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Donald's Encyclopedia of Popular MusicA B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y ZGRANZ, Norman(b 6 August 1918, Los Angeles CA; d 22 Nov. 2001, Geneva, Switzerland) Entrepreneur, promoter, producer, label boss. He attended UCLA, after WWII service worked as a film editor, then began a series of jazz concerts at the L.A. Philharmonic Auditorium in 1944: he took Jazz At The Philharmonic (JATP) on a tour which ended in Canada. He innovated from the start by recording concerts; record sales enabled more tours; also produced a film short, the classic Jammin' The Blues with Lester Young, photographed by Gjon Mili, nominated for an Oscar '44. He leased records to Asch etc, then to Mercury '48-51; started the Clef, Norgran and Verve labels, consolidated on Verve '57. He toured the world with JATP, booked other tours as well; shrewd but fair, he maintained relationships for many years with Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Stan Getz, scores of others who would have had considerably less work in the lean years for jazz of '50s and '60s without him: people who couldn't get along with Granz probably had bigger egos than he did. He refused to play places where the audience was segregated, and saw to it that his black artists were treated the same as the white. When a record distributor complained that one of his artists didn't sell enough copies, Granz replied that if just 1500 people wanted to hear the player, that was enough, and fired the distributor. He retained rights to some recordings when he sold Verve to MGM (thence to Polygram); the Fitzgerald Songbook series, Billie Holiday records '52-7 etc are still on Verve but (unable to stay away) he started Pablo in the '70s and his wonderful '50s recordings of Art Tatum are still on that label. He helped make a star of Joe Pass, nabbed Duke Ellington's The Queen's Suite for its first commercial release, and carried on making live recordings (many at Montreux); the many fine issues on Pablo soon rivalled the classic Verve list. Slower output in the 1980s reflected his health problems, and Pablo was sold to Fantasy late '86. He probably made too many records, certainly over-recording Oscar Peterson, for example, but the sound of jazz owed a lot to Granz for decades, and the priceless catalogues are still being reissued. Tad Hershorn published Norman Granz: The Man Who Used Music For Justice 2011. |