Simon Waronker

Simon Waronker, the founder of the independent pop music label Liberty Records, has died. He was 90.

Mr. Waronker, whose music label signed artists from Eddie Cochran to Alvin and the Chipmunks during the 1950s and 1960s, died of natural causes Tuesday at his home in Beverly Hills, his family said.

Liberty Records, which was founded in 1955, signed singers such as Julie London, Martin Denny, Johnny Burnette, Gene McDaniels, Buddy Knox and Timi Yuro. It scored major hits with the novelty recordings of Alvin and the Chipmunks, a fictional musical group created by Ross Bagdasarian under the stage name David Seville.

Bagdasarian supplied the voices for the chipmunk trio whose distinctive, high-pitched sound was created by speeding up the playback. " The Chipmunk Song, " released in 1958, sold more than 4 million copies in seven weeks and became a No. 1 hit single in the U.S.

It also earned Mr. Waronker a footnote in pop culture history: the Chipmunks Alvin, Simon and Theodore were named after Liberty President Alvin Bennett, Mr. Waronker and chief engineer Theodore Keep.

The Los Angeles-born Mr. Waronker trained as a classical violinist in Europe as a teenager in the early 1930s. After returning to Los Angeles, he played violin with the 20th Century Fox Orchestra and served as orchestra contractor at the studio until he founded Liberty Records in 1955.

Using his furniture as collateral, Mr. Waronker borrowed $2,000 and used half of the loan to arrange to have Capitol Records ' pressing plant manufacture his initial releases. At first, Mr. Waronker worked at 20th Century Fox from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and then ran Liberty from a rented desk in a Beverly Hills office until 5:30 a.m.

" In the end, I paid all my bills and had money left over, " Mr. Waronker told Billboard.

In 1963, Mr. Waronker sold Liberty Records to Avnet, an electronics corporation, for $12 million.