RIP, Jerry Ragovoy, wrote "Time On My Side," "Piece Of My Heart"

Jerry Ragovoy, the Philadelphia-born songwriter and producer who wrote the Irma Thomas - Rolling Stones hit "Time Is On My Side" and co-wrote classics like "Cry Baby" and "Piece Of My Heart," with Bert Berns, died at age 80 on Wednesday due to complications from a stroke.

The 2008 collection The Jerry Ragovoy Story, released on the British Ace Records label, demonstrates the full range of Ragovoy's talent.  He had his first hit in 1953 with "My Girl Awaits Me," by The Castelles, a rhythm and blues group he discovered singing outside a Philadelphia appliance store where he worked.

While working as an arranger at Chancellor Records in Philadelphia in the 1950s, he paired up Frankie Avalon with little known songwriters Burt Bacharach and Hal David on a song called "Gotta Get A Girl," that failed to be a hit. But plenty of successes were to follow, including "Stay With Me" with Lorraine Ellison, "Pata Pata" with Miriam Makeba, and "Piece Of My Heart," first with Aretha's sister Erma Franklin and then with Janis Joplin.

And Ragovoy was also the force behind some of the greatest gospel-tinged soul recordings of all time to never get the attention they deserved, from Howard Tate's 1966 album Get It While You Can to Carl Hall's 1967 single for the Loma label, "You Don't Know Nothing About Love."

In the 1960s, Ragovoy founded The Hit Factory studio in New York, where classics such as Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key Of Life were recorded.In 1973, he won a Grammy for producing the Broadway cast album of Don't Bother Me, I Can't Cope.

Ragovoy, who also produced Garnet Mims, Bonnie Raitt and Dionne Warwick, moved to Atlanta, Georgia in the 1980s. He once again worked with Tate on the preacher and soul singer's 2003 comeback album, Rediscovered.

"He was a pop titan," said Grammy-winning Philadelphia producer Aaron Luis Levinson of Ragovoy. "Ragovoy was a jack of all trades who elevated virtually anything he touched forom the merely quotidien to the truly inspired."

He is survived by his wife Beverly, their twin daughters and one grand daughter. According to keyboard player and producer Al Kooper, who paid tribute to Ragovoy on the music industry site The Morton Report, a private family funeral service will be held, with a memorial gathering being planned for the fall.

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