Creed Taylor Produced

Today, May 13th, marks what would have been Creed Taylor’s 96th birthday. While I continue to organize and catalog my archive, I frequently come across articles I think are worth sharing. I’ve used and quoted Mary Campbell before. She is known as a music reporter for the Associated Press. Campbell had transferred to the AP headquarters in New York in 1960. It was from there she would cover so much important music news.

By 1974, Creed Taylor International was in full flight. Success followed success, records, awards, and recognition found their way to CTI, the artists, and Creed Taylor’s productions. Fifty-one years ago in May, Mary Campbell and Creed Taylor sat down to talk about that success.

What follows is the full interview filed by Campbell. However, how much of it you got to read depends on what newspapers you had access to. Also, the headline for the story was different, depending on the space available and on which page the article appeared.

If you were in Lewiston (Maine), the May 23rd article was headlined on Page 7 as “Record Studio Finds Jazz Is Paying Off” with the article appearing between an advert for Kings Self-Service Dept. Stores and a picture of the UMF Sorority Pledges; meanwhile, over in Washington State, the article didn’t appear until June 5th in The Olympian, and was run with the headline “Tremendous News! Rock is Cracking” on page 49 – it sat uncomfortably next to another Associated Press article “Queenly Alexis Smith Returns to Screen at 52.”

Perhaps the shortest and most out-there version of the article appeared in the Long Beach California Independent on Friday, June 21st, 1974, on page 22—squeezed in between “Three Swedish Sizzlers”—an advert for three ‘R’ rated films and an advert for Saturday nights at Knotts Ghost Town with Rick Springfield, The Lennon Sisters, and Kenny Rogers and the First Edition. The same version and same positioning also appeared in the Long Beach Press Telegram the same day. The Anchorage Alaska Daily News ran another short edit on May 29th—page 11 ran with “Promoting Jazz-Rock.”

Creed’s relatives in Virginia also got short shrift with “Ex-Virginian’s Faith in Jazz Plays Off” and just four summary paragraphs printed in the Martinsville Bulletin on May 22, 1974 ·Page 32 – the Danville (VA) Register & Bee did carry the full article in its May 23rd edition.

I found the syndicated column in forty-two newspapers, many carried the full piece, though each had a slight variation in the lede. The article is reproduced here in full courtesy of the Associated Press and is reproduced as accurately as I could. It may contain transcription or punctuation errors not found in the original. No other changes or corrections have been made.

Mary Campbell died on October 20th, 2012 – aged 78 ^[1]https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/nytimes/name/mary-campbell-obituary?pid=160534665.

He’s A Believer – His Faith In Jazz Finally Pays Off

by Mary Campbell, Associated Press – reproduced from the Wichita Beacon, Wednesday Jun 12, 1974 ·Page 37.

NEW YORK – In the words of an old rock song, Creed Taylor’s a believer. But his faith is in jazz, and it’s paying off.

“Something has to come after rock,” says the founder of the flashy and highly successful CTI Records. “The cycle is going to get into more sophisticated type of music – jazz. After a decade of being inundated with strong rhythms and over-amplification, people are turning to a more substantial kind of music which still retains a beat. And they are more willing to listen to instrumentals.”

Several years ago Taylor listened to Blood, Sweat and Tears and Chicago, both jazz-rock groups. And saw the attraction of the instrumental. “But a major element was lacking — the individual player’s ability to improvise”, he said. “They were topnotch ensemble players, but they didn’t have the jazz man’s ability to go for very long solos and keep building climaxes, creatively.”

So he formed CTI Records in 1971 ^[2]ctproduced: Taylor actually founded CTI in 1966 and from 1967 used the company as the jazz production label for A&M records. When Taylor’s contract ended in 1969, he used the opportunity to … Continue reading to record jazz-rock. But Taylor’s jazz-rock is jazz, borrowing from rock, not the other way around, and it now has 16 strong jazz soloists who record with a regular group of studio musicians with both jazz and rock backgrounds.

At first there were three employes and one record, flutist Hubert Laws’s “Crying Song.” Laws isn’t a household name and the flute isn’t the No. 1 jazz instrument. But Taylor’s idea was “to make one good album and patiently market it, and when we had some profits coming in, use them to produce another good album.” The second was “Red Clay” by trumpeter Freddie Hubbard.

Financially, it has worked. Gross sales in 1971 were $1.5 million: 1972. $3 million, and 1973, close to $6 million. Taylor expects to do $10 million gross this year. “Last year was based on 50 LPs in the catalog. This year we’ll put out another 25 or 26 and the others will still be there. Pop records have an obsolescence factor but for us, old records are an annuity.”

The biggest hit put out by the company in 1973 was “Also Sprach Zarathustra’’ the music from “2001” by Deodato; it was also the biggest-selling instrumental 45 r.p.m. record of the year, according to Billboard magazine. And a 10-man group was put together, some from the recording and some not, for touring, after the record became popular.

“Bob James arranged that for CTI concerts, that we were giving to publicize our artists, as an opening fanfare. I try to look into areas that haven’t been exploited before. ‘Zarathustra’ would not appear to be a vehicle for a jazz-rock band at all. Therefore, I find it attractive. I think it would be a challenge to artists to try to make musical sense out of a foreign area . . .

“I like to look into unlikely areas, different ways of doing songs that have been around, classical pieces that never
have been exploited.”

Another CTI arranger, Don Sebesky, has put out a two-record set, “Giant Box,” which has one side combining “Birds of Fire,’’ a Mahavishnu hit, with “Firebird” by Stravinsky.

Taylor displays a plaque naming CTI Records as “best jazz label of 1973” by Billboard — the first year the magazine has given the award. In the long-standing Downbeat poll, Hubbard was named No. 1 on trumpet, after 15 straight years of Miles Davis winning, and also from CTI – Ron Carter, No. 1 on bass, Laws No. 1 on flute, and Billy Cobham. No. 1 on drums. ^[3]While Cobham never recorded a leader album for CTI, he did record more than twenty CTI/Kudu albums between 1970 and 1974 and was a first call for the CTI All-Stars live events.

Taylor, born 43 years ago in Lynchburg, Va., started as a trumpeter, always interested in jazz, with a hobby of listening to records.

“I had some ideas from being a record buyer and listener. Generally speaking, they were not being discriminating enough about the material they released, There was a tendency in the beginning of jazz LP recording to record a jazz session or whatever the musician played and release that. My policy always has been to record until something exceptional came along and then release that.”

Taylor worked for ABC-Paramount , started Impulse, went to MGM when it bought Verve from Norman Granz and had an independent production agreement with A and M. When that expired he started CTI “to have immunity from company policies.”

Taylor sometimes is asked whether the product from his new label is “real jazz.” The only true definition of jazz is improvised solos,” he said. “I would call unreal jazz something like Boots Randolph’s ‘Yakety Sax.’ He is a good musician, but everything he plays he has heard legitimate jazz players play. Stanley Turrentine is on the other side; he’s a true improviser.

“Junior Walker I call rhythm ’n’ blues. “In terms of material and maybe in terms of arrangement, we may be using popular rock, but nobody can say these soloists are compromising or modifying the way they play. They’re true to themselves and their music.”

Not all news is the same, and it doesn’t arrive at the same time!

For your delectation, here is a pdf with just fourteen different editions of the article. I always find the adverts so good for context; they show what was popular in different parts of the country and what else was news – The Exorcist; Blazing Saddles; The Great Gatsby; The Golden Voyage of Sinbad; Anne Murray in concert, Harry Nilsson, and Ringo Starr in the “Son of Dracula.” Also, premium belted white wall tires were $21 each, while a convertible Hoover could be had for $49.99! ^[4]http://ctproduced.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/A-Creed-Taylor-A-Believer-in-Jazz-various.pdf