Step on your toes?_其他_趣味英语-查字典英语网

Step on your toes?

In 1955 Granz formed Verve Records to consolidate his recording activities under one label and promote one artist in particular – Ella Fitzgerald. The label got off to a flying start with Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Songbook, one of the best-selling albums of 1956, and quickly became one of the best-known labels for both jazz and popular music. Its history has just been documented by Richard Havers in the impressive Verve: The Sound of America, which includes more than 1,000 photos – many never previously published. Under Granz’s stewardship Fitzgerald became one of the greatest singers of the 20th century, but she was also the bargaining chip he used to break down racial segregation at some of the biggest venues in the States – “You want Ella? It’s integrated audiences or no deal!”

A self-made man, Granz emerged in the 1950s as a figure about whom no one in the jazz world was neutral. Clearly he had to step on a few toes, but while Oscar Peterson, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald and saxophonist Benny Carter revered him, others loathed him. The singer Mel Tormé, who recorded for Granz several times and made at least one classic under his direction, Mel Tormé Swings Shubert Alley, didn’t have a good word to say about him, considering him an “ignoramus”.

Yet it was thanks to Granz that jazz was beginning to shed its déclassé image and its stars were becoming recognised as true artists. What Granz had discovered was a reciprocity between box office and record sales that no one had imagined was possible – the albums leveraged the concerts and the concerts generated more live records and within a few years JATP was an American phenomenon and jazz a concert-hall attraction. Contrary to music-biz apocryphal stories, Granz did not rip off his musicians, black or white. The drummer Gene Krupa told jazz magazine Down Beat that in a two-week tour with Granz he earned the equivalent of playing two months in a jazz club, while the pianist Oscar Peterson said, “I think the predominant factor in his image is his honesty.”