Grusin, Dave

Grusin, Dave, music business renaissance man: pianist, label head, and visionary; b. Littleton, Colo., June 26, 1934. While attending the Univ. of Colo., Dave Grusin got sucked into the jazz scene, working with jazz stalwarts like Terry Gibbs and Art Pepper. Yet he also had a pop side, and in 1959 he went to work as music director for MOR pop singer Andy Williams, a role he maintained through the mid-1960s, while continuing to play with Benny Goodman, Thad Jones, Milt Hinton, and Frank Foster. Later in the decade he expanded his horizons even more, taking on film scoring, including composing the incidental music between the Simon and Garfunkel songs of The Graduate. He also started to produce records for pop artists like Barbra Streisand and jazz players like Lee Ritenour. In 1976, Grusin founded GRP records with Larry Rosen. The company brought such noted artists as Diane Schuur and David Benoit to the public as well as furthering the careers of artists like Michael Brecker, Gary Burton, and Chick Corea. It was also the first record label to record all of its acts on digital equipment (rather than analog tape machines). Upon selling the company to MCA, Grusin and Rosen became pioneers in digital music on the World Wide Web, buying N2K, a multimedia company, and founding N2K Records and the Music Boulevard web site.

Through it all, Grusin continued to play and com-pose, working with the GRP All-Stars and creating scores for films ranging from Tootsie and Havana (for which he won an Oscar nomination) to The Firm and The Fabulous Baker Boys.

Discography

Subways Are for Sleeping (1961); Candy (1961); The Many Moods of Dave Grusin (1962); Kaleidoscope (1964); Discovered Again (1977); One of a Kind (1977); Mountain Dance (1979); A Flip of the Coin (1980); Dave Grusin and the GRP All-Stars/Live in Japan (1980); Out of the Shadows (1982); Night- Lines (1983); And the N.Y.-LA. Dream Band (1984); Harlequin (1985); Cinemagic (1987); Zephyr (1988); Lfirc m Japan (1988); Sffcfcs flnrf Stones (1988); The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989); Migration (1989); Bow/m? o/ the Vanities (1990); T/ze Gershwin Connection (1991); Homage to Duke (1993); TTze Orchestral Album (1994); Cwre (1995); Two/or ffo? Rofld: The Music of Henry Mancini (1996); 3 Days of the Condor (1997); Presents: West Side Story (1997).

—Hank Bordowitz