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 the great Max Roach-Clifford Brown Quintet, powerhouse big band sets by Woody Herman’s Third Herd and the Count Basie Orchestra, plus brilliant sets by the Dave Brubeck, Miles Davis and the Modern Jazz Quintet. So much music, so little time. I’m just trying to play catch-up now, but I’m falling way behind the beat. As soon as I tackle one night of music from 1955, for instance, the eager staff upstairs is already feeding me with sounds from the 1964 Newport Festival and the 1970 Newport Festival (the year that George Wein orchestrated a gala 70th birthday celebration for Louis Armstrong). Meanwhile, I can’t wait to listen to the controversial and supposedly disastrous 1969 Newport Jazz Festival — the year that George “sold out” to rock and booked Led Zeppelin, Frank Zappa, James Brown, Johnny Winter, Sly and the Family Stone and the electric Miles Davis band. YEAH!!!!
