Jerry Ragovoy, songwriter and producer

JERRY RAGOVOY was about 11 in 1941 when he skipped school one Friday to take in a show at the Earle Theater. It wasn't the first time that Jerry had committed this crime, and for the same reason. But this day was going to be different.

He was having a bite to eat in a Horn & Hardart restaurant in Center City before the show when a man sat down next to him and they struck up a conversation.

Jerry told the man he was going to the Earle Theatre to hear Tommy Dorsey, Frank Sinatra and Rosemary Clooney in concert.

The stranger asked him if he would like to meet those stars, and Jerry said sure, wondering at the same time what this guy had been smoking. The man told him to meet him at the stage door after the show.

"Yeah, sure," Jerry thought.

But at the end of the show, Jerry was sitting in the audience when Dorsey asked his arranger to come out and take a bow. And out came the man from the restaurant, introduced by Dorsey as Sy Oliver.

Jerry made a beeline for the stage door, met Oliver, one of the most famous arrangers in the Big Band era, who introduced the boy to Dorsey, Sinatra and Rosemary Clooney.

For a kid who was destined to become a highly regarded songwriter, arranger and producer himself, this was a day he would never forget.

Jerry Ragovoy, a Philly kid who went on to became an internationally known writer and producer of popular soulful ballads performed by some of the most notable singers of the '50s and '60s, died July 13 of complications of a stroke. He was 80 and was living in Stamford, Conn.

He wrote or collaborated on such hits as "Time Is on My Side," recorded by, among others, the Rolling Stones, and the Janice Joplin songs "Piece of My Heart," "Cry Baby" and "Try (Just A Little Bit Harder)."

He and Bert Berns originally wrote "Cry Baby" for Garnet Mimms and the Enchanters in 1963, and it reached No. 4 on the Billboard charts before Joplin (with Big Brother and the Holding Company) picked it up.

"Piece of My Heart" was also a collaboration with Bert Berns, and was performed by Erma Franklin, Aretha Franklin's older sister.

Joplin recorded it as part of her 1968 album, "Cheap Thrills."

Val Shively, proprietor of the popular music store, R&B Records, in Upper Darby, and a friend of Jerry's, said that Jerry told him that Joplin was anxious to meet him, but when she saw him at a party, she said he looked like a "Jewish accountant," and turned away.

Joplin sang a number of Jerry's songs, but one he wrote for her with Jenny Dean, "I'm Going to Rock My Way to Heaven," she didn't get to sing because she died in October 1970.

One day, an executive of Warner Bros. Records in New York called Jerry in a panic. He had 51 musicians waiting to make a record with Frank Sinatra, but Sinatra had canceled. Under union rules he had to pay the musicians anyway and he wanted to know if Jerry had anything they could record.

Jerry had written "Stay With Me" for Philly singer Lorraine Ellison. He took his arrangement to Warner's and it became a hit with Ellison on the vocal backed by a full orchestra. Jerry was by then head of artists and repertory for Warner Bros. on the East Coast.

"Stay With Me" was sung by Bette Midler in the movie, "The Rose," based on the tragic life and death of Joplin. She called Jerry later and told him, "I sang 'Stay With Me' and then I died."

"It was the greatest soul song ever recorded," Shively said of "Stay With Me."

Jerry was born in Philadelphia to Mandor and Evelyn Ragovoy. His father was an optometrist. Jerry's wife of 27 years, the former Beverly Matson, said that he was musically inclined from childhood and taught himself to play the piano.

"He was a wonderful man with an extraordinary sense of humor, she said.

Jerry attended West Philadelphia High School and took a job as a counterman at Tregoobs, an appliance and record store at 51st Street and Lancaster Avenue, in West Philadelphia, a predominantly black neighborhood.

One day, Jerry walked out of the store and discovered five black teenagers harmonizing on the corner.

He asked them what they were singing and they said it was a song they had written. Jerry said, "Let's make a record."

He took the boys into the studio in the store and they recorded "My Girl Awaits Me."

The boys became the Castelles, and they later recorded "This Silver Ring" with Jerry playing the piano. Both the Castelles and Jerry took off from there.

"That was the beginning of group harmony," Val Shively said.

Jerry was soon hired by Philadelphia's Chancellor Records and wrote arrangements for Frankie Avalon and Fabian. He wrote "About This Thing Called Love" for Fabian.

"He was not a melody writer like Carole King or Burt Bacharach, but he really got the gospel-based black idiom," Billy Vera, a songwriter, record producer and music historian, told the New York Times.

With the singers who performed his works, "New York R&B went deeper into gospel than it had previously," Versa said. "That was his contribution."

Jerry also is survived by two daughters, Melissa Ragovoy and Gillian Ragovoy Ferguson; a sister, Loretta Margulies; and one granddaughter.

Services: A memorial service will be planned later.