Last April, for the first time in its history,the featured Jazz Appreciation Month figure was not a musician, but a music producer whose role in the music industry not only launched careers, but helped shape and transform the industry as well.
We listed down five other producers whose transformative work and fierce dedication shaped jazz as we know it.
George Avakian
George Avakian fell in love with jazz in his early teens, listening to the likes of Duke Ellington played on the radio. In college, he produced Chicago Jazz(1940), known as the first jazz album. He also produced a jazz radio program for the Office of War Information during his military service and wrote for Down Beat, Jazz Magazine, and Mademoiselle magazines.
He worked in many record labels, most prominently at Columbia Records, and then Pacific Jazz, Warner Brothers, RCA, and became an independent producer himself (he signed many legendary jazz and pop musicians such as Miles Davis, Dave Brubeck, Edith Piaf, Tony Bennett, and more). He was responsible for many innovative ways in marketing and promoting jazz and pop albums, including pushing for the LP format, recording live performances of jazz and pop of the likes of Lionel Hampton, Harry James, and Louis Armstrong and in cornerstone recordings at Carnegie Hall, Newport Jazz Festival.
He was also one of the co-founders of the National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS, now known as The Recording Academy, and presenters of the Grammy Awards) in 1957 and served a one-year term as its president in 1967.
Esmond Edwards captured striking images of mid-20th century jazz musicians and develop a way of photographing them much similar to the genres characteristic form: evocative, loose, and moody.
He was a trailblazer in many ways. He was picked by Prestige Records founder Bob Weinstock as a photographer and designed LP covers. He attended recording sessions, learned music production techniques,and went on to supervise the labels recording sessions, becoming the head of A&R (Artist and Relations), one of the first of the few people of color who became recording industry executives for Prestige and other labels, including Cadet, Impulse, and Verve.
He went on to sign and record many jazz musicians, such as Eric Dolphy, Oliver Nelson, Buck Clayton. He also got to record the likes of Ramsey Lewin and the rock-and-roll icon Chuck Berry.
John Hammond
He was a board member of the NAACP, and played a pivotal part in integrating the music business and ushering an era of politically outspoken and socially responsible musicians.
He also organized concerts as the Carnegie Hall and over saw the highly influential posthumous reissues of Robert Johnson's recorded work.
Teddy Reig
He produced countless recordings of dozens of notable and seminal jazz figures, including the first recordings of Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and Stan Getz.
He primarily produced for Roost (which he co-founded in 1950), Roulette, Savoy, and Verve, as well as several other record labels. As an A&R man, he helped sign then-unknown Chuck Berry and became the guiding hand to the Count Basie orchestra through its most prolific and popular period.
He became instrumental in bringing Latin music to a wider audience, scouting for new artists and recording the best Latino performers.
George Wein
Considered as one of the most important jazz impresarios in history, George Wein, founded many of the most significant jazz festivals in the country and pioneered the concept of corporate sponsorships for jazz events in an effort to reach a wider audience.
He is the founder of the best-known jazz music festival in the world, the Newport Jazz Festival, which began in 1954. He went on to found (or co-found) and produce a series of music festivals in many cities during his lifetime, including the Newport Folk Festival, New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, and Los Angeles's Playboy Jazz Festival.
Wein himself was a jazz pianist in his youth, a teacher of jazz history in Boston University, owned a jazz club called Storyline, and founded the Storyline record label in the 1950's.
He was named a Jazz Master in 2005 by the National Endowment for the Arts and is a lifetime Honorary Trustee of Carnegie Hall.
Wein is a distinguished member of the Board of Directors Advisory committee of the Jazz Foundation of America.
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