JUSTICE SERVED
FEW HAVE DONE MORE TO ENSURE JAZZ RECEIVES THE HONOUR IT DESERVES THAN GEORGE AVAKIAN
The s t or y 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 r ecord, 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.