Philadelphia-born songwriter Jerry Ragovoy dies

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

The 2008 collection The Jerry Ragovoy Story, released on the British Ace Records label, demonstrates the full range of Mr. 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, Mr. Ragovoy paired Frankie Avalon with the little-known songwriters Burt Bacharach and Hal David on a song called "Gotta Get a Girl," which failed to be a hit. But plenty of successes were to follow. Songs he wrote included "Stay With Me" for Lorraine Ellison, "Pata Pata" for Miriam Makeba, and "Piece of My Heart," first performed by Aretha Franklin's sister Erma and then by Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Company.

And Mr. 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, Mr. 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.

Mr. Ragovoy, who also produced Garnet Mimms, Bonnie Raitt, and Dionne Warwick, moved to Atlanta 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 Mr. Ragovoy. "Ragovoy was a jack-of-all-trades who elevated virtually anything he touched from the merely quotidian to the truly inspired."

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