In this age of intense antisemitism, few Jews would embrace the moniker El Judio (“the Jew”), but Adam Mehl has taken it as his own.
His story began in Texas when his paternal family, Russian Jews, settled in the city of Fort Worth at the beginning of the 20th century. Sam and Rose Fogiel, his maternal grandparents and Polish concentration camp survivors, reached Texas after World War II.
Milton Mehl, his grandfather, served under general George S. Patton and worked as a lawyer during the Nuremberg trials.
Adam was born in Silver Spring, Maryland. His family returned to Texas in 1980 and lived in Houston.
The Mehls attended the Reform synagogue Temple Emanuel, where Adam had a joint bar mitzvah. “You get bar mitzvahed two at a time. You have a joint service…They don’t have enough temples, so they double up the bar mitzvahs,” he explains.
As a teenager, Mehl found himself drawn to the world of sports and entertainment. “From age 12 to 17, I was heavily into baseball cards. My mother used to let me travel in the summer to all the different shows with the promoters,” he says.
Due to his early career choice, he attended the management program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “I always knew that I wanted to be a manager.”
Going from the circus to music
Upon graduation, Mehl went to work for Feld Entertainment, which operates the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Mehl worked there in marketing and sales from 1996 to 1999.
The position with Feld began his involvement with the Latino market.
Mehl observed how Latinos went out on Thanksgiving, so he decided to promote an event intended to attract them to the circus. “The concept was to bring in a Spanish ringmaster, and after the circus we would bring in a singer.”
The event became a huge success, and the circus sold its largest number of tickets in one day up to that point in its history.
In 2007, Mark Cuban, the billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team, offered him the position of director of marketing. During his two-season tenure with the Mavs, Mehl continued his efforts in attracting Latino fans and viewers. “I created Festival de los Mavs. That was the first…Latin event for the Mavericks…[I created] a festival before the game…All the players came and sign[ed].”
After a stint at CBS Radio and the establishment of his own company A.M. Entertainment in 2012, he received a call which set him on his current path as a manager of Latino artists.
“I got a phone call from a friend in Chicago in March of 2016. He said, ‘I need you to go to Miami to meet a kid named Justin Quiles.’ I went…to meet him and the record label,” he recounts.
Mehl decided to promote Quiles’s new album and helped the singer reach the No. 1 spot in the Latin Urban musical charts.
“That led me to move to Miami…and from 2016 to today, I’ve been in reggaeton [Spanish rap].”
As a manager of artists, Mehl describes himself as “the CEO of the artist’s life. Being a manager and a record label owner is a lot of just giving advice.”
He started his label AGM Entertainment and his publishing company Hits by the Fam in 2020, during the COVID pandemic. “You don’t own anything as a manager…When you own a record label and a publishing company, you actually own the intellectual property,” he explains.
Mehl now manages three artists – Justin Quiles, Dimelo Flow, and Izaak. Seven songwriters and producers and five artists are signed with his label.
As part of his management work, Mehl has visited numerous countries in South and Central America. “I always get a passport with the extra pages every time it runs out,” he says.
As for his fluency in Spanish, “I’m seventy percent now…I’m self-taught there.”
Never having experienced antisemitism in the Latino music industry, Mehl describes being a Jew in that sector. “Being Jewish in the Latin business, primarily because there’s so few of us, gives an advantage to me and my artists at the negotiating table because the perception of a Jew…is [of] a smart businessman.”
He maintains his connection to Judaism in the midst of his busy life. “I try to celebrate the holidays when in town and shut off my phone at least for services…. For Yom Kippur, I shut it off in the morning and pray. I send a note out to my guys, ‘This is my Christmas, leave me alone.’”
Mehl began being called El Judio when he started his own company. “It just stuck…I don’t know a lot of people who call me Adam. Even presidents of record labels call me El Judio or Judio or Judi – I embrace being El Judio.”
In regard to his alternative identity, he says: “It’s unbelievable. I would never have thought that my name would be El Judio.”■