"Any book on my life would start with my basic philosophy of fighting racial prejudice. I loved jazz, and jazz was my way of doing that," Norman Granz told Tad Hershorn during the final interviews given for this book. Granz, who died in 2001, was iconoclastic, independent, immensely influential, often thoroughly unpleasant-and one of jazz's true giants. Granz played an essential part in bringing jazz to audiences around the world, defying racial and social prejudice as he did so, and demanding that African-American performers be treated equally everywhere they toured. In this definitive biography, Hershorn recounts Granz's story: creator of the legendary jam session concerts known as Jazz at the Philharmonic; founder of the Verve record label; pioneer of live recordings and worldwide jazz concert tours; manager and recording producer for numerous stars, including Ella Fitzgerald and Oscar Peterson.
Tad Hershorn is an archivist at the Institute for Jazz Studies at Rutgers University.
"Any book on my life would start with my basic philosophy of fighting racial prejudice. I loved jazz, and jazz was my way of doing that," Norman Granz told Tad Hershorn during the final interviews given for this book. Granz, who died in 2001, was iconoclastic, independent, immensely influential, often thoroughly unpleasant-and one of jazz's true giants. Granz played an essential part in bringing jazz to audiences around the world, defying racial and social prejudice as he did so, and demanding that African-American performers be treated equally everywhere they toured. In this definitive biography, Hershorn recounts Granz's story: creator of the legendary jam session concerts known as Jazz at the Philharmonic; founder of the Verve record label; pioneer of live recordings and worldwide jazz concert tours; manager and recording producer for numerous stars, including Ella Fitzgerald and Oscar Peterson.
Tad Hershorn is an archivist at the Institute for Jazz Studies at Rutgers University.
List of Illustrations
Foreword by Oscar Peterson
Prologue: “I Made Things Work”
1 “All I Wanted Was My Freedom”
2 “A Marvelous Crucible”
3 Cole Train
4 “The Opener”
5 Let Freedom Swing
6 Norman Granz versus . . .
7 Mambo Jambo
8 Enter Ella and Oscar
9 The Continental
10 “I Feel Most at Home in the Studio”
11 Starry Nights
12 “That Tall Old Man Standing Next to Ella Fitzgerald”
13 The Jazz Hurricane
14 “The Lost Generation”
15 Duke, Prez, and Billie
16 Joie de Verve
17 Across the Sea
18 “Musicians Don’t Want to Jam”
19 Picasso on the Beach
20 “One More Once”
21 Takin’ It on Out—for Good
22 “Somewhere There’s Music”
Epilogue: “My Career, Such As It Is . . .”
Acknowledgments
Chronology
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
Tad Hershorn is an archivist at the Institute for Jazz Studies at Rutgers University.
"This book is a valuable addition to the jazz literature." -- Norman Vickers The Jazz Society Of Pensacola "[A] diligently researched biography... [Hershorn] meticulously documents the personnel and songs played at many concerts and recording dates." -- David Lander Stereophile "An impressively researched, detailed, and highly readable account of ... one of the most significant non-musicians in jazz." Blue Light
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