Lester Koenig (December 3, 1917 – November 20, 1977) was an American screenwriter, film producer, and founder of the jazz record label

Contemporary Records Contemporary Records was a jazz record company and label founded by Lester Koenig in Los Angeles in 1951. Contemporary produced music from a variety of jazz styles and players. West Coast players Contemporary became identified with a style of ja ...

Biography

Koenig was born to a

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

family in New York City, the son of Minna (Harlib) and

Morris Koenig Morris Koenig (March 13, 1883 – December 1, 1939) was a Hungarian-born Jewish-American lawyer and judge from New York City. Life Koenig was born on March 13, 1883, in Eger, Hungary, the son of Joseph Koenig and Rose Schwartz. He immigrated to A ...

. His father was a judge; his brother was advertising executive

Julian Koenig Julian Norman Koenig (; April 22, 1921 – June 12, 2014) was an American copywriter. He was inducted into The One Club Creative Hall of Fame in 1966. Early life and education Koenig was born to a Jewish familyJohn H. Hammond who served as his mentor. He attended

Dartmouth College Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native A ...

where he was friends with

Budd Schulberg Budd Schulberg (born Seymour Wilson Schulberg, March 27, 1914 – August 5, 2009) was an American screenwriter, television producer, novelist and sports writer. He was known for his novels '' What Makes Sammy Run?'' and ''The Harder They Fall;'' ...

, son of B.P. Schulberg, the head of production at

Paramount Paramount (from the word ''paramount'' meaning "above all others") may refer to: Entertainment and music companies * Paramount Global, also known simply as Paramount, an American mass media company formerly known as ViacomCBS. The following busin ...

film studios. After Dartmouth, he attended

Yale Law School Yale Law School (Yale Law or YLS) is the law school of Yale University, a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. It was established in 1824 and has been ranked as the best law school in the United States by ''U ...

but was forced to drop out after his father's death. In 1936, he then went to work for

Martin Block Martin Block (February 3, 1903 – September 18, 1967) was an American disc jockey. It is said that Walter Winchell invented the term "disc jockey" as a means of describing Block's radio work. Career Early years A native of Los Angeles, Blo ...

on the ''

Make Believe Ballroom ''Make Believe Ballroom'' is a 1949 American musical romantic comedy directed by Joseph Santley and produced by Ted Richmond. It was loosely based on a radio program of the same name by Martin Block and Al Jarvis. The film starred Jerome Courtla ...

'' radio show at Milton H. Biow's WNEW in New York City. In 1937, B.P. Schulberg offered him a job as a writer at Paramount Studios and he moved to

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

. In Los Angeles, leveraging his experience with John Hammond, he was hired by David Stuart and his wife, Marili Morden – the owners of the Jazz Man Record Shop which was adjacent to Paramount Studios – to produce some records under Stuart's

Jazz Man Records Jazz Man Records was an American record company and independent record label devoted to traditional New Orleans-style jazz. David Stuart ''(né'' David Ashford Stuart; 1910–1984) founded the label in 1941 and sold it to Marili Morden and Nesu ...

label. In 1941, Koenig recorded

Lu Watters Lucius Carl Watters (December 19, 1911 – November 5, 1989) was a trumpeter and bandleader of the Yerba Buena Jazz Band. Jazz critic Leonard Feather said, “The Yerba Buena band was perhaps the most vital factor in the reawakening of public i ...

which he followed on with

Bob Scobey Robert Alexander Scobey Jr. (December 9, 1916 – June 12, 1963) was an American jazz trumpet player of traditional or Dixieland music based originally in the San Francisco area and later in Chicago, Illinois. He was born in Tucumcari, New Mex ...

and

Turk Murphy Melvin Edward Alton "Turk" Murphy (December 16, 1915 – May 30, 1987) was an American trombonist and bandleader, who played traditional and Dixieland jazz. Biography He was born in Palermo, California, United States. Murphy served in the Nav ...

. World War II interrupted his career and he served in the film unit of the

United States Army Air Corps The United States Army Air Corps (USAAC) was the aerial warfare service component of the United States Army between 1926 and 1941. After World War I, as early aviation became an increasingly important part of modern warfare, a philosophical r ...

where he wrote the war documentary films, '' Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress'' (1944) and ''

Thunderbolt A thunderbolt or lightning bolt is a symbolic representation of lightning when accompanied by a loud thunderclap. In Indo-European mythology, the thunderbolt was identified with the 'Sky Father'; this association is also found in later Hell ...

'' (1947), both directed by then-Major

William Wyler William Wyler (; born Willi Wyler (); July 1, 1902 – July 27, 1981) was a Swiss-German-American film director and producer who won the Academy Award for Best Director three times, those being for ''Mrs. Miniver'' (1942), ''The Best Years of O ...

. In 1947, Koenig was blacklisted by the

House Un-American Activities Committee The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA), popularly dubbed the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives, created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloy ...

. He decided to return to record producing with Jazz Man Records but when he returned to Los Angeles, he found that Stuart and Morden had divorced and she had since remarried to

Nesuhi Ertegun Nesuhi Ertegun ( Turkish spelling: Nesuhi Ertegün; November 26, 1917 – July 15, 1989) was a Turkish-American record producer and executive of Atlantic Records and WEA International. Early life Born in Istanbul in the Ottoman Empire, Nesuhi ...

, the founder of

Crescent Records Crescent Records was an American independent record label that produced jazz recordings from 1944 to 1946. It was founded by Nesuhi Ertegun to record a band that was assembled to perform on CBS Radio's 1944 variety series ''The Orson Welles Almana ...

; instead Koenig founded his own label,

Good Time Jazz Records Good Time Jazz Records was an American jazz record company and label. It was founded in 1949 by Lester Koenig to record the Firehouse Five Plus Two and earned a reputation for Dixieland jazz. The label produced new releases and reissues, includi ...

. In 1952, Ertegun sold him the Jazz Man label (Crescent Records had been merged into Jazz Man) and then Ertegun went to work for Koenig at Good Time Jazz Records. In 1951, Koenig founded

Personal life

In 1948, he married artist Catharine Anliss Heerman, who was the daughter of Sarah Yeiser Mason and Victor Eugene Heerman. Koenig had two children with Heerman, John (born 1950) and Victoria (born 1951). The couple divorced in 1954."Biography: Catharine Aanliss Heerman (February 5, 1922 – April 4, 2007) by John Koenig
November 24, 2007 In 1961, he married jazz singer .Jazz Journal: "More About Les"
September 20, 2010 , "Les Koenig died of a heart attack in Los Angeles on 21 November 1977, 12 days before his 60th birthday. He was married to the singer Joy Bryan. He was the father of two children, John and Victoria, and the step-father of Alan and Shawn Bryan." Koenig died of a heart attack on November 20, 1977.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Koenig, Lester 1917 births 1977 deaths First Motion Picture Unit personnel Businesspeople from New York City Record producers from New York (state) American people of Hungarian-Jewish descent Jazz record producers 20th-century American businesspeople 20th-century American Jews Dartmouth College alumni Koenig family