Norman Granz

Norman Granz ranked among jazz’s most influential non-performing figures at the peak of his influence. He championed the music he adored—especially its free-flowing jam sessions—backed the musicians he regarded as the world’s finest, and challenged racial barriers by compelling hotels and concert halls to integrate during the 1940s and 1950s. After studying at UCLA and completing Army service, he entered jazz in 1944 by supervising the award-winning short film Jammin’ the Blues, which featured Lester Young, and by staging a concert at Los Angeles’s Philharmonic Auditorium that he titled Jazz at the Philharmonic. Its overwhelming success enabled him to expand these all-star jam sessions first across the United States and later around the globe. Granz delighted in matching leading bop and swing artists against one another in spirited “battles,” and although some conservative and humorless critics dismissed the concerts, the performances yielded abundant rewarding music. Unwilling to limit himself to live presentation, he routinely recorded the sets despite their 10- to 15-minute lengths, which surpassed the conventional three-minute capacity of 78 rpm discs. He launched Clef in 1946 and Norgran in 1953 before consolidating his catalog under the Verve imprint in 1956. The arrival of the LP in the early 1950s proved ideally timed, allowing him to issue many Jazz at the Philharmonic performances on long-playing records. Granz additionally managed Ella Fitzgerald and created Verve largely to document her work. Other artists who flourished under his aegis during the 1950s included Oscar Peterson, whom he discovered and managed, as well as Lester Young, Roy Eldridge, Dizzy Gillespie, Art Tatum, Count Basie, and Ben Webster. By the late 1950s Jazz at the Philharmonic had sharply declined, prompting Granz to sell Verve to MGM in 1960. He concentrated chiefly on concert promotion and the management of Fitzgerald and Peterson throughout the 1960s, yet returned decisively to recording in 1973 with the founding of the prosperous Pablo label. Numerous musicians he favored—among them Ella, Basie, Roy Eldridge, and Dizzy Gillespie—had endured uneven recording opportunities in the 1960s, but Pablo revitalized and substantially enlarged their discographies. Granz documented his roster extensively, spotlighting the spontaneity of jam sessions and featuring artists such as Joe Pass, who soon achieved wide recognition, Zoot Sims, Sarah Vaughan, Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, and especially Oscar Peterson. Pablo’s release pace slowed during the 1980s, leading Granz to sell the label to Fantasy in 1987; most of the sessions later appeared on CD reissues. Retiring to Switzerland after advancing the music he cherished, Norman Granz died in Geneva on November 22, 2001, from complications of cancer.