Norman J. O'Connor, Priest, Well-Known Authority On Jazz

Date: Sun, 6 Jul 2003 06:38:39 -0400
Newsgroups: alt.obituaries
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FROM: The New York Times ~
The Rev. Norman J. O'Connor, a Roman Catholic priest
who was also a well-known authority on jazz, died last
Sunday in Wayne, N.J., where he lived. He was 81.
The cause was a heart attack, the medical examiner's
office said.
Father O'Connor, whose name was seldom mentioned in
print without the words "the jazz priest" attached, began
making a name for himself in the jazz world not long after
being ordained as a Paulist priest in 1948.
In 1954, three years after becoming the Catholic chaplain
at Boston University, he was named to the board of the
first Newport Jazz Festival. In the ensuing years he was a
familiar presence there, clerical collar and all, as the master
of ceremonies for concerts and the moderator of panel
discussions.
During his decade at Boston University, Father O'Connor
also became known as a jazz writer, contributing a weekly
column to The Boston Globe and articles to Down Beat,
Metronome and other magazines. In the 1960's, after
moving to New York, he was the host of a local television
show, "Dial M for Music," and a syndicated radio show.
His association with the Newport Jazz Festival stemmed
both from his lifelong love of jazz and from his friendship
with the festival's producer, George Wein. Father O'Connor
was a frequent patron of Storyville, the Boston nightclub Mr.
Wein operated.
"In those days," Mr. Wein wrote in "Myself Among
Others," his autobiography, "it wasn't common for a Catholic
priest to walk into a jazz club; in fact, it sounded like the
beginning of a bad joke."
Norman James O'Connor was born in Detroit on Nov. 20,
1921. He became interested in jazz at an early age and began
playing piano with local jazz bands while in high school. He
continued to work occasionally as a musician into the 40's,
but had abandoned any thought of music as a career by the
time he enrolled at Catholic University in Washington.
He nonetheless remained passionately interested in the
subject, and wrote his doctoral thesis on the aesthetics of
popular music.
In 1962, Father O'Connor was named director of radio and
television for the Paulist Fathers in New York. He became a
fixture on the New York jazz scene, and remained one even
after being named director of the Mount Paul Novitiate, a
church training center in Oak Ridge, N.J., four years later.
In 1980, Father O'Connor was hired as the executive director
of Straight and Narrow, a drug and alcohol treatment center
in Paterson, N.J. He retired last year.
His profile in the jazz world became lower in his later years.
But he remained the jazz priest to the end, producing benefit
concerts by Marian McPartland and other musicians for
Straight and Narrow with the help of Mr. Wein.
He is survived by two brothers, Patrick O'Connor of Detroit
and James O'Connor of Sebastopol, Calif.
Over the years Father O'Connor encountered some criticism
for his involvement in the jazz world - although he said
most of it came from lay Catholics who viewed the music as
disreputable, rather than from members of the clergy.
"Jazz has no morality," he said in 1962. "If a listener thinks
jazz is immoral, it's because he brings to it remembered
associations, such as a pretty girl in a slinky gown,
undulating dancers or people overindulging in Prohibition-era
speakeasies."
Father O'Connor also saw nothing wrong with using jazz in
religious services. "I'm a 20th-century man," he told The Daily
News in 1969. "I'm accustomed to the modern sounds of the
piano, the drum, the trumpet and the saxophone."