Clarence Avant, ‘Black Godfather’ of leisure, and benefactor of athletes and politicians, dies

By Associated Press

NEW YORK: Clarence Avant, the considered supervisor, entrepreneur, facilitator and adviser who helped launch or information the careers of Quincy Jones, Bill Withers and plenty of others and got here to be often known as the “Black Godfather” of music and past, has died. He was 92.

Avant, inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2021, died Sunday at his residence in Los Angeles, in line with a household assertion launched Monday.

Avant’s achievements have been each public and behind the scenes, as a reputation within the credit, or a reputation behind the names. Born in a segregated hospital in North Carolina, he grew to become a person of lasting and wide-ranging affect, partially by minding two items of recommendation from an early mentor, the music supervisor Joe Glaser: Never let on how a lot you recognize, and ask for as a lot cash as doable, “without stuttering.”

Sometimes known as “The Godfather of Black Music,” he broke in as a supervisor within the Nineteen Fifties, with such shoppers as singers Sarah Vaughan and Little Willie John and composer Lalo Schifrin, who wrote the theme to “Mission: Impossible.” In the Nineteen Seventies he was an early patron of Black-owned radio stations and, within the Nineteen Nineties, headed Motown after founder Berry Gordy Jr. bought the corporate.

He additionally began such labels as Sussex (a hybrid of two Avant passions — success and intercourse) and Tabu, with artists together with Withers, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, the S.O.S Band and an obscure singer-songwriter, Sixto Rodriquez, who many years later grew to become well-known by the Oscar-winning documentary “Searching for Sugarman.” (Rodriquez died final week).

Other work befell extra quietly. Avant brokered the sale of Stax Records to Gulf and Western in 1968, after being recruited by Stax govt Al Bell as a bridge between the leisure and enterprise industries. He raised cash for Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, helped Michael Jackson set up his first solo tour and suggested Narada Michael Walden, L.A. Reid and Babyface and different youthful admirers.

“Everyone in this business has been by Clarence’s desk, if they’re smart,” Quincy Jones preferred to say of him.

“Clarence leaves behind a loving family and a sea of friends and associates that have changed the world and will continue to change the world for generations to come. The joy of his legacy eases the sorrow of our loss,” stated the assertion, which was launched by Avant’s son Alex, daughter Nicole and her husband, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos.

Avant’s affect prolonged to sports activities. He helped working again Jim Brown transition from soccer to appearing and produced a primetime tv particular for Muhammad Ali. When baseball nice Henry Aaron was on the verge of surpassing Babe Ruth as the sport’s residence run champion, in 1974, Avant made certain that Aaron acquired the form of profitable business offers typically elusive for Black athletes, beginning with a private demand to the president of Coca-Cola.

Aaron would later inform The Undefeated that the whole lot he had develop into was “because of Clarence Avant.”

Avant met Jacqueline Gray, a mannequin on the time, at an Ebony Fashion Fair in mid-Sixties and married her in 1967. They had two youngsters: Music producer-manager Alexander Devore and Nicole Avant, the previous U.S. ambassador to the Bahamas and, together with Sarandos, a significant fundraiser for Obama. Besides his Rock Hall induction, his honors included two honorary Grammys, an NAACP Image Award and a BET entrepreneur award.

In 2021, Jacqueline Avant was murdered of their Beverly Hills residence, her loss of life mourned by Bill Clinton and Magic Johnson amongst others. Nicole Avant would credit score her mom, who grew to become a distinguished philanthropist, with bringing to Clarence Avant and different relations “the love and passion and importance of the arts and culture and entertainment.”

Born in 1931, Clarence Avant spent his early years in Greensboro, North Carolina, considered one of eight youngsters raised by a single mom, and he dropped out of highschool to maneuver north. A buddy from North Carolina helped him discover work managing a lounge in Newark, New Jersey, and he quickly bought to know Glaser, whose shoppers ranged from Louis Armstrong to Barbra Streisand, to not point out Al Capone. Through Glaser, Avant discovered himself in locations the place Black individuals not often had been permitted.

“Mr. Glaser would have me go with him to these dog shows,” Avant informed Variety in 2016. “And you’ve got to imagine I was the only Black person at the goddamn dog show. He also had these 16 seats behind the visiting dugout at Yankee Stadium, and whenever he’d take me I would try to walk to the back row, and he’d grab me and say, ‘Goddamn it, sit your ass up here with me.’”

Avant grew to become particularly near Jones, their bond fashioned by a missed report deal. It was the early Sixties, and Jones was a vp at Mercury Records, one of many business’s few Black executives. Avant was representing jazz musician Jimmy Smith and had heard that Mercury just lately signed Dizzy Gillespie for $100,000. For Smith, Avant aimed a lot increased, nearer to half 1,000,000.

“Are you smoking Kool-Aid?” Jones would bear in mind saying to Avant, who then negotiated with Verve Records.

“He went and got the deal,” Jones, whose collaborations with Avant would come with the TV sequence “Heart and Soul” and the characteristic movie “Stalingrad,” informed Billboard in 2006. “I respected him for that.”

As he rose within the leisure business, Avant grew to become extra energetic politically. He was an early supporter of Tom Bradley, the primary Black mayor of Los Angeles, and served as govt producer of “Save the Children,” a 1973 documentary a couple of live performance fundraiser for the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s “Operation PUSH.” Three years earlier, when he discovered that the civil rights chief Andrew Young was working for Congress, in Georgia, he gave him a name.

“He said, ‘In Georgia, you’re running for Congress?’” Young later informed CNN. “He said, ‘Well, if you’re crazy enough to run, I’m crazy enough to help you.’”

Avant, whom Young had by no means met, supplied to herald Isaac Hayes and different entertainers for a profit and organize for it to be held on the baseball stadium in Atlanta.

Young had forgotten about their dialog when, a month later, indicators selling the present appeared round city.

“We had about 30,000 people in the pouring down rain,” Young stated. “And he never sent us a bill.”

NEW YORK: Clarence Avant, the considered supervisor, entrepreneur, facilitator and adviser who helped launch or information the careers of Quincy Jones, Bill Withers and plenty of others and got here to be often known as the “Black Godfather” of music and past, has died. He was 92.

Avant, inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2021, died Sunday at his residence in Los Angeles, in line with a household assertion launched Monday.

Avant’s achievements have been each public and behind the scenes, as a reputation within the credit, or a reputation behind the names. Born in a segregated hospital in North Carolina, he grew to become a person of lasting and wide-ranging affect, partially by minding two items of recommendation from an early mentor, the music supervisor Joe Glaser: Never let on how a lot you recognize, and ask for as a lot cash as doable, “without stuttering.”googletag.cmd.push(operate() googletag.show(‘div-gpt-ad-8052921-2’); );

Sometimes known as “The Godfather of Black Music,” he broke in as a supervisor within the Nineteen Fifties, with such shoppers as singers Sarah Vaughan and Little Willie John and composer Lalo Schifrin, who wrote the theme to “Mission: Impossible.” In the Nineteen Seventies he was an early patron of Black-owned radio stations and, within the Nineteen Nineties, headed Motown after founder Berry Gordy Jr. bought the corporate.

He additionally began such labels as Sussex (a hybrid of two Avant passions — success and intercourse) and Tabu, with artists together with Withers, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, the S.O.S Band and an obscure singer-songwriter, Sixto Rodriquez, who many years later grew to become well-known by the Oscar-winning documentary “Searching for Sugarman.” (Rodriquez died final week).

Other work befell extra quietly. Avant brokered the sale of Stax Records to Gulf and Western in 1968, after being recruited by Stax govt Al Bell as a bridge between the leisure and enterprise industries. He raised cash for Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, helped Michael Jackson set up his first solo tour and suggested Narada Michael Walden, L.A. Reid and Babyface and different youthful admirers.

“Everyone in this business has been by Clarence’s desk, if they’re smart,” Quincy Jones preferred to say of him.

“Clarence leaves behind a loving family and a sea of friends and associates that have changed the world and will continue to change the world for generations to come. The joy of his legacy eases the sorrow of our loss,” stated the assertion, which was launched by Avant’s son Alex, daughter Nicole and her husband, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos.

Avant’s affect prolonged to sports activities. He helped working again Jim Brown transition from soccer to appearing and produced a primetime tv particular for Muhammad Ali. When baseball nice Henry Aaron was on the verge of surpassing Babe Ruth as the sport’s residence run champion, in 1974, Avant made certain that Aaron acquired the form of profitable business offers typically elusive for Black athletes, beginning with a private demand to the president of Coca-Cola.

Aaron would later inform The Undefeated that the whole lot he had develop into was “because of Clarence Avant.”

Avant met Jacqueline Gray, a mannequin on the time, at an Ebony Fashion Fair in mid-Sixties and married her in 1967. They had two youngsters: Music producer-manager Alexander Devore and Nicole Avant, the previous U.S. ambassador to the Bahamas and, together with Sarandos, a significant fundraiser for Obama. Besides his Rock Hall induction, his honors included two honorary Grammys, an NAACP Image Award and a BET entrepreneur award.

In 2021, Jacqueline Avant was murdered of their Beverly Hills residence, her loss of life mourned by Bill Clinton and Magic Johnson amongst others. Nicole Avant would credit score her mom, who grew to become a distinguished philanthropist, with bringing to Clarence Avant and different relations “the love and passion and importance of the arts and culture and entertainment.”

Born in 1931, Clarence Avant spent his early years in Greensboro, North Carolina, considered one of eight youngsters raised by a single mom, and he dropped out of highschool to maneuver north. A buddy from North Carolina helped him discover work managing a lounge in Newark, New Jersey, and he quickly bought to know Glaser, whose shoppers ranged from Louis Armstrong to Barbra Streisand, to not point out Al Capone. Through Glaser, Avant discovered himself in locations the place Black individuals not often had been permitted.

“Mr. Glaser would have me go with him to these dog shows,” Avant informed Variety in 2016. “And you’ve got to imagine I was the only Black person at the goddamn dog show. He also had these 16 seats behind the visiting dugout at Yankee Stadium, and whenever he’d take me I would try to walk to the back row, and he’d grab me and say, ‘Goddamn it, sit your ass up here with me.’”

Avant grew to become particularly near Jones, their bond fashioned by a missed report deal. It was the early Sixties, and Jones was a vp at Mercury Records, one of many business’s few Black executives. Avant was representing jazz musician Jimmy Smith and had heard that Mercury just lately signed Dizzy Gillespie for $100,000. For Smith, Avant aimed a lot increased, nearer to half 1,000,000.

“Are you smoking Kool-Aid?” Jones would bear in mind saying to Avant, who then negotiated with Verve Records.

“He went and got the deal,” Jones, whose collaborations with Avant would come with the TV sequence “Heart and Soul” and the characteristic movie “Stalingrad,” informed Billboard in 2006. “I respected him for that.”

As he rose within the leisure business, Avant grew to become extra energetic politically. He was an early supporter of Tom Bradley, the primary Black mayor of Los Angeles, and served as govt producer of “Save the Children,” a 1973 documentary a couple of live performance fundraiser for the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s “Operation PUSH.” Three years earlier, when he discovered that the civil rights chief Andrew Young was working for Congress, in Georgia, he gave him a name.

“He said, ‘In Georgia, you’re running for Congress?’” Young later informed CNN. “He said, ‘Well, if you’re crazy enough to run, I’m crazy enough to help you.’”

Avant, whom Young had by no means met, supplied to herald Isaac Hayes and different entertainers for a profit and organize for it to be held on the baseball stadium in Atlanta.

Young had forgotten about their dialog when, a month later, indicators selling the present appeared round city.

“We had about 30,000 people in the pouring down rain,” Young stated. “And he never sent us a bill.”