Joel Katz ruled the music industry from Atlanta for decades, maintaining a most envied client list, with names ranging from Michael Jackson to Alan Jackson, James Brown, Jimmy Buffett, Ludacris, Nicki Minaj, Lil Wayne, the group TLC and George Strait. The list goes on.
Katz was the founding chairman of the entertainment and media practice at Greenberg Traurig and once served as counsel for the Recording Academy and the Country Music Association. His spirit lives on in the bounce of innumerable catchy pop tunes, country ballad twangs and thumping rap beats.
On Friday, the man behind the music died after fighting progressive supranuclear palsy, his wife, Rikki, confirmed with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was 80.
“He was bigger than life in everything he did,” said his longtime friend and fellow attorney Darryl B. Cohen. “When he represented someone ― whether it was Willie Nelson or Jimmy Buffett ― he only did it at the highest level. He loved the music business. The better he did, the happier he was.”
Representatives for Greenberg Traurig and Barnes & Thornburg did not immediately respond to requests for comment from the AJC.
Katz was an international legal powerhouse with more than 6,000 names in his Rolodex. His beginnings could not have been more different, as he shared during a 2014 commencement address at Kennesaw State University, which is home of the Joel A. Katz Music and Entertainment Business Program and is about 15 miles north of Joel Katz Parkway in Atlanta.
“I started with absolutely nothing,” said Katz, a New York native who got through law school at the University of Tennessee thanks to a scholarship and a six-day-a-week job working 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. as a Holiday Inn night clerk. Graduation in 1969 brought him to a one-bedroom apartment in Atlanta and a teaching job at Georgia State University.
In 1971, he opened a law practice. He had a tiny office, a secretary he shared with other lawyers and one big problem: “I had no clients.”
Credit: Getty Images
Credit: Getty Images
One afternoon, the telephone blessedly rang. A banker on the line had taken Katz’s course at Georgia State and enjoyed it. Now he needed to help a client locate a good entertainment lawyer.
“Do you know anything about entertainment law?” the banker asked. Katz pondered that for a second. “I was honest. ‘No, I know nothing.’”
This, somehow, was the right answer. The next day, he was ushered into the penthouse suite at downtown’s old entertainment complex, the Omni, where the mystery client was getting his hair done.
Katz met the man who would become his first client, legendary singer James Brown. After a 10-minute discussion, the Godfather of Soul decided this untested lawyer was his man and stroked a retainer check for $2,500. The next day, they headed for New York, where Katz’s job was to negotiate a huge recording contract.
“He wanted $5 million and a jet plane, and a variety of other contractual demands,” Katz said.
Recording executives were gobsmacked. “No one who understood the recording industry would ask for such crazy things,” Katz recalled one of the executives bellowing. “As his yelling intensified, I began to realize why Mr. Brown chose me.”
After Brown signed the contract giving him most of what he wanted, Katz accompanied him to a news conference where Brown closed by saying, “I want to thank my lawyer, Joel Katz, from Atlanta, Georgia, the best entertainment lawyer in the whole world,” recalled Katz, who collected $50,000 for his work on that contract and remained Brown’s lawyer until he died on Christmas Day 2006.
“The Atlanta Constitution and several other newspapers carried articles, and my name was in all the articles — Joel Katz, the best entertainment lawyer in the world. A few days later, I received a call from a country music artist from Austin, Texas. He had read the articles. He said if you’re good enough for the Godfather, you’re good enough for me. Willie Nelson went on to be a superstar, too.”
Credit: Rick Diamond / Getty Images
Credit: Rick Diamond / Getty Images
A slew of others followed. Katz’s long and successful career was paralleled by his philanthropy. He was a key and avid supporter of the T.J. Martell Foundation, which raises money to fund leukemia, cancer and AIDS research. In 2016, the foundation announced the Joel A. Katz Music is Medicine Fund, which provides dedicated innovative cancer research at the Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University.
The announcement coincided with the dedication of musical memorabilia donated by Katz. The exhibit includes guitars signed by Buffett, Nelson, Paul McCartney and Berry Gordy, handwritten Alan Jackson lyrics, and other commemorative items. A large and prominent group of friends crowded into the Winship hallway the night the Katz exhibit went on permanent display. Then-Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, former U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss, broadcasters Frank Ski and Monica Pearson, then-KSU President Dan Papp and Atlanta Grammy chapter senior executive director Michele Rhea Caplinger were among the well-wishers.
Cagle presented Katz with a proclamation in his honor that night.
“What a great way to commemorate a great career,” he said.
Stephen Weizenecker, an entertainment attorney who worked with Katz for many years both at Greenberg Traurig and Barnes & Thornburg, said watching Katz wheel and deal was a master class in negotiating.
“He could do anything,” Weizenecker said. “He could be a hard negotiator. He can then flip instantly and become your best friend. Whatever it was to get the best deal for his clients. He could get results nobody else could.”
Weizenecker once flew in Katz’s private plane to New York City to meet with Nelson, and Katz was a whirling dervish of phone calls and meetings, indefatigable from morning to night. “He never stopped,” Weizenecker said. “He’d often be at the office on Saturdays. He was an office guy. He had three to five assistants around him at any given time.”
Although Katz was constantly on the road, he loved Atlanta as his home base and refused to move to New York, Nashville or Los Angeles, where most of his clients were. “He made Atlanta an epicenter for entertainment law by himself,” Weizenecker said. “He was a trailblazer.”
Katz worked with the Recording Academy since the late 1980s, rising to general counsel. It produces the Grammy Awards. In 2016, he negotiated a $600 million pact to keep the Grammy Awards and additional Recording Academy programming on CBS through 2026.
In January 2020, Katz was accused of sexual harassment by Deborah Dugan, the ousted CEO of the Recording Academy. Dugan filed a 46-page statement with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in Los Angeles that alleged during a dinner meeting in 2019, Katz repeatedly commented on her appearance, called her “baby,” invited her to travel on his private plane and attempted to kiss her. Katz, through his attorney, denied any wrongdoing. He resigned the following year.
The graveside service is set for Arlington Memorial Park in Sandy Springs on at 3 p.m. Tuesday, according to Katz’s family. Shiva will be held Tuesday after the service and from 6 to 8 p.m. on Wednesday and Thursday at Temple Sinai in Sandy Springs.
Katz is survived by his wife, two daughters and grandchildren.
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