From deep inside the Vault comes another treasure for music fans to savor. While Wolfgang’s Vault has already firmly established a reputation as a major chronicler of classic rock through its acquisition of audio archives from Bill Graham’s Filmore West and Filmore East, as well as recordings made from 1958 to 1974 at L.A.’s Ash Grove nightclub, now comes the big news that it has recently acquired the entire audio archive from the Newport Jazz Festival. For hardcore jazz fans, this is akin to discovering the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Established in 1954 by impressario George Wein, this scenic summer festival on the banks of Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island has showcased a Who’s Who in Jazz. From Louis Armstrong and Coleman Hawkins, Duke Ellington and Dave Brubeck to Monk, Mingus and Miles, all the giants of jazz over the past five decades appeared at the Newport Jazz Festival, and their performances (some of which are regarded as historic in jazz lore) were expertly documented by Wein’s audio crew. Over 150 “Live at Newport” recordings have been released by various labels since the festival’s inception, but Wolfgang’s Vault has access to countless hours of other previously unissued performances by the jazz elite.
Though Wein was an ardent fan of mainstream jazz and an accomplished pianist himself (he continues to tour the world-wide festival circuit at age 84 with his George Wein All-Stars), he maintained an eclectic attitude in his booking policy for the Newport Jazz Festival. So along with such straight ahead icons as Armstrong, Hawkins, Roy Eldridge, Lionel Hampton, Count Basie, Billie Holiday, Eddie Condon, Turk Murphy, Jack Teagarden, Bobby Hackett and Benny Goodman, Wein also booked players of a more modernist approach like Dave Brubeck, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Oscar Peterson, Max Roach, Jimmy Giuffre and George Shearing. And he also pushed the envelope with such representatives of “The New Thing” as Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman, Rahsaan Roland Kirk and John Coltrane. They all appeared at Newport, and their performances were preserved for all time. Now, after a painstaking and meticulous process of transferring all of the existing one-inch magnetic tape reels to a digital format, the Vault will make these treasures available to jazz fans for the first time.
Stay tuned for these potent and profoundly swinging sounds by some of the greatest names in jazz.
