Granz had become a jazz fan after hearing the Coleman Hawkins recording of Body and Soul and believed that jazz could be used as a means of breaking down racial segregation, and he was quite open in his objectives: to make money, to combat racial prejudice and to present good jazz.
Many jazz clubs at the time played to segregated audiences, but when Granz, an ex-marine standing at more than 6ft tall who kept himself in fine physical shape (he was a talented tennis player), began promoting his own small-scale concerts, he demanded integrated audiences and good rates of pay for the musicians.
In 1944 he took the ambitious step of arranging a promotion at the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Borrowing money to record the show, a novel idea of presenting the spontaneity of a “jam session” for mass audiences, the event turned out to be a sellout and the concept of “Jazz at the Philharmonic” (JATP) was born. More monthly concerts followed, which were in turn recorded, and then the show went out on the road. By 1946, the now annual JATP tour included some of the biggest names in jazz, including Charlie Parker, Coleman Hawkins, Buddy Rich, Lester Young and Billie Holiday.
At the time both Parker and Holiday were heroin addicts (and Holiday also an alcoholic), but when asked if he encountered behavioural problems from them he replied, simply, “No, they were fine, always very polite, but you don’t understand – I worked for years with Buddy Rich”. It was an unexpected response – the virtuoso drummer Rich was no addict, but he had a mercurial temper and a razor-sharp wit (he once did a stint as a standup comic) and had clearly got under the skin of Granz, who was not one to easily forgive a slight.
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