Bob Rusch (born 3 April 1943, New York) is an American jazz critic and record producer.Rusch studied clarinet and drums in his youth. During the 1970s, Rusch played drums in workshops with Jaki Byard and Cedar Walton. He wrote for the magazines Down Beat, Jazz Journal and Jazz Forum in the 1970s before founding Cadence Magazine in 1975. He founded two noted labels, Cadence Jazz (in 1980) and CIMP (in 1995), and produced or oversaw the release of hundreds of jazz releases; among those he has produced are Bill Dixon, Chet Baker, Glenn Spearman, Ernie Krivda, Ivo Perelman, Noah Howard, Dominic Duval, Steuart Liebig, Cecil Taylor, Fred Hess, Anthony Braxton, Bill Barron, Paul Smoker, and Steve Swell. He has run North Country Record Distribution, an independent jazz label distributor, since 1983. Rusch has donated his large, indexed collection of jazz periodicals to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.From 1965-1973, Rusch was a teacher at Woodward School, a private elementary school in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn. On June 4, 2014, three separate articles appeared in the Wall Street Journal accusing Rusch of "sexually abusing female students as young as 12 years old during the late 1960's and early 1970's." Rusch was interviewed by the Wall Street Journal, and in the articles "Rusch acknowledged that he had sex with multiple young students.... 'I accept involvement in some of the things that went on, not all of them, and to that extent I am embarrassed and remorseful and I have been for the better part of 41 years,' said Mr. Rusch, who is now 71 years old. 'I carry a lot of guilt.'"
Bob's theatre company is called "SkyPilot". It's from the song "SkyPilot" by "The Animals", which was used in a play Bob performed during his time in Chicago. The play was a big hit and Bob wanted to bring some of that good luck to his new theatre company. His friend Eric Curtis Johnson actually came up with the title.
$1.6 Million
