ALL THAT JAZZ

Today’s musicians who scat and blow and sing and riff and improvise until their fingers bleed at the Newport Jazz Festival are part of a legacy that dates to 1954. Some of the musical genre’s greatest legends — including Billie Holiday, Dave Brubeck, Miles Davis, Etta James and Herbie Hancock — set the standard for the level of talent that festival attendees expect to see on stage today. When the Duke Ellington Orchestra played “Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue” at the festival in 1955, the saxophone solo had no less than 27 choruses.