Early in his career, Avant worked at a jazz lounge in Newark; Sarah Vaughan was a client
and many others and came to be known as “The Godfather of Black Music,” has died. He was 92.
He broke in as a manager in the 1950s, with such clients as singers Sarah Vaughan and Little Willie John and composer Lalo Schifrin, who wrote the theme to “Mission: Impossible.” In the 1970s he was an early patron of Black-owned radio stations and, in the 1990s, headed Motown after founder Berry Gordy Jr. sold the company.
“Everyone in this business has been by Clarence’s desk, if they’re smart,” Quincy Jones liked to say of him. “Mr. Glaser would have me go with him to these dog shows,” Avant told Variety in 2016. “And you’ve got to imagine I was the only Black person at the goddamn dog show. He also had these 16 seats behind the visiting dugout at Yankee Stadium, and whenever he’d take me I would try to walk to the back row, and he’d grab me and say, ‘Goddamn it, sit your ass up here with me.’”
“He went and got the deal,” Jones, whose collaborations with Avant would include the TV series “Heart and Soul” and the feature film “Stalingrad,” told Billboard in 2006. “I respected him for that.”
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