Jack Maher, 78; Publisher of Down Beat, Called World’s Most Revered Jazz Magazine

Jack Maher, who served more than three decades as publisher of the respected jazz magazine Down Beat and its parent company, Maher Publications, has died. He was 78.

Maher died Friday of unspecified causes in a suburban Chicago hospital.

“Jack Maher was a cheerleader, a taskmaster, a visionary, a curmudgeon when he wanted to be, and your grandfather when he wanted to be,” said a longtime Down Beat staff member, Frank Alkyer, whom Maher appointed last year as his successor as publisher.

Maher was credited with transforming Down Beat into a leading forum on jazz, with a roster of writers that included Leonard Feather, Nat Hentoff, Dan Morgenstern, Ralph Gleason and Ira Gitler.

In a tribute to Maher, Howard Reich, arts critic of the Chicago Tribune, called Down Beat “the world’s most revered jazz magazine.”

“Despite increasing competition from rock-music magazines, cable TV and the Internet,” Reich said, “Maher transformed a long-struggling journal into a profitable business and a champion of music education.”

Maher believed the first priority for a business is staying in business -- not an easy task in his situation when he assumed control of Down Beat.

The magazine was founded in 1934 to chronicle the comings and goings of touring swing bands. The publication was a labor of love that never turned a profit, and its shaky finances finally caused a previous owner, unable to pay his printing bills, to forfeit Down Beat to its printer, John Maher, the father of Jack Maher.

After his father died in 1968, Jack Maher put up his own money to acquire Down Beat, outbidding Playboy founder and jazz aficionado Hugh Hefner.

Maher immediately changed a number of his father’s policies, including one that discouraged running pictures of black musicians on the magazine’s cover.

“The cover is the vehicle used to get potential readers into the magazine,” Jack Maher told the Tribune in 1994. “Down Beat has always championed jazz, which has meant championing African American musicians.”

Maher, who was in the Marines during World War II, presided over Down Beat’s participation in “Soundstage” -- a 1977 public television concert featuring winners of the Down Beat readers poll -- and established the Down Beat Student Music Awards in 1978.

He is survived by his wife, Pat; seven children; 13 grandchildren; and one sister.

The family has asked that any memorial donations be made to the AMC-Music Education Charity, 5790 Armada Drive, Carlsbad, CA 92008; or the West Suburban Humane Society, 1901 W. Ogden Ave., Downers Grove, IL 60515.