Creativity Quote by Norman Granz

There is a sly humility in Granz’s line, and it’s doing real work. “I don’t want to sound as if I’m doing something tremendously special” is the classic preface of someone who knows he is, in fact, making a claim. The disarming move isn’t false modesty so much as a shield against hero worship. Granz spent a career getting mythologized as the impresario who fought segregation, paid musicians fairly, and turned jazz into an international touring force. He understands how quickly a culture turns advocates into saints and then uses sainthood as an excuse to stop doing the actual, unglamorous labor.

Then he lands on the pivot: “But I am a jazz fan.” Fan is a deliberately smaller word than “patron,” “visionary,” or “gatekeeper.” It relocates authority from the boardroom to the bandstand, from prestige to pleasure. Subtext: he’s not a savior descending onto the music; he’s accountable to it. The person who buys a ticket has standards, curiosity, stubborn loyalty. A fan is allowed to be obsessive, to be picky, to insist the music be taken seriously without turning it into a museum piece.

Context matters: Granz’s era treated jazz as both America’s great art and its disposable nightlife soundtrack, celebrated in principle and underpaid in practice. By framing his identity as fandom, he’s smuggling an ethic into a simple confession: if you truly love this music, you don’t just admire it. You protect the conditions that let it happen - dignity, money, integrated rooms, and the freedom to swing without being treated like background noise.