CLICK HERE if you are having trouble viewing these photos on a mobile device.
If it weren’t for his musical passions, Carl Jefferson would likely be best remembered as a successful Concord businessman who owned and operated what was said to be one of the nation’s largest Lincoln-Mercury car dealerships.
Yet, he also was a huge jazz fan with a desire to share his love for the music with his community. So in 1969, he organized and hosted a small jazz concert at a city-owned park — and in so doing, he birthed an empire that gave rise to an annual music festival, a record label and a major Bay Area concert venue.
Jefferson’s concert, billed the Concord Jazz Festival, quickly established itself as a cherished annual event and eventually proved popular enough to warrant building the Concord Pavilion to house it.
“There’s a plaque up there at the Pavilion that says it’s the house that jazz built and credits Carl Jefferson for his vision in making it happen,” said John Burk, president of Concord Records, the influential label that owes its very existence to the festival.
Although declining attendance shuttered the festival after the 2004 edition, music promoter Live Nation and Concord Records have teamed up to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the festival with a star-studded show at — where else — the Concord Pavilion on Aug. 3. Performers include Dave Koz, Esperanza Spalding, Chick Corea, the Count Basie Orchestra and Poncho Sanchez.
“That event happened to be one of the building blocks of the Pavilion,” says Aaron Siuda, senior vice president of promoter Live Nation Northern California. “The Pavilion owed it to Concord Jazz to do the event.”
“I think it’s fabulous, I am so excited about it,” says Stacey Jefferson-Shewry, Carl Jefferson’s daughter, who lives in Oakley. “He loved to help people, and he wanted to enrich Concord.”
The inaugural festival was held at an eight-acre park now named for another Concord-based jazz giant, Dave Brubeck. It was a fine setting for a few years, but as the festival’s popularity swelled, Jefferson began looking for a new space. He convinced city officials to build an outdoor venue that could host the festival and other shows and events, and the result was the Frank Gehry-designed Concord Pavilion, which opened in 1975.
As for the record label, its roots date back to mere minutes after the close of the 1972 festival, when Jefferson bought a round of drinks for some of the performers at a local inn.
“He was sitting there with Herb Ellis and Joe Pass and Ray Brown and they were telling him how the industry was changing and, for the first time in a long time, they were having trouble getting a record deal,” says Burk. “He said, ‘Well, I’ll make a record with you. How do you do it?’ And he started making records.”
Thus, the Concord Jazz label was born — at the Jefferson Motors Dealership on Willow Pass Road.
“He literally ran the record company out of the dealership. The guys who washed cars would pack records,” says Burk, who graduated from De La Salle High School in 1980 and went on to attend Cal State East Bay in Hayward. “He just kind of did it that way for a while — which was a great way to start a label, because all the overhead was covered by the car dealership.”
It didn’t take long for Concord Jazz to become a major player in the genre, drawing such talents as Stan Getz, Art Blakey, Rosemary Clooney, Mel Tormé and Charlie Byrd. In the late ’70s, Jefferson introduced the Concord Picante imprint, which was dedicated to Latin jazz and featured such artists as Cal Tjader, Tito Puente, Mongo Santamaria and Poncho Sanchez, who is still a part of Concord family today.
“It was just a small little company back then in Concord,” says Sanchez, who released his first album on Concord in the early ’80s. “But I could see that, No. 1, Carl Jefferson was a very hard worker and a very smart man and a very good businessman. I could tell that he wasn’t going to let anything slip through his hands or let somebody (expletive) him.”
Another selling point for jazz musicians was Jefferson’s unwavering commitment to the genre.
“The old man thought that the Beatles ruined music. So, he was very focused on, ‘We do jazz records here,’” says Burk, who met Jefferson in 1989 and soon after became the 12th employee of the label. “We put out a lot of records. We put out 40, 50 records a year — sometimes 60.”
In 1994, Jefferson, in his mid-70s and in declining health, sold the label to Alliance Entertainment. One condition of the sale was that he and Burk would continue to run Concord Jazz, which they did until Jefferson died of liver cancer in 1995. He was 75.
The label continued to grow under the leadership of Burk and new partner Glen Barros, adding artists that worked outside of jazz and striking a somewhat controversial deal to sell its CDs at Starbucks locations in North America. While some derided the agreement as a unnecessary boon to easy-listening music, it also set the table for releases by such acts as Ray Charles, Paul McCartney, James Taylor, Carole King, Paul Simon and Joni Mitchell.
Now, the Los Angeles-based Concord Music Group is a massive enterprise encompassing numerous imprints. But musicians fondly remember the label and jazz festival’s roots that, like its founder, celebrated a deep connection to the music.
“What I remember most was really the backstage hang,” says platinum-selling saxophonist Dave Koz, who performed at the festival numerous times. “It was just like a love fest backstage. Then when it was it finally time for the show, you were in such a good mood and happy to be there that the shows often reflected that kind of contentment and excitement.”
CONCORD JAZZ FESTIVAL
When: 4 p.m. Aug. 3
Where: Concord Pavilion, 2000 Kirker Pass Road, Concord
Tickets: $39.50-$149.50; www.livenation.com
