August 2009
10 posts
A Glorious Beginning to an Annual Clambake
A Glorious Beginning to an Annual Clambake
George Wein’s very first Newport Jazz Festival, held in 1954, took place on the lawn of the historic Newport Casino (lawn capacity of 5,000), which they rented for two days for a grand total of $350. Performers at that maiden voyage in Newport included Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, George Shearing, Johnny Smith, Oscar Peterson, the...
It Was a Very Good Year
Slate music columnist Fred Kaplan has just written the most thoroughly intriguing and persuasive treatise as to why Miles Davis’ 1959 masterpiece Kind of Blue is so universally praised over time. Highly recommended reading. Very scholarly and well thought out with tons of great examples (including sound files from individual tracks of that album and others) to support his argument. Kaplan is...
Those Who Have Grabbed Their Hats
There aren’t too many left. You scan through the pages of the Newport Jazz Festival program from 1954 to 1976 and you see the sheer numbers of players who have passed on (or “grabbed their hat” in jazzbo parlance). Trumpeter and close personal friend of George Wein, the great Bobby Hackett, died in 1970 (which was noted in the festival program that year). From the first festival...
Elvin at Newport '70
I’m checking out Elvin’s set at Newport, just a few years after he left the fabled John Coltrane Quartet. He’s leading a quintet featuring the great Japanese pianist Masabumi Kikuchi, bassist Wilbur Little and the dangerous two-tenor frontline of George Coleman and Frank Foster. Elvin, of course, fuels the proceedings with his inimitable over-the-barline traversing of the kit while Kikuchi feeds...
Who's on Alto?
It’s an amazing how much detective work goes into figuring out who is who on some of these tapes from the Newport Jazz Festival. Take yesterday, for example, when we were trying to solve the riddle from the 1955 festival. There were two unidentified tracks that featured a very smooth sounding alto saxophone fronting a quartet with piano, bass and drums. Now, the alto was not that “dry martini”...
Muggsy and the Boys Tearin' it Up in '64
You can just tell, looking at the programming over the years of the Newport Jazz Festiva since its inception in 1954, that “hot jazz” (or Dixieland) held a special place in the heart of impressario George Wein. This was the music of the ‘Roaring ’20s, initially popularized in Chicago by King Oliver’s Creole Band featuring star trumpeter Louis Armstrong. A musical movement further defined by...
July 3, 1960. Connover Says It’s...
End of the Newport Jazz Festival?
In 1960, the unthinkable happened. After six successful campaigns in Newport, it all came crashing down around George Wein and the Newport Jazz Festival board. Apparently, by 1959, young people (and not necessarily jazz fans) had caught on to the fact that Newport pubs were staying open until 4 or 5 a.m during festival week, and the additional fact that few bars were checking for ID. So under-aged...
Decade-Hopping at the Vault
As we get deeper and deeper into the process of digitally transferring and cataloging these achival tapes of the Newport Jazz Festival from 1954-1976, certain patterns begin to emerge. The sound of the crowds assembled at George Wein’s annual clambake have by now become familiar along with the heavily accented Bostonese of the impresario himself as he makes announcements between acts from...
Fast and Furious
Completed MP3 files are now coming fast and furious here at Wolfgang’s Vault. With a staff of seven or eight keen-eared young staffers listening intensively up on the ninth floor, we’re zipping through whole sets of music, night by night, year by year. The classic 1955 shows (the second year of George Wein’s Newport Jazz Festival) went by in a flash. Highlights that year included a killer set by...