Detroit International Jazz Festival founder
shone spotlight on Detroit as a jazz capital

By K. Michelle Moran
Arts & Entertainment Editor

Editor’s note: Backstage Pass is a new series that introduces Grosse Pointe Times readers to local residents who play a significant role behind the scenes in the arts. You may not always recognize their names, but if you’ve been to an exhibit, a concert or other performance, you can probably thank them for making these cultural offerings possible.

GROSSE POINTE WOODS — When internationally recognized urban planner Bob McCabe became the first permanent president of Detroit Renaissance in April 1971, he was charged with reviving a city reeling from the riots and exodus out to the suburbs.

The lifelong music lover believed that art and culture were vital to bringing people back to the city. And what better music, he thought, than jazz, which was rooted in Detroit from the musical genre’s infancy? Thus was born the Labor Day weekend tradition now known as the Detroit International Jazz Festival, an event that, in its 29th year, is now the largest free jazz festival in North America and recognized as one of best jazz festivals in the country.

McCabe’s explanation for launching the festival is deceptively simple.

“Because Detroit needed it,” he said matter-of-factly from his home office in Grosse Pointe Woods. “In the 1970s, there was nothing but bad news coming out of Detroit internationally, and part of the job of Detroit Renaissance when I was president was (to find) ways we could show off Detroit as a great place.”

McCabe was instrumental in the rebirth of Music Hall — long before the city had its current theater district — and in bringing Grand Prix racing downtown, but the jazz festival has always been especially close to his heart, which explains why, at 84, he’s still an active part of the event as a member of the board of trustees.

“The jazz festival was something that could help in the development of the city because it would bring (visitors) who would stay in the hotels and eat in the restaurants,” McCabe said. “It had an economic impact.”

That remains true to this day. According to Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano, this year’s festival is expected to draw 753,000 people and generate about $90 million in revenue.

Former Music Hall Chief Operating Officer and Marketing Director Michael Vigilant worked on seven jazz festivals with McCabe. Now the COO of the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Vigilant said the festival was “an outstanding event … (that helped) keep Detroit on the artistic map.” McCabe, said Vigilant, was uniquely qualified to spearhead such an event, as he knew “how to partner art with business.” The jazz festival meant more than that, though.

“It was the most outstanding piece of event diversity I have ever experienced,” said Vigilant, who lived for years in Troy. “It showed Detroit at its best. I remember seeing (people from) the suburbs and the city intermingle like at no other event — (it was a) diverse, community-minded audience. And in my mind, that was more important than the jazz.”

McCabe grew up loving music — jazz in particular — since he was, as he puts it, “raised during the heyday of jazz and big bands.” He even studied clarinet when he was about 12 and played in the Detroit Youth Symphony.

But he was also a child of the Depression whose parents moved frequently around the state as his father took odd jobs when and where he could find them. McCabe’s mother washed dishes in a restaurant to support the family, and her son recalls pitching in by cleaning the restaurant floor. McCabe, an only child, even lived for a couple of years with his grandparents, who had a farm in tiny Empire, Mich., where McCabe attended a one-room schoolhouse and lent a hand on the farm. He especially hated the grueling work of harvesting potatoes.

After serving his country as a World War II Navy sailor, McCabe — who had a bachelor’s degree in social science from Central Michigan University — used the G.I. Bill to earn master’s degrees in sociology and planning from the University of Chicago. He started his urban planning career with the federal Housing and Home Finance Agency — a predecessor to the Department of Housing and Urban Development  — in Washington, D.C. Circa 1956, he was a consultant to the South American country of Columbia, where he created a master plan for the city of Barranquilla. More importantly, that’s where he met and married his wife of 51 years, Beatriz. They have two adult sons — Robert Jr., a professional storyteller, and Brian, a financial planner and father of three young daughters.

Among his other posts before returning to Michigan, McCabe was appointed by former New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller to become the general manager of the New York State Urban Development Corp.

McCabe was president of Detroit Renaissance until 1993, when he became vice president of civic and government affairs for IMG Motorsports Inc., where he worked until his retirement in 2001. Among his many honors are an award from the Detroit City Council in 1982, an honorary doctorate in public service from CMU and being named Michiganian of the Year in 1982 by the Detroit Newspaper magazine.

When the Detroit International Jazz Festival lost its major sponsor, Ford Motor Co., a few years ago, McCabe was instrumental in recruiting the woman who would save it — Gretchen Carhartt Valade, a business leader and fellow lifelong jazz aficionado. Valade, of Grosse Pointe Farms, recalls the pivotal Hill Seafood and Chop House lunch meeting she had with McCabe and Tom Robinson, one of the heads of Valade’s record label, Mack Avenue Records: McCabe, she said with a gentle chuckle, was “very nice about it, but very persuasive.” Valade had already been a festival sponsor for a couple of years before taking the reins of the whole event, so McCabe knew she’d be a great candidate to keep it going.

Even today, said Valade, McCabe is “the one everyone goes to when they have problems” with regard to the festival.

“He shapes it,” she said of her friend and colleague. “He’s in the background, but not really. And he knows jazz — he knows an awful lot about it.”

From the crucial revitalization of Music Hall — now in the heart of Detroit’s flourishing theater district — to the jazz festival that Music Hall once helmed, McCabe has reason to look back on the last three decades and smile.

“A lot of people thought it couldn’t be done,” he said. “All of these bright lights that we now have on these buildings were dark. … What culture does is not only entertain and educate people, but it brings people down to an area that has become very vital in terms of restaurants and bars. It has an economic impact.”

You can reach Staff Writer K. Michelle Moran at kmoran@candgnews.com or at (586) 498-1047.