Bill Grauer

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William "Bill" Grauer Jr. (* 1922 - December 15, 1963 in New York City , New York ) was an American jazz producer. He founded Keepnews Riverside Records with Orrin .

Grauer studied at Columbia University and was - himself a record collector - from 1948 owner of the magazine " The Record Changer ". With his friend and former fellow student Orrin Keepnews , the jazz fan founded Riverside Records in New York in 1953, which was initially called Bill Grauer Productions and started as a reissue label, but became one of the most important labels in modern jazz in the 1950s (starting with Randy Weston ) . Before that, in 1952, both of them had released new classical jazz recordings from their catalog for RCA Victor (on their label "X") in order to counteract the wave of illegal releases that was rampant at the time. In 1956 they continued the reissues with the "Riverside History of Classic Jazz" (using smaller labels like Gennett and Paramount, whose rights they had acquired).

You published at Riverside u. a. Albums by Cannonball Adderley , Thelonious Monk , Bill Evans , Art Blakey , George Russell , Sonny Rollins , Milt Jackson and Wes Montgomery . Grauer was the commercial director, Keepnews the artistic one. After Grauer died unexpectedly of a heart attack in 1963, Riverside Records came to an end in 1964 - they had to declare themselves bankrupt. The catalog was taken over by Fantasy (and from 2004 by Concord).

In 1956 he published the book A Pictorial History of Jazz with Keepnews .

His brother Ben Grauer was a well-known radio host on NBC.

Books

  • Orrin Keepnews, Bill Grauer: A pictorial history of jazz: people and places from New Orleans to the Sixties . Hale Publishing, 1956, ISBN 0-517-00009-1 .

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ The Bootleggers did not shy away from publishing black copies by contemporary musicians, but this was slowed down by a lawsuit by Louis Armstrong . See: John S. Wilson: GREATS OF CLASSIC JAZZ IGNITE A REISSUE - Review ( English ) NYTimes.com. January 18, 1987. Retrieved July 6, 2010: "The flow of bootleg records dwindled drastically when Louis Armstrong and Columbia Records sued a pirate for putting out current best-selling Armstrong disks."
  2. ↑ the big labels were reluctant to pass on rights to their recordings
personal data
SURNAME Grauer, Bill
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Grauer, William Jr.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American jazz producer
DATE OF BIRTH 1922
DATE OF DEATH December 15, 1963
Place of death New York City , New York