The New York Times
Obituaries

George Avakian, Record Producer and Talent Scout, Dies at 98

From left, Louis Armstrong, the songwriter W.C. Handy and George
Avakian in the 1950s. Mr. Avakian helped popularize the long-playing
record and organized the first jazz reissue series, preserving the
recorded legacies of Armstrong and other pioneers.CreditColumbia
Records

By Peter Keepnews
Nov. 22, 2017

George Avakian, a record producer and talent scout who played a key
role in the early careers of Miles Davis, Dave Brubeck, Keith Jarrett
and Bob Newhart, among many others, died on Wednesday at his home on
the Upper West Side of Manhattan. He was 98.

His death was confirmed by his daughter Anahid Avakian Gregg.

Over the course of a career that began when he was in college,
Mr. Avakian (pronounced a-VOCK-ee-an) was involved in virtually every
facet of the music industry. He helped popularize the long-playing
record; organized the first jazz reissue series, preserving the
recorded legacies of Louis Armstrong and other pioneers; and
introduced dith Piaf to American audiences.

He made his most lasting mark as a jazz producer with Columbia Records
in the 1950s. He brought Brubeck and Davis to the label, helping to
transform them from artists with a loyal but limited audience to
international celebrities. He signed Johnny Mathis, then an unknown
jazz singer, and oversaw his emergence as a chart-topping pop star. He
persuaded Louis Armstrong to record the German theater song "Mack the
Knife," an unlikely vehicle that became one of his biggest hits. And
he supervised the recording of Duke Ellington's performance at the
1956 Newport Jazz Festival, which revitalized Ellington's career.

George Mesrop Avakian was born on March 15, 1919, in Armavir, Russia,
to Armenian parents, Mesrop and Manoushak Avakian. His family moved to
the United States shortly after he was born. His younger brother,
Aram, became a respected film editor and director.

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An avid jazz fan and record collector, George was a sophomore at Yale
and already a published jazz critic when he persuaded Decca Records to
let him record the guitarist Eddie Condon and other musicians who had
been fixtures of the Chicago scene a decade earlier. Those sessions,
in 1939, produced "Chicago Jazz," a package of six 78
r.p.m. recordings that is widely regarded as the first jazz album.

"When I saw how much alcohol Eddie Condon and his guys drank and
abused their health," Mr. Avakian told Down Beat magazine in 2000, "I
was very alarmed and became convinced they couldn't possibly live much
longer. So I persuaded Jack Kapp at Decca to let me produce a series
of reunions to document this music before it was too late.

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"They were only in their mid-30s. But I was 20. What did I know about
drinking?"

Columbia hired Mr. Avakian in 1940 to assemble and annotate a
comprehensive jazz reissue series, something no record company had
undertaken before. Working one day a week for $25, he compiled
anthologies of the work of Armstrong, Ellington, Bessie Smith and
others, establishing a template that the industry continued to follow
into the CD era.

In 1946, after five years in the Army, Mr. Avakian became a full-time
member of Columbia's production staff.

While overseeing the company's jazz operations, he wore many other
hats as well. He was in charge of pop albums and served as a one-man
international department, releasing Piaf's "La Vie en Rose" and other
important European records in the United States.

He also played a significant role in establishing the
33#-r.p.m. long-playing record as the industry standard, supervising
production of the first pop LPs shortly after the format was
introduced in 1948.
Image
George Avakian in 2009.CreditFrederick M. Brown/Getty Images

Mr. Avakian later worked briefly for the World Pacific label before
joining the Warner Bros. movie studio's newly formed record
subsidiary, where he was in charge of artists and repertoire from 1959
to 1962.

With a mandate to get Warner Bros. Records on solid financial ground
by delivering hits, he temporarily shifted his focus from jazz. He
brought the Everly Brothers to the label and signed a young humorist
named Bob Newhart, who had been working as an accountant in Chicago
and moonlighting as a radio performer but had never performed for a
live audience.

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Mr. Newhart's first album, "The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart,"
became one of the best-selling comedy records of all time.

In 1962, Mr. Avakian joined RCA Victor Records, where he was in charge
of pop production but also had the opportunity to renew his
involvement in jazz, producing critically acclaimed albums by Sonny
Rollins, Paul Desmond and others.

Tiring of the day-to-day grind of the record business, Mr. Avakian
became a freelance manager and producer in the mid-60s. His first
client of note was Charles Lloyd, a saxophonist and flutist whose
freewheeling style had attracted a young audience and who became one
of the first jazz musicians to perform at the Fillmore Auditorium in
San Francisco and other rock venues.

The pianist in Mr. Lloyd's quartet was Keith Jarrett, and Mr. Avakian
worked with him as well, helping to lay the groundwork for his
breakthrough as one of the most popular jazz musicians of the 1970s.

By the late '90s Mr. Avakian had come full circle: He returned to
Columbia Records to supervise a series of jazz reissues. This time the
medium was CD rather than vinyl. And this time many of the recordings
being reissued had originally been produced by Mr. Avakian himself.

Mr. Avakian was married for 68 years to the violinist Anahid Ajemian,
a founding member of the Composers String Quartet. She died in
2016. Aram Avakian died at 60 in 1987.

In addition to Ms. Gregg, Mr. Avakian is survived by another daughter,
Maro Avakian; a son, Greg; and two grandchildren.

In 2014, Mr. Avakian and Ms. Ajemian donated their archives, including
unreleased recordings by Armstrong and Ellington, to the New York
Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center.

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Among the many honors Mr. Avakian received were a Trustees Award for
lifetime achievement from the National Academy of Recording Arts and
Sciences in 2009 and a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters
award for advocacy in 2010.

Receiving the N.E.A. award, he said at the time, was "a culminating
honor that confirms my long-held belief: Live long enough, stay out of
jail, and you'll never know what might happen."

Daniel E. Slotnik contributed reporting.
A version of this article appears in print on November 23, 2017, on
Page A24 of the New York edition with the headline: George Avakian,
Producer of Jazz Greats, Dies at 98. Order Reprints | Today's Paper |
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