[Dixielandjazz] a Founder of the Newport Jazz Festival Dies At 93

[Robert S. Ringwald]

Elaine Lorillard, 93, a Founder of the Newport Jazz Festival
By DENNIS HEVESI, New York Times
Published: November 28, 2007
Elaine Lorillard, a socialite who with her husband, Louis, lured jazz greats 
to their
hometown in Rhode Island for a two-day concert series in the summer of 1954, 
starting
the Newport Jazz Festival and creating the model for what became a worldwide 
circuit
of outdoor jazz festivals, died on Monday near her home in Newport. She was 
93.
Elaine Lorillard in 1969
Her daughter, Didi Cowley, confirmed the death.
It was a casual remark during intermission at a classical concert in Newport 
in 1953
that inspired the Lorillards to sponsor the first Newport Jazz Festival. 
Mrs. Lorillard,
already a jazz fan, was seated next to John Maxon, then head of the Rhode 
Island
School of Design Museum.
"It's too bad we can't do something like this for jazz," he said. "That's 
another
music form that's worth a big-time festival."
The Lorillards got in touch with George Wein, then the owner of a jazz club 
in Boston,
and asked him to produce that first festival. The Lorillards and Mr. Wein, 
who went
on to become a renowned jazz impresario, brought together for the first 
concert series,
among others: the Modern Jazz Quartet, the Oscar Peterson Trio, the Dizzy 
Gillespie
Quintet, the Gerry Mulligan Quartet, the George Shearing Quintet, the Erroll 
Garner
Trio, the Gene Krupa Trio and the singers Billie Holiday and Ella 
Fitzgerald.
About 7,000 fans packed the grounds of the Newport Casino on the nights of 
July 17
and 18 in 1954.
"Because it was held in Newport, it gave an aura of social distinction to 
jazz that
it had never had before," Dan Morgenstern, director of the Institute of Jazz 
Studies
at Rutgers University, said in an interview yesterday.
The Lorillards led the nonprofit Newport Jazz Festival foundation for six 
years,
providing financial support of their own and from their friends.
In 1960, when the Lorillards could no longer afford to support the festival, 
Mr.
Wein found money elsewhere and moved the concerts to Freebody Park, the 
local municipal
stadium. (His Festival Productions Inc., now a division of the Festival 
Network,
runs festivals around the world.)
For a time, rock music was part of the mix. That ended in 1971 when angry 
fans, trying
to see the Allman Brothers, crashed the gates. Festival Productions moved 
the Newport
festival to New York in 1972. A more jazz-rooted festival later returned to 
Newport
and is still held each summer.
Elaine Guthrie was born in Tremont, Me., on Oct. 11, 1914, the daughter of 
Walter
and Eliza Pray Guthrie. Her father owned a printing company and her mother 
was a
professional pianist. Elaine Guthrie attended the New England Conservatory 
of Music.
But in 1943 she went to work for the Red Cross, teaching music and painting 
to orphans
in liberated Naples, Italy.
There she met United States Army Lt. Louis Lorillard, a descendant of Pierre 
Lorillard,
who founded the P. Lorillard Tobacco Company in 1760. They went to 
"underground jazz
clubs together" in Naples, their daughter, Didi, said, "and she fell in love 
with
this fabulous music." The Lorillards were married in 1946, but later 
divorced. Mr.
Lorillard died in 1986.
Besides her daughter, of Newport, Mrs. Lorillard is survived by a son, 
Pierre, of
Los Angeles, and two grandchildren.
Mr. Morgenstern of Rutgers, a friend of Mrs. Lorillard, said she never lost 
her love
of jazz. "I saw her in clubs just a few years ago," he said.


--Bob Ringwald K6YBV
530/642-9551
916/806-9551 Cell
www.ringwald.com
Fulton Street Jazz Band

"I can resist everything except temptation."  --Oscar Wilde, 1854 - 1900