NewPort Jazz Festival Celebrates 50th Anniversary

[DudeAsInCool]

Late to the Party?

The Newport Jazz Festival and the golden age of jazz.

By Fred Kaplan

Posted Tuesday, Sept. 28, 2004, at 7:38 AM PT

The Newport Jazz Festival was one of the great celebrations of the mid-20th century before it devolved into one of the more ossified institutions of the late 20thcentury. The festival—which is now called the JVC Jazz Festival—marked its 50th anniversary this year. To celebrate, its founder, George Wein, produced a three-CD compilation of live recordings—many of them never before released—called Happy Birthday Newport: 50 Swinging Years.

The tracks are arranged by musical style. Disc 1 features the old-timers (Louis Armstrong, Eddie Condon, Willie "The Lion" Smith, Duke Ellington, Count Basie). Disc 2 emphasizes those who straddled the divide between '30s swing and '40s bebop (Buck Clayton, Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, Roy Eldridge, as well as the singers: Ella Fitzgerald, Dinah Washington, and Billie Holiday). Disc 3 highlights the modernists (Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Sarah Vaughan, John Coltrane.

http://www.slate.com/id/2107198/

[Kooperman]

great stuff there....

[method77]

I'd like to see that sometime. Heard a lot. Too many things to see, so far away though