for Capitol in 1964, and founded Seraphim Records, a bargain label for classical music. After serving Capitol as chief operating officer for two years, he resigned in 1976 to concentrate on his writing. Capitol enticed him back in 1984 as the president of Angel Records; he revived the label for the digital age.
As a writer, he won Best Documentary from the Cowboy Hall of Fame for the 1962 documentary film Appaloosa, and he was nominated for the Edgar Award for his mystery novel Saturday Games (1974).
Early life and career
Meggs was born in Los Angeles to Canadian-born painter and art director Charles Winfield Meggs and Margarette Brown Meggs. The Meggs line was originally English, settling along the Saint Lawrence River. His maternal ancestry was from Dutch immigrants to America who helped build the Erie Canal. His maternal grandparents were F. L. Moore of Los Angeles and Edward George Brown of Grosse Pointe, Michigan. His paternal grandfather was William E. Meggs of Gananoque, Ontario, Canada. Meggs had three younger sisters: Toby Winfield Meggs, Margarette "Peggy" Brown Meggs and Victoria "Vicky" McLaughlin Meggs.
Meggs' father took film scripts home from Paramount Pictures to evaluate them with regard to art direction, and Meggs eagerly read the scripts, preferring them to books. He wanted to be a scriptwriter, though he also played French horn and loved classical music. He attended two private schools: first Black-Foxe Military Institute in Hollywood, then St. Luke's in Connecticut. He took college courses at California Institute of Technology and Harvard University, graduating in English. During the Korean War he served with the U.S. Army in counterintelligence, stationed for a year in Japan. After the war, Meggs lived in Laguna Beach, writing freelance for magazines.
Meggs married Vassar-educated Boston socialite Nancy Bates Meachen on June 16, 1954, in the Old South Church of Boston, with a reception at the Algonquin Club; they took a road trip across the continent for their honeymoon, to make their home in Pasadena. They moved to Detroit by 1956 so Meggs could write industrial film scripts for the Jam Handy Organization. The couple had one son there, Brook Meachen Meggs, born on October 9, 1956.
Capitol Records
Meggs joined Capitol Records, a subsidiary of EMI Records, in September 1958 as a manager of merchandising and promotion at the Los Angeles Capitol Records Building. In 1959 he was director of public relations, handling Capitol artists, and also EMI artists visiting from the UK. In March 1962, Capitol moved Meggs to New York City, and nine months later he rose to the position of director of operations for the U.S. East Coast, coordinating with his West Coast counterpart, Fred Martin. His preference for music was in the opera and classical genres, and he reorganized Angel Records, Capitol's classical imprint, for better profitability. Meggs signed an agreement between Angel and the Soviet label Melodiya, which allowed Angel to sell recordings of Soviet artists such as pianist Sviatoslav Richter and conductor Kirill Kondrashin.