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Jazz musican and manager John Levy died in his sleep on Friday at home in Altadena. He would have been 100 years old in a few months. His clients included Cannonball Adderley, Betty Carter, Roberta Flack, Herbie Hancock, Shirley Horn, Freddie Hubbard, Ramsey Lewis, Herbie Mann, Les McCann, Joe Williams, Nancy Wilson and many others. In 2006 the National Endowment for the Arts recognized Levy's role in jazz. From an NPR tribute:
Levy was once a musician of some renown — he played bass with Billie Holiday, Stuff Smith, George Shearing and many others — but he's primarily remembered for his advocacy. He was named an NEA Jazz Master in 2006 for representing dozens of musicians as a manager, and also produced concerts and recordings....John Levy was a black man. That makes him the first, or at least one of the first major African-American personal managers in music. By extension, he was also dealing almost entirely with club owners and record producers who were white, representing clients with national, even international reputations. His first client was the white Englishman George Shearing, who he began to manage full-time in 1951 — an era where overt racism and segregation were still prevalent in the U.S. Not only was he able to navigate this situation; the work that he did resulted in new models of black success in the U.S. during the civil rights era.