Norman O'Connor
American priest and musician (1921-2003)
Norman James O'Connor, CSP (November 20, 1921 – June 29, 2003), also known as The Jazz Priest, was an American Paulist priest known for playing and promoting jazz music.
Biography
O'Connor became interested in jazz music at an early age and played piano with local jazz bands while in high school. He continued to work occasionally as a musician into the 1940s, but had abandoned the thought of music as a career by the time he enrolled at Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. He wrote his doctoral thesis on the aesthetics of popular music.
He was ordained as a Catholic priest of the Paulist order in 1948. In 1951, he became the Catholic chaplain at Boston University. In 1954 he served on the board of the first Newport Jazz Festival and appeared at the event in his priest collar, acting as master of ceremonies for concerts and moderator of panel discussions. His introduction of John Coltrane at the festival in 1965 can be heard on Coltrane's New Thing at Newport (as well as My Favorite Things: Coltrane at Newport), and his introduction of Dave Brubeck at the 1971 festival can be heard on Brubeck's The Last Set at Newport. O'Connor also introduced Duke Ellington and the members of his orchestra (along with personal quips) at the 1956 Festival, as heard on Ellington's Ellington at Newport.
O'Connor wrote a weekly jazz column for The Boston Globe and freelanced for Down Beat, Metronome, and other music magazines. He did jazz radio shows on WGBH-FM for many years previous to, and overlapping with, the advent of TV at WGBH, in 1955.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7052650. VIAF identifies the subject as 21770385. The Library of Congress control number is no98130104. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1921, 2003, 1948 and 1951.
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This entry incorporates text from “Norman O'Connor” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.