Norman O’Connor, 81; Paulist Father Known as ‘the Jazz Priest’

Father Norman J. O’Connor, 81, known as “the jazz priest” for his work in the Roman Catholic Church and his commentary on jazz, died June 29 in Wayne, N.J., of a heart attack.

Brought up in his native Detroit, O’Connor played piano with local jazz bands in high school, but enrolled in Catholic University in Washington, D.C.

After his ordination as a Paulist priest in 1948, he spent a decade as Catholic chaplain at Boston University. While there, he was named to the board of the first Newport Jazz Festival, and for many years served as its master of ceremonies.

O’Connor also wrote about jazz, with a weekly column in the Boston Globe and articles in Down Beat, Metronome and other music magazines. When he was reassigned to New York in the 1960s, as director of radio and television for that city’s Paulist Fathers, he hosted a syndicated radio show and a local TV show, “Dial M for Music.”

From 1980 until his retirement last year, O’Connor was executive director of Straight and Narrow, a drug and alcohol treatment center in Paterson, N.J.