Stan Cornyn with Paul Scanlon: Exploding (Harper Entertainment)

"THE REALLY important factor was that we were a younger company than Columbia," Warners insider Stan Cornyn said in 1993. "We weren't structured so tightly that we couldn't bend." Bend Warner Brothers did – or at least Warner Bros. and Reprise Records, under the inspiring helmsmanship of sometime Sinatra accountant Morris "Mo" Ostin and Boston disc-jock Joe Smith. For a golden half-decade, roughly 1967-1972, Warner-Reprise was the ultimate haven for the crème of the talent pouring out of (and into) the canyons of Southern California.