Biography
Gene Norman (Eugene Nabatoff, January 30, 1922 - November 2, 2015) was an American jazz impresario, disc jockey and label president.
Born Eugene Nabatoff in Brooklyn, New York and a graduate of the University of Wisconsin at 18, Gene began his radio career in San Francisco, before relocating to Los Angeles in the 1940s.
A jazz buff, Gene Norman soon became Los Angeles’ leading disc jockey via stints on various local stations, including KLAC. Turning impresario, he initiated a series of jazz concerts throughout the Southland across two decades, including dates featuring Benny Goodman, Peggy Lee and Erroll Garner. His Blues Jubilee programs at the Shrine Auditorium in the early 1950s attracted some of the first integrated audiences in the United States.
Norman also introduced the Snader Telescriptions, a prototype MTV-styled concept documenting recording personalities of the era, on NBC-TV. He hosted the first ever televised jazz concert on KTLA, as well as ‘The Gene Norman Show’ and ‘Campus Club’ on KHJ.
While a DJ at KFWB, Norman organized jazz concerts at venues like the Shrine, the Pasadena Civic Auditorium, and the Hollywood Bowl with artists like Benny Goodman, Dizzy Gillespie and Shorty Rogers under the aegis of ‘Gene Norman Presents.’ These shows were recorded and released on Decca, Capitol and Modern Records, presaging Norman’s later career as a record label owner.
In 1954, Gene opened the Crescendo nightclub on the Sunset Strip which featured an adjunctal venue, the Interlude, upstairs. There he presented virtually every record and cabaret star of the era, including Ella Fitzgerald, Bob Newhart, Johnny Mathis, Stan Kenton, Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass, Lenny Bruce, Don Rickles, Rusty Warren, Mort Sahl, Woody Allen and Louis Armstrong.
Norman continued to put on big concerts, and produced a series of live albums and studio recordings based around his promotions. His own record imprint, GNP Crescendo, was therefore a natural next step, and indeed the label became the focus of the rest of his life. He served as one of the directors of the RIAA, and was elected into the Hall of Fame of the American Association of Independent Music in 1991.
Norman’s jazz recordings formed the base of what was to evolve into a vast and varied catalog, including acts such as The Seeds, Joe & Eddie, Queen Ida (who garnered a Grammy for the label), Wrecking Crew regular Billy Strange, Bing Crosby, Gary Richrath and many original film and television soundtracks. The label operated out of offices on the Sunset Strip for more than five decades, moving to less hectic quarters in later years.
Gene Norman passed away peacefully at his home in Hollywood, California on November 2nd 2015. He was 93. Up until his death, Norman remained a force in the label’s direction, consulting with musician/producer/director son Neil, to whom his legacy now passes.
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Gene Norman, a music promoter, nightclub owner and record producer who helped bring some of the most renowned jazz artists of midcentury to the West Coast and, through his independent record label, to the world, died on November 2 at his home in Los Angeles. He was 93.
His son, Neil, confirmed the death.
Mr. Norman, who began his professional life as a disc jockey and was for more than half a century an influential presence on the American jazz scene, was perhaps best known for founding the label GNP Crescendo, begun in 1954 and still in business. (Its initials stand for “Gene Norman Presents”; Crescendo was the name of the nightclub Mr. Norman opened in Los Angeles the same year.)
Artists recorded by GNP over the years include Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton, Max Roach, George Shearing and Art Tatum, as well as the bluesmen Jack Dupree and Memphis Slim; the garage-rock band the Seeds; Bing Crosby, Dick Dale and Tito Puente; the Creole accordionist Queen Ida, who won a Grammy Award for her 1982 recording on the label, “Queen Ida and the Bon Temps Zydeco Band on Tour”; and even Orson Welles, who released a spoken-word album, “I Know What It Is to Be Young (But You Don’t Know What It Is to Be Old).”
More recently, GNP has also been known for releasing television and motion picture soundtracks, with a particular emphasis on science fiction.
Mr. Norman was born Eugene Nabatoff in Brooklyn on Jan. 30, 1922, and as a youth became enthralled by visits to New York’s jazz clubs. After studying at the University of Michigan, he graduated at 18 from the University of Wisconsin.
Changing his surname at the start of his broadcasting career, he worked as a disc jockey in San Francisco before moving to Los Angeles in the 1940s.
There he plied his trade at a series of radio stations, among them KLAC and KFWB, giving particular airplay to jazz. He began producing live concerts on local stages — including those of the Shrine Auditorium and the Hollywood Bowl — featuring artists like Benny Goodman, Erroll Garner and Peggy Lee. He also hosted jazz programs on local television.
At the Crescendo, which he opened on the Sunset Strip, Mr. Norman presented musicians including Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Johnny Mathis and Herb Alpert. He also booked some of the era’s foremost comedians, among them Lenny Bruce, Shelley Berman, Mort Sahl, Bob Newhart, Don Rickles and Woody Allen. Mr. Norman sold the club in the 1960s.
Mr. Norman’s wife, June Bright, a fashion model and actress, died in 1975. Besides his son, Neil, the current president of GNP Crescendo, his survivors include a granddaughter and two great-grandchildren.
As passionate as Mr. Norman was about jazz, he had a good ear for other genres, as his catalog makes plain. Sometimes he had a good ear in spite of himself, as when he signed an easy listening-country-polka ensemble called the Mom and Dads on the strength of the fact that they had sold tens of thousands of records for a Canadian label.
“They were this group from Spokane, Wash., who played very, very square versions of standards,” Neil Norman told Variety last year. “They made Lawrence Welk look like Pink Floyd.”
He continued: “My father took them on without even hearing them. When he finally listened to their records, he said, ‘Oh my God, what have I done?’ But they sold millions for us.”
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# There is also a Florida, USA, rockabilly musician named Gene Norman.
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