Phoebe Jacobs & Jackie Harris
Phoebe Jacobs
After graduating from high school, Jacobs got married at the young age of 18. Her and her husband immediately started to attend the New York City club scene. She began to meet stars such as Billie Holiday and Nat King Cole and Sy Oliver, who gave her first job at Decca Records. Jacobs was in charge of contracts with musicians and appointment for recording sessions.
This is when Jacobs career took flight. She became very involved in the behind-the-scenes jazz business. Jacobs eventually became publicist for Ella Fitzgerald, Sy Oliver, Peggy Lee, Sarah Vaughan, Duke Ellington, and Della Reese. Later she also was the presenter of the Rainbow Room at Rockefeller Plaza, in which she hosted concerts.
In the last years that Jacobs ran the publicity, she became very close to Louis Armstrong. After his death in 1971, Jacobs founded the Louis Armstrong Educational foundation. She was the executive vice president and looked after the financing programs. Jacobs also helped organized the naming of the Louis Armst
Jacobs worked feverishly to provide high school and college students through various non-profit organizations, and she played a major role in launching the Jazz for Young People Concert Series at Jazz Lincoln Center. In 1989, she helped establish the Jazz Foundation of America, a non-profit organization that provides support to musicians in need.
Phoebe Jacobs was an icon of the 20th century jazz world. She spent her life giving to and helping others. Jacobs passed away on April 9th, 2012. There was a memorial concert celebrating her life in New York.
Jackie Harris
Jackie Harris is native to New Orleans and got involved with jazz at a very young age. That being said, she entered the world of jazz through a different and interesting channel. Instead of entering into jazz through the entertainment side, Jackie Harris decided to take the business route. Throughout her young adulthood, Harris worked in the service industry and as well for an oil company, picking up valuable skills along the way. Her first job within the jazz industry was with the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. She worked for the Heritage Festival for nine years, which was followed by her appointment to lead the city of New Orleans’s Music and Entertainment Commission. She worked in that position for eight years and had great success in re-positioning New Orleans as an entertainment Mecca and marketing it’s rich cultural legacy as the, “Birthplace of Jazz.” Harris is now the executive director of the New Orleans Arts and Cultural Host Committee meanwhile is also the founder and director of Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong Summer Jazz Camp. She has spent the last 25 years providing convention planning, festival/music production, program administration, coordination, and event management services to clients both domestic and abroad. Ultimately, Jackie Harris has devoted her life to preserving the cultural legacy of jazz in New Orleans and informing the youth of this rich history in order to keep it alive. She discusses her career and its New Orleans influences in her interview.
Attached is a transcript of an interview between Monk Rowe & Phoebe Jacobs/Jackie Harris.
