National Post (f/k/a The Financial Post) (Canada)
November 28, 2017 Tuesday
Justice Served; Few Have Done More To Ensure Jazz Receives The Honour
It Deserves Than George Avakian
by Robert Fulford, National Post
The story of George Avakian is the story of jazz being awakened to
itself and finding its proper place in the world.
In the middle of the 20th century, jazz was pushed to the margins of
music. Nobody wrote its history and nobody taught it in the music
schools. The crucial jazz records of the past were seldom heard
because they were not on sale. They had been sold for a few weeks
after they were produced, then forgotten.
When George Avakian (pronounced a-VOCK-ee-an) saw this cultural
wasteland, he knew it needed changing. And he did more than anyone to
change it. When he died last week at age 98, the people who love jazz
began reflecting on how much he had accomplished.
He was born in 1919 in Russia to wealthy Armenians who left Europe not
long after. Growing up in New York, he found himself attracted to jazz
because (as he recalled), "It reminded me of the lively dance music
and other folk music my parents had brought to America from Armenia."
Even as a child, he listened to jazz on the radio at low volume so his
parents wouldn't know he was still awake.
As a 20-year-old student at Yale in the late 1930s, he wrote to
several record companies with his complaint that much of the great
music was unavailable in record stores. He considered it a tragedy
that Louis Armstrong's two recorded groups from the 1920s, the Hot
Five and the Hot Seven, could only be heard on scratchy-sounding
discs. This was an example - and far from the only one - of a European
pointing out the true value of American culture. At Yale, he
encouraged jazz fans among his fellow students to import two French
books, Charles Delaunay's Hot Discography and Hugues Panassie's Le
Jazz Hot. The Europeans were ahead of North American critics in
treating jazz as art.
Decca Records was so impressed by his letter that it hired him to
organize reissues of valuable material. A new life opened up, for
Avakian and for jazz. The old Armstrong performances became widely
known, and so did the work of many others. One result was the revival
of Armstrong's career. Years later Avakian persuaded Armstrong to
record Kurt Weill's Mack the Knife, which became a major hit.
Avakian's father had always expected him to join the family's rug
importing business, and in fact, the young man made a few trips to
Iran and other sources of rugs. But for many decades, he devoted
himself to music. He worked for Columbia and Warners as a producer of
records, a talent scout and an agent. But he was in essence a man with
a mission; he had an urgent need to see justice done for the musicians
he admired.
When the record companies adopted the LP (long-playing) discs, he saw
how this innovation could benefit jazz. Great soloists appeared on
discs that allowed them, for the first time, to perform according to
their talent rather than the demands of technology. Avakian absorbed
this alteration in the landscape of musical reproduction. One of his
LPs carried the first-ever jazz liner notes - written, of course, by
Avakian.
In the 1950s, Avakian supervised the release of Benny Goodman Live at
Carnegie Hall 1938, a concert that told the history of jazz through
musical examples. When the Duke Ellington band hit a low period in the
1950s, Avakian supervised Ellington at Newport, reviving the band's
fortunes.
He had a feel for more than jazz. He introduced Édith Piaf to American
record buyers. He produced The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart, which
made Newhart's reputation as a comedian. Before the record, Newhart
was an accountant with only a sideline in comedy. After, he was an
instant star.
Avakian also produced Louis Armstrong Plays W.C. Handy, some of Dave
Brubeck's most popular albums and a great Sonny Rollins record, The
Bridge. But his most surprising success was Miles Davis.
"I saw him as the best trumpet ballad player since Louis Armstrong,"
Avakian said. He made Davis a special project, once convinced he had
finally beaten the drug habit that held him back. He suggested Davis
emphasize ballads and encouraged his elegant way of dressing. In 1957
he produced Davis's Miles Ahead, which sold a million copies and
established him internationally. Miles Davis soon rose above the mass
of musicians, taking a place of celebrity all his own, just where
George Avakian thought he should be.
