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Interviews
Creed Taylor, Incorporated: The AAJ Interview, Part 1-3
Chris M. Slawecki
Chris M. Slawecki has been published in music industry and related publications for more than thirty years and has served AllAboutJazz.com as Senior Editor since 1997.
There was another guy there, Larry Newton, who was the sales manager. He had a R&B background, he loved black pop music or whatever it was called at that point. I put this idea together to do Gil Evans' Out of the Cool, Great Kai and J.J. , Oliver Nelson Blues & the Abstract Truth...oh! and Ray Charles' Genius + Soul = Jazz. Those would be the first, introductory releases from Impulse! records. Larry and Harry both thought it was great so they went to Sam Clarke who was the President of ABC-Paramount and he said, "Great, let's do it."
I said, "Look, we're not going to have single-pocket LPs. It's going to be gatefold and it's going to be either art or photographs by high-priced photographers." That's the way it turned out. Actually, Larry Newton had just made the deal with Ray Charles' manager to have Ray come over to ABC and record after having been on Atlantic for so many years. Ray did this and he was delighted to do it. It was the Basie band backing Ray Charles with Quincy Jones' arrangements: "Genius plus Soul equals Jazz," that was my title. We had that and from that we had a single to give the record leverage, "One Mint Julep." So that was going and then on the serious jazz ensemble side we had Gil Evans' Out of the Cool and the Oliver Nelson and the Great Kai and J.J.. Bill Evans was in the rhythm section for Great Kai and J.J.. He was on the Oliver Nelson also.
Continue: Part 2
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Photo Credit
Freddy Warren (in studio)
