Legendary manager Jazz Summers dies from cancer

Legendary artist manager Jazz Summers – the guiding light behind Wham!, Snow Patrol and The Verve, among others – has died after a two-year battle with lung cancer. He was 71.

His other artists included Lisa Stansfield, Soul II Soul, Badly Drawn Boy, Klaxons, The Scissor Sisters and London Grammar.

His company Big Life Management announced the news on its website, calling him “one of (the) most vibrant, most notorious and most brilliant characters” of the music industry. It also described him as “a champion of new music, a non-conformist and a visionary.”

Summers’ strengths were a knack for artist development and for spotting a hit song, and an uncanny knowledge of the workings of the US music industry. As a result, his artists sold over 60 million albums and 72 million singles around the world.

Born on March 15, 1944, Summers joined military school at age 12 and joined the British Army three years later. He served in Hong Kong and Malaysia as a radiographer.

Back in London, he became an artist manager in the mid-70s. Then he and Tim Parry founded Big Life Management in 1986. The pair also ran Big Life Records, which signed The Orb, Yazz, Coldcut, De La Soul and The Soup Dragons.

He was an active campaigner for artist rights. He served as board member and Chairman of the Music Managers' Forum and was vocal in artist-related issues as the extension of copyright, secondary ticketing and VPL The MMF said in a statement, “Jazz was a one-off – they broke the mould after his creation.”

Summers also helped set up non-profit organisations Featured Artists' Coalition and Julie's Bicycle which worked on sustainability in the creative industries. In 2013, was awarded the Peter Grant Award as a top manager. That year he published his autobiography Big Life.