[Dixielandjazz] Norman Granz biography reviewed

[Robert Ringwald]

Legend Had Power to Colour Outside Black and White Lines
by Chris Smith
Winnipeg Free Press, January 23, 2012
Norman Granz cut a wide swath through the jazz world, as a concert promoter, record
producer, label owner and musicians' manager.
If you've ever enjoyed Ella Fitzgerald, Oscar Peterson, Ray Brown, Joe Pass, Charlie
Parker and many others, Granz deserves a great deal of credit for that.
Verve, just one of the labels he started, became a recording powerhouse.
But, as author Tad Hershorn relates in his new biography, Norman Granz: The Man Who
Used Jazz for Justice (University of California Press, $35), Granz fought to ensure
the African-American musicians he represented were accorded their civil rights --
such as access to hotels and restaurants when on the road -- when such a stand was
not only unusual but dangerous.
Granz insisted on the musicians get the same accommodations as whites in the South
and that the concerts, part of his touring Jazz at the Philharmonic (JATP), be open
to all. If the local hotel or promoter refused, Granz cancelled the shows rather
than subject his band members to racism.
Granz wasn't a saint, Hershorn says, and he had detractors within the jazz world.
His often prickly personality rubbed many people the wrong way.
But he was a huge jazz fan who turned his love of the music into a lifelong career
that took him around the world, let him meet and befriend so many of the greatest
jazz players, and made him a wealthy man.
The Granz jazz dynasty was born in the summer of 1944 when he presented his first
JATP concert, a labour of love that evolved into a legendary touring jam session
that featured an array of great musicians and that built the careers of others. That
includes Canada's Oscar Peterson, who Granz met in Montreal and arranged to be in
the audience of a New York JATP concert to be called upon as an apparently impromptu
guest.
He managed successful musicians like Peterson and Fitzgerald without the need for
written contracts. He helped Billie Holiday and Lester Young on the downward side
of their careers by giving them performance and recording work. He was responsible
for the comprehensive Art Tatum recordings, the series of Songbook recordings that
helped define Fitzgerald's career and recorded scores of jazz greats such as Count
Basie, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Benny Carter, Parker, Dizzie Gillespie, Coleman
Hawkins and Pass.
He came under fire for his JATP formula of jam sessions by the stars interspersed
with ballads and/or a set by Ella. Detractors said his penchant for blues-based jams
did little to advance the art of jazz.
Granz, for his part, knew what he and his audiences liked and he toured JATP through
the United States, Canada and to Europe and Japan after its beginnings in Los Angeles.
There is a Winnipeg connection of sorts to the Granz saga. In high school, Granz
befriended Aaron Greenstein who, as Archie Green, was a major figure among labour,
cultural and social activists and spearheaded legislation to create the American
Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. The former Winnipegger's friendship helped
stir Granz's intellectualism and interest in radical thinking in high school and
the early years at UCLA. They remained friends throughout their lives.
Whether you liked JATP and its all-star cutting contest, or felt it held back the
jazz genre, whether you found Granz to be objectionable, you have to accept that
he built great labels like Verve, Clef, Norgran and Pablo (named after his friend
Picasso) and recorded some definitive music, whatever your jazz politics.
And at a time when African-American performers were cheated and mistreated by unscrupulous
white managers and promoters, Granz did the right thing to protect his musical clients/friends,
to see they received respectful treatment.
I've listened to a lot of good music thanks to Granz, and his jazz and civil rights
ledgers have more entries in the assets columns than not.
Granz didn't really care what his detractors thought. His record (and records) told
the story. Hershorn's retelling celebrates his undeniable accomplishments.


--Bob Ringwald
www.ringwald.com
Fulton Street Jazz Band
530/ 642-9551 Office
916/ 806-9551 Cell
Amateur (Ham) Radio K6YBV

Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases:
If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.