French say 'merci beaucoup' to legendary music producer

‘I have long believed that if you live long enough, and stay out of jail, you never know what might happen,’ says the man who brought jazz greats to stardom.

By Megan James

George Avakian can still rattle off the street address in Paris where he sent away for the world’s only jazz discography in the 1930s. Reflecting on his career as a record producer, the 89-year-old insists his remarkable success — he brought international stardom to Miles Davis, Dave Brubeck, Sonny Rollins, Erroll Garner and Mahalia Jackson, among many others — was simply a matter of being in the right place at the right time.

“I have long believed that if you live long enough, and stay out of jail, you never know what might happen,” he said.

Late last month the French government recognized the Riverdalian’s devotion to researching, preserving and disseminating French music by naming him a Commander in the Order of Arts and Letters, an honor given to non-French citizens who have contributed to the recognition of French culture around the world.3

Mr. Avakian promoted Juliette Greco, Jacqueline Francois, Georges Brassens and Edith Piaf

He is not short on lifetime achievement honors. His work as a producer earned him a knighthood in the Knights of Malta; the Order of Lenin; Japan’s “His Master’s Voice” award; Europe’s most prestigious jazz award, the Django d’Or; and the Humanitarian Award of the International Association for Jazz Education.

Then again, he got off to an early start.

He produced his first album — and the world’s first-ever jazz album — as a student at Yale University in 1939. But it was at Horace Mann that he really got rolling. President of the senior class and editor of the school newspaper, the young Mr. Avakian had dreams of becoming a journalist or an English teacher.

At 17, he finagled an interview with Benny Goodman, the King of Swing, when he discovered the mother of one of his classmates knew the owner of the Hotel Pennsylvania, where Mr. Goodman was playing.

A giddy Mr. Avakian and his friend, Charlie, met the musician at the hotel.

“[Mr. Goodman] liked it so much that he said, ‘Any time George and Charlie come, get them a good seat at the table.’” The star later invited the teenagers to sit in on his rehearsals after hours on Saturday nights.

Years later, Mr. Avakian became Mr. Goodman’s producer at Columbia Records.

One afternoon between recording sessions, while they listened to playbacks together, he noticed Mr. Goodman was particularly grumpy.

When Mr. Avakian asked if he was feeling alright, the musician answered, coyly, “Yeah, it’s just that I had another interview this morning and the same g— damn stuff went on — ‘Where do you buy your neckties, Mr. Goodman? What’s your favorite color?’ Not one question about music.”

The last time that happened, Mr. Goodman said, it was some high school kid years ago.

That night Mr. Avakian dug up the old Horace Mann article and brought it to the studio the next day. He didn’t say anything, just placed it on the switchboard where Mr. Goodman would see it.

When the picture caught his eye, Mr. Goodman stood up.

“‘So,’ — he had a special voice for things like that — ‘It was you!’” Mr. Avakian said, chuckling. “He walked out without another word.”

Later, when Mr. Goodman died, his daughter told Mr. Avakian she found a copy of the article in the top drawer of his bureau.

Elementary, Watson

Born in Russia, Mr. Avakian was a young boy when he came to New York with his family. He learned English listening to other children in a classroom at the Hunter College Model School.

He fell in love with the language at his local public library, where he found a slim volume containing a single short story by Arthur Conan Doyle about a man named Sherlock Holmes.

Mr. Avakian was never a musician, but listened to the radio religiously as a child. He was captivated by the unusual sounds of swing.

Inspired by his interview with Benny Goodman, he sought out Lester Koenig, the brother of another Horace Mann friend who had an extensive collection of swing records. When asked what he thought of Louis Armstrong, Mr. Avakian told Lester, “Well, he sings kind of funny, but he plays a master trumpet.”

Lester invited Mr. Avakian to the family home for Thanksgiving weekend; they would listen to Mr. Armstrong’s early 1920s recordings. “I’m going to knock his ears off,” he said.

And so he did.

Stunned, Mr. Avakian asked where he could get his hands on the records, but soon discovered he couldn’t; they were all out of print. Incredulous, he wrote a letter to the company that owned the recordings.

“That was the first of a series of letters I wrote demanding, as only a school kid can do, ‘You’ve got to put these out! They’re great! Wonderful! Historic! The public deserves to hear them!’”

He got no reply — until 1939, when he finally persuaded another company, Decca Records, to let him drop in during his school vacation and put together a jazz album, “Chicago Jazz,” complete with the first series of jazz annotations.

All that jazz

There wasn’t much about jazz he could learn from books — there were none — so Mr. Avakian contacted two Frenchmen who had put together the world’s first jazz discographies and became a kind of musical detective, rooting through old recordings to compile albums that would best communicate jazz to the listeners.

Interrupted by World War II — Mr. Avakian served in the Philippines while the production of records was curtailed and existing records were melted down for their shellac — his career swiftly resumed at Columbia Records, where his commitment to putting out full albums shifted the industry’s focus on the single record and paved the way for modern CDs.

In 1958 he helped start Warner Bros. Records and in 1960 became Director of Popular Artists & Repertoire at RCA, before turning to independent production.

But he never forgot what he was in it for.

“I had so many friends among the musicians,” he said. “Almost every one of them was a decent person. They might have had bits of temper — Goodman was noted for that — but they were sincere and strong about the music.”

Poring over an old discography at his home the other day, he stopped at the pages listing Louis Armstrong’s recordings. It was all numbers and symbols to the untrained eye, but it was music to Mr. Avakian’s.

“Armstrong was the greatest of them all,” he said. “What a human being.”