George Wein, the ultimate music promoter, died Monday. He lived a long and productive life—95 years–leaving the music world much better off because he lived.
Modern jazz was born in the early 1940s in a movement led by Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie.
But it took George Wein to bring jazz to the multitudes. An innovative and untiring organizer, Wein probably presented more musicians to more people than anyone else in history.
George Wein, a capable jazz pianist, started his career as a musician. But finding he was better at promoting music than playing it, he started his Storyville jazz club and Storyville record label in Boston in 1950—at 24 years of age.
He brought in the big stars of jazz—Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, and others. And he even played the piano for Billie Holiday, whose regular pianist failed to show up.
Wein knew what he wanted. As a teenager, he defied his family and brought Black musicians to their home in Newton, Massachusetts; and in his early 20s met the love of his life, Joyce Alexander, an African American Simmons College student who wrote a jazz column for the college newspaper. Twelve years later, they married over the objection of his Jewish parents; Joyce became his business partner and closest advisor.
In 1954, with funding from a tobacco fortune heir and resident of Newport, Rhode Island, George started the Newport Jazz Festival, establishing the template for virtually all music festivals worldwide.
This first festival featured the giants of jazz—Billie Holiday and Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald and Lester Young.
Louis Armstrong performed the second year. The third year, 1956, featured one of the festival’s epic moments when it presented Duke Ellington. Ellington’s band performed their little-known “Diminuendo and Crescendo Blue.”
With Duke offering encouragement and keeping time with a rolled-up newspaper, tenor saxophonist Paul Gonsalves performed an amazing extended solo of 27 blistering choruses lasting five minutes.
And the rest is history, as they say. At the time, many considered Ellington past his prime with a diminishing appeal. However, within weeks of this Newport event, Ellington was featured on the cover of Time Magazine. In addition, the album “Ellington at Newport,” featuring Gonsalves’s solo, became Duke’s best-selling album.
In 1959, Wein expanded beyond jazz and jazz-related artists. He and Pete Seeger began the Newport Folk Festival, featuring Seeger, Odetta, the Kingston Trio, the Weavers, and the young Joan Baez.
Bob Dylan’s show in 1963 established Dylan as the “voice of his generation.” One of the landmarks of folk history occurred in 1965 when Dylan broke out of his folk confines and showed up with an electric guitar, producing boos from the crowd and conflicts among performers. Folk purists considered his use of amplified, rock-influenced music a betrayal.
Ever-expanding the types of music at the jazz festival, Wein, in 1971, booked the Allman Brothers Band, which proved disastrous as rock fans rioted and brought about the cancellation of the festival and a ten-year exile from Newport.
To support Wein, who lost money that year, jazz musicians held a benefit concert. Some 20 “Hall of Fame” performers put on a six-hour show at Boston Garden on December 9, 1971. It is unlikely that there was ever such a star-studded jazz lineup before or after this event.
I was pleased to be in attendance at this night of dream combinations: Charles Mingus-Dave Brubeck-Art Blakey; Earl Hines-Gene Krupa-Bobby Hackett; Thelonious Monk-Dizzy Gillespie-Sonny Stitt-Kai Winding. And to top it all, Aretha Franklin closed out the show. What a time!
During the ten-year hiatus in Newport, Wein started the New York Jazz Festival. And he kept expanding—creating the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and the Grande Parade du Jazz in Nice, France, and more. Over the years, he also produced jazz festivals in Germany, the Netherlands, and Asia.
George Wein started what might be called the “music festival” movement presented around the world today.
