Steve Backer

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Steve Backer (born June 3, 1937 in Brooklyn , New York , † April 10, 2014 in Englewood , New Jersey ) was an American A&R manager and music producer in the field of jazz .

Live and act

Backer worked as a teenager in a Long Island nightclub and began his career in the music industry in the late 1960s, advertising radio for MGM Records / Verve Records and Elektra Records , where he ran the Butterfield Blues Band . From 1972 he worked for ABC / Impulse as Promotion Director and then General Manager . During this time he was instrumental in the revival of the Impulse label with productions by Dewey Redman (Eye of Behearer) , Keith Jarrett , Gato Barbieri ( Chapter One: Latin America 1973), John Klemmer and Pharoah Sanders , among others . Around 1975 he switched to Arista , where he worked for the productions a. a. by Paul Bley , Stanley Cowell , Hampton Hawes , Julius Hemphill , Charles Bobo Shaw and Archie Shepp and was responsible for republishing the Savoy catalog and the Novus sub-label he founded. At Novus he oversaw productions by jazz avant-garde artists such as Muhal Richard Abrams , Anthony Braxton , Steve Lacy , Cecil Taylor and the Air formation . After his departure from Arista in 1980, Backer worked for Windham Hill Records from 1981-86 , whose sub-label Magenta he founded. The short-lived label released productions by Anthony Braxton (Seven Standards 1985) , Mitchel Forman and Ben Sidran in 1985/86 .

In 1986 Backer moved to the major label RCA Records , which Novus had taken over. At RCA he produced recordings of Night Ark , Mulgrew Miller , John Pizzarelli , Danilo Pérez , Marcus Roberts , Roy Hargrove and Steve Coleman . At the end of the 1990s he worked both in reissue production (such as Tijuana Moods by Charles Mingus , The Jazz Workshop ( George Russell ) or … And His Mother Called Him Bill by Duke Ellington ) and in supervising the productions of younger musicians such as Jason Lindner , Omer Avital and Greg Tardy . He also participated in the republication of recordings by Alice Coltrane , Sam Rivers and Marion Brown . Backer died in April 2014 of complications from pneumonia .

literature

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Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Obituary in JazzTimes
personal data
SURNAME Backer, Steve
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American music producer
DATE OF BIRTH June 3, 1937
PLACE OF BIRTH Brooklyn , New York , USA
DATE OF DEATH April 10, 2014
Place of death Englewood , New Jersey , USA