Creativity Quote by Norman Granz

Granz is doing two things at once: boasting and defending. The line sounds casual, almost tossed off, but it’s aimed at a persistent suspicion that jazz was either a youth fad or nightclub noise that “serious” adults would outgrow. By insisting his audiences “hardly” include teenagers, he’s repositioning jazz as grown-up culture: music with money behind it, taste in front of it, and longevity baked in.

The Europe clause matters. Postwar Europe often treated American jazz as high art and moral rebellion in the same breath, while the U.S. still racialized and policed the spaces where it thrived. Granz, the impresario behind Jazz at the Philharmonic, made his name booking top-tier players into concert halls, charging real ticket prices, and selling a version of jazz that could sit under chandeliers without losing its bite. “Even in Europe” is a flex and a rebuttal: if the continent that prides itself on cultural seriousness isn’t packing houses with kids, then the music’s legitimacy must be self-evident.

The subtext is also about control. Teen audiences signal trend-chasing and volatility; adult audiences signal stability, respectability, and a marketplace that can sustain touring ensembles. Granz isn’t just describing demographics. He’s arguing for jazz as an adult commitment - aesthetically, economically, and politically - and, by extension, for the musicians he championed to be treated as professionals rather than attractions.