RECORD EXECUTIVE SHAPED COUNTLESS CAREERS
Avant, a record executive who shaped the careers not only of Bill Withers, Whitney Houston, Janet Jackson and other Black singers, but also of politicians, actors and sports figures — exerting so much influence that a 2019 documentary about him was called simply “The Black Godfather” — died Sunday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 92.
His family announced his death in a statement.
Avant (pronounced AYvant), born in a segregated hospital in North Carolina and educated only through ninth grade, moved easily in the high-powered world of entertainment, helping to establish the idea that Black culture and consumers were forces to be reckoned with.
He started out managing a nightclub in Newark, N.J., in the late 1950s and moved on to represent some of the artists he met there. Joe Glaser, a high-powered agent who handled Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and many other top acts, took Avant under his wing; perhaps, the documentary suggested, Glaser, who was White, thought it would be advantageous to have a Black man representing some of his Black clients.
In any case, Avant was soon handling artists including jazz organist Jimmy Smith, and traveling in rarefied circles. Not all of his clients were Black; he said Glaser sent him to Los Angeles in 1964 with Argentine piaClarence nist Lalo Schifrin, who was then working with Dizzy Gillespie, to try to get Schifrin started on a career composing for film and television. Though he knew nothing about the movie business, Avant worked his brand of magic on the West Coast: Schifrin has been nominated for six Oscars.
In 1960, Avant formed Sussex Records — he said the name was his combination of the two things people want more than anything else, success and sex — which lasted only about half a decade but released, among other records, Withers’ early albums.
“Clarence made some great choices musically,” Withers, who died in 2020, said in the documentary. “‘Lean on Me’ ” — Withers’ only Billboard No. 1 hit — “was not my choice for a single.”
In the 1970s, Avant founded Tabu Records, and for a time in the 1990s he ran Motown. He also helped football star Jim Brown build an acting career and negotiated an endorsement deal for baseball star Hank Aaron, as well as supporting the political careers of Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
Clarence Alexander Avant was born Feb. 25, 1931, in Greensboro, N.C., to Gertrude Avant Woods, a domestic worker. In the documentary, he said his mother was not married to his father, Phoenix Jarrell, whom he barely knew.
He grew up in Climax,
N.C., in difficult circumstances.
“We were poor,” he said in the film. “I’m talking about poor, poor, poor. We had chicken-feet soup.”
Racism was omnipresent, and the Ku Klux Klan loomed large.
He grew up with a stepfather, Eddie Woods, who was abusive, and he said he left home when he was a teenager after his attempt to kill the man by putting rat poison in his food failed. He went to live with an aunt in Summit, N.J.
For a time he held a lowlevel job at MartindaleHubbell, publisher of a law directory. In his 20s, he started working at a Newark nightclub that featured Black musicians. That was his introduction to the entertainment business, and he proved a natural.
As his career representing entertainers began to flourish, Avant met Jacqueline Gray, a model. They married in 1967, and as the couple prospered, Jacqueline Avant became noted for her philanthropic work.
In December 2021, a man burglarizing the Avants’ home, Aariel Maynor, shot and killed her. He pleaded guilty to multiple charges the next year and was sentenced to life in prison.
In the documentary, friends remarked on their long marriage.
“They still look like they’ve got wedding cake on their feet,” actor Jamie Foxx said, “like they just walked off a soul wedding cake.”
Avant’s daughter, Nicole Avant, said in a phone interview that after the tragedy, her father made a conscious effort to press on.
“Music was, I think, the
lifesaving force for him,” she said, especially that of Ellington, Frank Sinatra and other artists from his youth. “His mood changed when the music came on.”
At about the time he was getting ready to marry Jacqueline, Avant was growing more vocal about racial matters. A 1967 article in The Pittsburgh Courier quoted a strongly worded letter he had written to the management of WLIB, a radio station in New York that was aimed at a Black audience but at the time was White owned.
“Is your station managed by Negroes,” he wrote, “and I am not referring to Negro disc jockeys?”
“I think radio stations whose programs are supposed to appeal to the socalled Negro market,” he added, “should at least be staffed by Negro personnel.”
He was also becoming active politically. He supported
the early campaigns of Andrew Young, who made an unsuccessful run for a Georgia congressional seat in 1970 and a successful one two years later. It was Young who connected Avant to Aaron when he was about to break Babe Ruth’s career home run record in 1974.
“Clarence called me up and said, ‘Andy, do you know Hank Aaron?’ ” Young recalled in the documentary, which was directed by Reginald Hudlin. “I said, ‘Yeah, he lives around the corner.’ He said, ‘If he’s about to break Babe Ruth’s record, he’s supposed to make some money.’ ”
Avant wanted to help Aaron secure some endorsement deals.
It was fraught territory — Aaron was receiving death threats over the prospect that he would break a hallowed record set by a White player. Avant, though, according
to the documentary, marched into the office of the president of Coca-Cola and told him, in unprintably blunt language, that Black people drink Coke.
Avant’s guidance helped Aaron secure a deal from Coke and otherwise market himself, which fueled his later charitable endeavors.
“Henry Aaron would not be Henry Aaron if it were not for Clarence Avant,” Aaron, who died in 2021, said in the film.
Avant also helped other athletes, including Brown as he transitioned from football into acting in the 1960s. Interviewed for the documentary, Brown, one of the biggest Black stars of the 1960s and ’70s, had a hard time pinning down what Avant did — not an uncommon thing among those who knew and worked with Avant.
“You have this guy called
Clarence Avant that everybody’s talking about, but nobody seems to understand just what his official title was,” Brown, who died in May, said, recalling their early meetings. “I couldn’t tell you now exactly what he — was he an agent, a manager, a lawyer? — what he was.”
Avant had rocky times in the mid-1970s, when the Sussex label went bankrupt and KAGB-FM, a radio station he had bought, floundered. But, he said, friends were always his most important asset, and some of them helped him get back on his feet.
In addition to his daughter, who was a producer of “The Black Godfather,” Avant is survived by a son, Alexander, and a sister, Anne Woods.
The Avant home was always abuzz with A-list visitors. Nicole Avant recalled a day, when she was 12, that she and a friend got into trouble at school. The friend’s mother, driving Nicole home, was fuming — until she saw Harry Belafonte walking out of the Avants’ house.
“Is that Harry Belafonte?” the woman asked her.
“I said, ‘Yeah, how do you know Harry Belafonte?” — not realizing he was anyone other than a friend who would come around to visit her parents from time to time.
Nicole Avant, who served as ambassador to the Bahamas during the Obama administration, said that Belafonte and others who would gather at the Avant home were serious about breaking down racial barriers, in the entertainment world and in society in general.
“They knew that they were on a mission,” she said.