Dead, Jazz Summers, born March 15, 1944 and died August 14, 2015 of lung cancer, the legendary music manager behind acts including Wham!, the Verve, Snow Patrol, La Roux and London Grammar, has died aged 71 after a two-year bout of lung cancer.
Summers’ artists have sold more than 60m albums and 72m singles around the world, including more than 100 top 40 hits.
A spokesman for Big Life Management, which Summers co-founded 29 years ago, said: “The music industry has lost one of its most vibrant, most notorious and most brilliant characters.
A champion of new music, a non-conformist and a visionary, Jazz Summers will be greatly missed.”
He added that Summers was a “master of artist development” and his ability to recognise the potential of a song had brought him “huge success across several decades”.
Summers was born on 15 March 1944. He enrolled in military school at the age of 12 before joining the army aged 15, serving as a radiographer in Hong Kong and Malaysia.
In 1985, in partnership with Simon Napier-Bell, Summers helped Wham! to become the first western pop group to tour China.
The crucial role the manager played in breaking the band in the US helped establish his reputation as an expert in the American market.
When he formed Big Life in partnership with Tim Parry in 1986, the pair released music from artists including The Orb, Coldcut, and De La Soul, on the label Big Life Records.