THEN to NOW THE HISTORY OF JazzTimes
JAZZTIMES DID NOT START WITH A PROPOSAL, prospectus, or PowerPoint presentation. There was no capital investment. There was no particular strategic plan. It didn’t even have a name. What kind of magazine is launched without a thoroughly researched and market-tested name? The answer is a jazz magazine in 1970—one that would evolve into an award-winning publication and, with all modesty, one of the finest music magazines in the world.
Like most publications, it started as the vision of one man. In the ’60s, Ira Sabin, a former society drummer and concert presenter, was the owner of an R&B and jazz record store—Sabin’s Discount Records—in the U Street corridor of Washington, D.C. The store became a cultural hot spot, with many of the great
