[Dixielandjazz] New Book For Jazz Festival Promoters

[Stephen Barbone]

Everyone who produces a jazz festival, should read this book. An
autobiography of the master producer himself, George Wein. As many know,
he invented the Newport Jazz Festival, which later became the JVC Jazz
Festival in New York City, still the model of a varied and highly
successful jazz festival. Nobody, but nobody, does it better.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone

July 8, 2003 - NEW YORK TIMES

The Guy Who Turned Jazz Into an Outdoor Sport

By PETER KEEPNEWS

In the spring of 1962 George Wein held a news conference to announce
that he would be returning to Newport, R.I., that summer, after a
one-year absence, to produce the jazz festival he had first presented
there in 1954. "The name 'Newport' is synonymous with jazz," he
declared, "and signifies the most important single event in the history
of jazz."

There is room for debate about what, if anything, was the most important
event in jazz history. There is no room for debate about another
statement Mr. Wein made that day: "The festival is me." That claim can
be called arrogant, egocentric or even obnoxious; it cannot reasonably
be called inaccurate.

That's George Wein for you. His chutzpah may grate, but his
accomplishments speak for themselves. And as his vastly entertaining
autobiography proves, those accomplishments make a terrific story.

Mr. Wein is the most visible and influential jazz entrepreneur in the
world. What he more or less made up as he went along at Newport in 1954
quickly became the template for jazz festivals everywhere, most of them
produced by Mr. Wein himself. He is also the man behind the Newport Folk
Festival, an event every bit as celebrated as its jazz counterpart, and
the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, a remarkable 10-day
extravaganza that is as much a
celebration of the full sweep of that city's musical, cultural and
culinary life as it is of jazz.

Inevitably his ubiquitous influence has made him an inviting target:
over the years musicians have accused him of exploiting them, critics
have found his artistic vision limited, and civic leaders have
questioned the desirability of playing host to a jazz festival. (He
recounts many of the attacks here, sometimes graciously allowing that an
old adversary might have had a point but more often gleefully settling
old scores.) Just as inevitably he has developed a healthy ego. How else
could he have survived this long in such a tough business, let alone
thrived?

"Myself Among Others" is an apt title (if not an original one; the
actress Ruth Gordon used it for a memoir three decades ago). In his
exhaustive chronicle of a half-century behind the scenes, put together
with the help of Nate Chinen, a freelance writer, Mr. Wein is never far
from center stage, and his account of his rise from journeyman Boston
pianist to enterprising nightclub owner to global impresario is
compelling. But he knows that what gives the story its real juice
is all those illustrious "others" with whom he has worked.

Mr. Wein has plenty of big names to drop and plenty of anecdotes to
tell, many of which shed surprising light on the unusual nature of the
performer-producer dynamic. Here is Sarah Vaughan, misinterpreting Mr.
Wein's offer to manage her as a romantic come-on. Here is Duke
Ellington, showing up unannounced at Mr. Wein's Manhattan apartment to
celebrate his own birthday, then, for unexplained reasons, quietly
slipping out the back door.

Here is Dizzy Gillespie, understandably perplexed when, before he takes
the stage at the first Newport festival, Mr. Wein instructs him, "Please
don't clown out there." It was a "highly misguided" request, Mr. Wein
acknowledges in retrospect, roughly equivalent to telling Charlie
Chaplin he should tone down the horseplay.

At times "Myself Among Others" seems less like an autobiography than
like a series of artist rosters and itineraries or, worse, a ledger
sheet. Few readers are likely to be as fascinated as Mr. Wein is by the
details of which of his endeavors made money, which ones lost money, and
how much. On the other hand anyone who thinks producing concerts is an
easy road to wealth needs to know that the first Newport Jazz Festival
made a profit of $142.50, and that it ended up in the black only because
Mr. Wein chose not to collect his $5,000 producer's fee.

And anyone who doubts that the festival business is a perilous one needs
to read about Mr. Wein's running battle with the Newport authorities,
who, as he tells it, were always ambivalent at best about the yearly
influx of music fans and made getting the necessary paperwork a constant
struggle. The city finally decided enough was enough after the 1971 jazz
festival was ended prematurely by a gate-crashing mob that was there
mostly because there were no big rock
festivals that summer.

Mr. Wein calls the invaders "stupid kids," "hostile youths" and
"maniacs," not without reason. Still, it is a bit of an
oversimplification for Mr. Wein, who clearly dislikes rock, to explain
the violent behavior of a few thousand irrational people by observing
that "the rock-and-roll generation had come to power and Woodstock had
given them a voice."

Kicked out of Newport, Mr. Wein had the last laugh: he moved the
festival to New York, where it turned into a far grander if less bucolic
affair and continues to thrive as the JVC Jazz Festival. And little more
than a decade later he also brought both jazz and folk back to Newport,
where the reborn festivals have remained popular annual attractions.

"Myself Among Others" is marred by the occasional factual error. (The
payoff of a story about Charlie Parker, for example, has Mr. Wein
learning of Parker's death in March 1954, a full year before he actually
died.) And beyond a touching chapter about his wife, Joyce, and the
challenges they have faced as an interracial couple, Mr. Wein has little
to say about his personal life. Of course it could simply be that he
doesn't have time for a personal life, or to put it another way, that
his career is his personal life.

Anyone can write about the music played at a jazz festival. Very few
people can write authoritatively about what it takes to run one. George
Wein can do both, and in "Myself Among Others" he does both very well.