“To me, the artist is the person who should be in the foreground,” Mr. Ostin stated in 1994.
Still, the trade acknowledged the importance of his work. He was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2003, and the Recording Academy honored him with a President’s Merit Award in 2014 and a Trustees Award in 2017.
He was born Morris Meyer Ostrofsky on March 27, 1927, in Brooklyn to immigrant dad and mom who had come to the United States from Russia throughout the Communist revolution of 1917. When he was 13, he moved along with his dad and mom and his brother, Gerald, to Los Angeles, the place the household ran a produce market.
He was a music fan from an early age, however his introduction to the music enterprise got here by happenstance. Living subsequent to his household was the brother of Norman Granz, who owned the jazz label Clef Records and promoted live shows within the Nineteen Forties and ’50s. During his school years at the University of California, Los Angeles, the place he majored in economics, Mr. Ostin wound up serving to Mr. Granz by promoting applications for his live shows. He married Evelyn Bardavid in 1948.
Earning a bachelor’s diploma with honors, Mr. Ostin enrolled in U.C.L.A.’s regulation faculty however dropped out in 1954 to help his spouse and their younger son. A job alternative additionally took place by Mr. Granz, who employed him to be the controller for Clef at a time when the label’s roster included such vital jazz artists as Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald and Charlie Parker.
Clef finally modified its title to Verve; about the identical time, Mr. Ostin modified his title as properly.
Toward the top of the Fifties, Frank Sinatra tried to purchase the label, impressed by its artist-friendly method. But he misplaced out to MGM Records, a disappointment that led him to type his personal firm, Reprise, in 1960. He named Mr. Ostin govt vice chairman, with the mission to mannequin the brand new firm on Verve.
