Helped create music history with Newport Jazz Festival
NEW YORK — George Wein, an impresario of 20th century music who helped found the Newport Jazz and Folk festivals and set the template for music gatherings everywhere, died Monday.
Mr. Wein, 95, died “peacefully in his sleep” in his New York City apartment, said Carolyn McClair, a family spokesperson.
A former jazz club owner and aspiring pianist, Mr. Wein launched the Newport Jazz Festival in 1954 under pouring rain and with a lineup for the heavens — Billie Holiday and Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald and Lester Young. Louis Armstrong was there the following year and Duke Ellington in 1956.
Mr. Wein led the festival for more than 50 years. The success of Newport inspired a wave of jazz festivals. His multiday, all-star gatherings were also a model for rock festivals, whether Woodstock in 1969 or the Lollapalooza tours of recent years.
The idea for Newport came in part from locals Louis and Elaine Lorillard, who urged Mr. Wein to organize a jazz festival in their gilded resort community in Rhode Island. Elaine Lorillard, a socialite, complained that the summer scene was “terribly boring.” Her tobacco-heir husband backed her up with a $20,000 donation.
Bob Dylan’s show in 1963 helped establish him as the so-called “voice of his generation,” but by 1965 he felt confined by the folk community and turned up at Newport with an electric band. The response was mostly positive, but there were enough boos and conflicts backstage to make Dylan’s appearance a landmark in rock and folk history.
The Newport festival lasted despite ongoing conflicts, whether objections from the locals in Newport, the declining appeal of jazz, or the demands of the musicians. In 1971, the booking of the Allman Brothers Band proved disastrous when rock fans overran the grounds, even setting sheet music on fire, and brought about a decadelong exile from Newport.