Music icon has ‘heart the size of Detroit’

“My life is a very different life,” he said, sunk into a high-back chair in his Buckhead office, a space cheerfully cluttered with framed records, plaques, stacks of papers and briefcases, James Brown bobbleheads and Grammy memorabilia.

That is, perhaps, the understatement of the decade.

Katz is a legend in Atlanta’s music business community. An entertainment attorney and chairman of global media and entertainment practice for Greenberg Traurig, yes. A Queens transplant who came to Atlanta 41 years ago and by a quirk of luck landed James Brown as his first client and saw his life change forever, absolutely.

But calling Katz a lawyer is tantamount to saying Atlanta occasionally has traffic.

He’s a workaholic businessman, zipping off in his private plane or heading to Europe or the Far East about 50 times a year. There are deals to be done everywhere, whether it’s for the Grammys, the Tonys or the Country Music Association awards.

Or maybe he’s needed to peruse paperwork for the Jackson estate — Michael was a client before his death and Katz handled the megastar’s will — or help extricate a prominent record producer from Dubai, as Katz famously did with Dallas Austin five years ago.

When he’s in Atlanta, spending time with his wife, Kane, his partner and best friend in a 20-year-plus marriage — “I don’t like to say how many years, exactly,” he said with a grin — he’s usually being honored by some organization or attending another lavish dinner or sprinkling his philanthropy across various beneficiaries.

So yes, his life is indeed a very different life.

And as Katz grows older, he has zero interest in alleviating any of the pressures that accompany such an existence.

“Even though I’ve been doing this a long time, I still have a dimension and view toward what happens. At one time, I wanted to retire when I was 40. At one time, I wanted to retire when I was 50. Then I was sure I would retire when I was 60, and now I’m 67 and saying I don’t want to retire,” Katz said with a touch of gleeful mischievousness. “[Working] keeps you busy. It keeps your mind active, your body healthier. If you’re physically able to work and you’re mentally wanting to work, then why not work?”

The cadence of a native New Yorker slips into Katz’s speech, especially with rhetorical questions. But he’s been a Southerner so long — he received his law degree from the University of Tennessee College of Law in 1969 — that his accent veers between twang and Yankee staccato.

Throughout an hourlong interview at Greenberg Traurig’s offices at the Forum in Buckhead — the firm will relocate to the Terminus building in the heart of the area in February — Katz is candid and affable, and when he likes you, it’s evident in his handshake and the twinkle in his eye.

While he’s instantly endearing to a stranger, those who know Katz well and long speak of his sterling reputation and credibility as a lawyer, but also of his kindheartedness.

“Don’t get me wrong — I would never want to be on the wrong side of the table negotiating a deal with him, but his brilliance, benevolence and savvy are forces to be admired and reckoned with,” said Michele Caplinger, the executive director of the Atlanta Chapter of the Recording Academy, the organization that produces the Grammys.

Caplinger has known Katz, general counsel for the Grammys, since the late ’80s and notes that while the business deals he has secured over the years are important, it’s the friendship that she treasures.

“He has a heart the size of Detroit,” she said.

Of all of Katz’s parade of accomplishments, his greatest achievement, he says, is funding the Katz Family Scholarships at the University of Tennessee.

Those applying for one of Katz’s four scholarships have to meet slightly unusual criteria: Students have to be in the bottom half of the class to receive the scholarship, yet rise to the top half the next year to keep it.

“It’s for students who are working while going to school, so it eliminates the need for a student to have to work at a job. They can concentrate almost full time on school. It evens the playing field,” he said. “My kids went to Harvard and Southern Methodist University, and they had a daddy who could pay for it. Most people don’t have that.”

Katz’s grown daughters, Leslie Lestz and Jeni Paul, live in Dallas and Austin, respectively, and have nothing to do with the music industry; Lestz is a doctor and Paul a businesswoman.

But Katz has a new academic goal: to fund a scholarship for the Joel A. Katz Music and Entertainment Business Program at Kennesaw State University, which launched last fall and already has exceeded early hopes with 150 students enrolled.

While Katz downplays his role in the program bearing his name — “All I did was give the initial funding for it, and I’ve had some of our friends and clients go out there and give talks” — he’s proud that the courses are providing students with hands-on experience in the Atlanta music business scene.

Bruce Burch, director of the program, has known Katz about 20 years and says his friend’s expertise and knowledge have already helped broaden its appeal to include all facets of entertainment. The Katz moniker has, apparently, also been an invaluable recruitment tool.

“[His name] is so big, you can go anywhere in any entertainment center in the world and it opens doors. Not just Atlanta or New York or Los Angeles. It’s international,” Burch said. “Pretty much anybody I call — within reason — will come [talk to classes] because Joel is involved.”

You hear that with most people commenting about Katz. He’s an indefatigable lawyer and a stand-up guy, sure, but that name is platinum.

Of the exhaustive number of charities and boards Katz participates in, the T.J. Martell Foundation, which funds cancer, leukemia and AIDS research, is one of his most visible.

Greenberg Traurig sponsors the annual Atlanta Best Cellars Dinner, an evening benefit featuring exclusive wines from private cellars and, in its Nashville incarnation, a country music celebrity at every table.

Holly Hawkins, the co-chairwoman of the Atlanta dinner, said when a local version of the event started a couple of years ago, she was told she should talk to Katz about getting involved.

“I didn’t know him from Billy Bob down the street,” Hawkins said. “But I soon realized that when you have Joel Katz, you don’t need celebrities. I tease him that I love his name because every time I use it, I get whatever I want. People respect him so much.”

Last fall, Hawkins’ teenage daughters, Sarah Beth Perry and Grace Ann Perry, founded T.J.’s Friends, a group of student volunteers working on behalf of the T.J. Martell Foundation.

Hawkins asked Katz whether he would join the advisory council and, she said: “Not only did he agree to do it, but his assistant sat down with us one day and helped my 14-year-old daughter with some wording for the website. That says so much about him. Some people get too big for their britches, but he’s never lost his grounding.”

Katz would have plenty of reasons to keep expanding those britches as the accolades pour in faster than a Kim Kardashian marriage.

Last month, U.S. News Media Group and Best Lawyers designated Greenberg Traurig “Law Firm of the Year” in entertainment law — the first time a music category has been included.

Katz has also been named Best Lawyers’ 2012 Atlanta Entertainment Law-Motion Pictures & Television Lawyer of the Year, and earlier this month, the entertainment trade magazine Variety included Katz in its “Dealmakers Impact Report 2011,” a list that spotlights the most creative and influential deals of the past year.

But while Katz appreciates the public recognition, he’s more interested in working than adding another honorary plaque to his wall. And despite his intense travel schedule, his heart is stuck in Atlanta.

He’s part of the Georgia Music Partners, a group trying to get tax credits for music artists who come to the state to record, rehearse or otherwise generate income — a la the current movie initiatives. Katz realizes that the wavering economy makes it difficult to pursue but hopes to have legislation in the next three years.

“We’re a great city with a lot of great places that make it attractive to filmmakers, but in all fairness, the reason that 95 percent of these films are coming here is because of the tax law,” he said. “Anyone who thinks differently is really smoking something they shouldn’t be smoking.”

Katz is also exploring Atlanta as the next home for the Georgia Music Hall of Fame, which had its Macon home shuttered this summer after the state Legislature exterminated funding. Katz — who was inducted into the hall in 1995 — says that meetings with the governor and mayor indicate interest in relocating the trove of memorabilia downtown, but the timing must be right.

“Hopefully there will be money from some of the companies here that see the value of it,” Katz said. “When you look at the music people who have been inducted, it’s amazing when you see the connectivity they have to our state.”

Which all leads back to Katz’s chance encounter with Brown, which inadvertently set him on this long and winding road.

“I met Mr. James Brown and he changed my life,” Katz said. “I got into all of this, really, on a fluke. I can’t say I planned my career.”