George Wein (03/10/25 - 13/09/21)

George Theodore Wein should have had Newport as his middle name, since he became so identified with the Rhode Island resort. The son of a prominent ENT specialist in Boston, he was already at 25 the proprietor of “George Wein’s Storyville”, a nightclub that featured currently neglected stars as Sidney Bechet and Jo Jones, as well as providing an early platform for Ruby Braff. This led to him being approached by Newport resident Elaine Lorillard, whose husband put up the starting fund for the first festival in 1954.

A two-day event with everyone from Eddie Condon to Lennie Tristano, it set the tone for ever more ambitious annual festivals, transmitted from 1955 by Voice Of America radio and from the following year recorded by established labels, the famous Ellington At Newport being an early outcome. The movie Jazz On A Summer’s Day, filmed there in 1958, was released in 1960, the year that booking some pop-oriented acts provoked a small-scale “rebel festival” (organised by Mingus and Max Roach) but also brought riotous teenagers creating havoc in the town. After the initial not-for-profit organisation was wound up, Wein set up his own commercial company which ran the festival from 1962 onwards and moved into European tours, beginning with Thelonious Monk.

He also started the Newport Folk Festival in 1959 and from 1964 was importing his jazz festivals to Berlin, London, Paris and even New Orleans, where he was previously unwelcome because of his African-American wife Joyce, whom he had known since 1947. The 1970s onwards saw him masterminding the Grande Parade de Jazz in Nice, as well as moving the “Newport” festival to New York City in 1971 and involving corporate sponsors such as Schlitz, Kool and JVC. There it continued to thrive and, despite cancellation in 2020 due to the pandemic, it duly happened this year under the artistic directorship of Christian McBride.

Starting out as a teenage pianist who studied with Marguerite Chaloff, Wein had led the house band at Storyville and appeared on several albums, later branching out to lead all-star bands on his festivals. Seeing him alone on stage after a soundcheck, playing Thelonious Monk’s reharmonisation of ‘Sweet And Lovely’ – while Monk himself was within earshot – demonstrated that Wein was serious about his playing but well aware of his position in the scheme of things. And many of those things, he had helped to bring about in the first place.