Joel Katz, Former Attorney to James Brown, Michael Jackson, Willie Nelson and Many Top Music Executives, Dies at 80

Joel Katz, for decades one of the most powerful attorneys in the music business, has died, Variety has confirmed. No cause of death was cited but Billboard reports that he died “peacefully at home, with his wife Rikki by his side.”

Katz was founding chairman of the entertainment and media practice at the top law firm Greenberg Traurig and was also heavily involved with both the Recording Academy and the Country Music Association, and negotiated major deals for both, including middle-nine-figure deals for the Grammy Awards. He represented artists ranging from James Brown and Willie Nelson to Michael Jackson and Sen. Orrin Hatch over the years, and oversaw the $300 million purchase of Big Machine Records by Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings in 2018.

He resigned from Greenberg Traurig at the end of 2020 and was nominally retired, but continued his work behind the scenes as a top-level player for both artists, also including Justin Timberlake, Jimmy Buffett, Julio Iglesias, George Jones, Tammy Wynette, Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson, Jamie Foxx, George Strait, Kenny Chesney, Little Big Town, TLC, Tim McGraw and Faith Hill, along with the Recording Academy and many executives.

As Variety stated in 2021, Katz was the rare attorney who could “get Jimmy Buffett or a senator on the phone in minutes.”

Based in Atlanta, Katz was a native of the Bronx but moved south to attend the University of Tennessee Law School in Knoxville, the law library of which now bears his name. He graduated in 1969 and began his music career two years later, working with James Brown. He went on to represent dozens of top artists and executives — along with Allen Grubman, for many years he was considered the top music business attorney, with a power and reach that few could equal.

After decades at Greenberg Traurig, he left in 2021 amid some controversy, after being accused of sexual harassment by ousted president-CEO Deborah Dugan in a blockbuster legal complaint against the organization in 2020. Before her ouster after just eight months in the job, Dugan also sent a memo to the Academy’s head of HR expressing concern about the organization’s “exorbitant and unnecessary” legal fees to outside law firms, including Greenberg Traurig, which totaled more than $1 million annually for several years. He joined Barnes & Thornburg in 2021, where he is listed as senior counsel (retired).

A portion of the Northside Parkway in Atlanta is known as Joel Katz Parkway due to his contributions to the state of Georgia. At the University of Georgia campus at Kennesaw State University, he endowed and launched a commercial music program that now includes more than 500 students. He also led philanthropic endeavors in education and in cancer research.

Katz worked extensively with such programs as the Recording Academy’s Grammy in the Schools Program, the Atlanta Downtown Partnership’s Music Industry Symposium, and many lectures and panels for the Entertainment and Sports Industry Forum of the ABA and the Entertainment and Sports Law Section of the State Bar of Georgia.

In February of 2024, he received a 2024 Recording Academy Trustee Award in recognition of his contributions to the field of recording.