Jimmy Ienner

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Jimmy Ienner (eye'-ner) is an American music producer, best known for producing albums for such artists as John Lennon and Three Dog Night. He and his brother Don Ienner founded the publishing house C.A.M. U.S.A., which operated from 1972-1977. C.A.M. U.S.A. was a highly successful publishing, management and production company which represented such artists as Three Dog Night, Grand Funk Railroad, Blood, Sweat & Tears, Air Supply, The Raspberries and Eric Carmen.

He was also the key music producer for the 1987 film Dirty Dancing. The film was originally shot to oldies songs from the personal collection of Eleanor Bergstein, the film's writer and producer. Ienner obtained licenses for the songs in her collection, chose other artists, and also enlisted star Patrick Swayze to sing "She's Like the Wind." Swayze had written the song a few years earlier with Stacy Widelitz, originally intending for it to be used in the 1984 film Grandview, U.S.A. with Jamie Lee Curtis and C. Thomas Howell. Ienner was also executive producer for the Dirty Dancing soundtrack album with the film's music. The film's popularity caught the producers by surprise, and the album had one million copies on back order before a single had even been released. The album spent 18 weeks at number 1 on the Billboard 200 album sales charts and went platinum eleven times, selling more than 39 million copies worldwide.^[1] It spawned a follow-up album in February 1988, entitled More Dirty Dancing, which also went multi-platinum, selling 32 million copies worldwide.^[2]