Creed Taylor, the venerated jazz producer who founded Impulse! Records and CTI, has died. The Verve Label Group confirmed the news. He was 93.
Taylor’s career spanned over five decades, during which he worked on over 300 albums, including recordings by Charles Mingus, Herbie Mann, Stan Getz and João Gilberto, Ray Charles, John Coltrane, and countless others. He frequently encouraged jazz musicians to work with artists and material outside their respective repertoires, thereby broadening their commercial appeal.
Taylor was born in Lynchburg, Virginia in 1929. As a child, he became enamored of big band jazz and tuned his radio to live broadcasts from New York’s famed jazz club Birdland. In high school, Taylor took up trumpet and played in local jazz outfits. He kept at the instrument throughout his Duke University years when he performed in a group called the Five Dukes while studying psychology.
After serving as a marine in the Korean War, Taylor settled in New York where he worked as a producer and landed a job as head of A&R for Bethlehem Records. Taylor’s Bethlehem stint found him working with Charles Mingus and Herbie Mann, among others.
Taylor left Bethlehem in 1956, moving to ABC-Paramount, where he was a prolific in-house producer. He founded the subsidiary label Impulse! shortly after, signing John Coltrane to the label in 1960. Just months after working with Ray Charles on the Impulse! album Genius + Soul = Jazz, Taylor left ABC-Paramount to take a job at Verve. There, he worked with stars including Bill Evans, Wes Montgomery, and others.
His most significant contribution during his time at Verve was introducing the United States to bossa nova music. He was the producer behind Stan Getz and João Gilberto’s “The Girl From Ipanema,” plus many other records by Getz, Charlie Byrd, Buddy Rich, Lee Konitz, and more. Taylor left Verve and launched his own label CTI (Creed Taylor Incorporated) in 1967, followed by sister label Kudu, which focused on soul jazz.
CTI struggled throughout the ’70s, and, after filing for bankruptcy in 1978, Taylor sold the catalog to Columbia. In 2009, Taylor assembled a group called the CTI All-Stars Band that toured throughout Europe and oversaw a live album recorded during the trek.
