George Wein, who set the standard for what outdoor music gatherings would become with his leadership of the Newport Folk and Jazz Festivals from the 1950s into the 21st century, died Monday at his …
Wein said that he, too, believed his festivals laid the groundwork. “We were the first of the major outdoor music events,” he said.” Woodstock evolved right out of Newport with my staff, my sound people and my light people. The people who put on Woodstock had been to Newport and said, ‘Hey, why don’t we put the rock thing into the same feeling that Newport has?’ So Newport was ahead of its time because it represented the music of its day, which was jazz music.
In 1953, a professor from one of Boston’s local colleges brought a socialite, Elaine Lorillard, to his club who told him that she and her husband, Louis, had brought the New York Philharmonic to the city of Newport for a concert series but lost a huge amount of money due to lack of attendance. She suggested he could be helpful in trying to do something more successful in a jazz format the following summer. He looked to a nearby classical music festival in Tanglewood for inspiration.
The diversity stretched so far that he put Led Zeppelin and other rock bands onto the Newport Jazz Festival in 1969, but he pulled back from that. “Look, I could have been the biggest rock producer in New England,” he told Jazzwax. But “after the festival, I said to myself, ‘This isn’t the life I want.’ … I had no control over the rock concerts. I couldn’t program them. I couldn’t use my own creative talents, whatever they were. … You put a group on, and they owned the festival.
Another documentary, 1967’s “Festival!,” was filmed at the Newport Folk Festival between 1963=65 and included artists including Dylan, Johnny Cash, Pete Seeger, Howlin’ Wolf, Donovan, the Staple Singers, Judy Collins and Mississippi John Hurt. Now available on home video as a Criterion Collection title, the film was nominated for a best documentary Oscar.“went electric” for the first time.
In 2007, Wein sold his company to a group that soon ran into financial trouble. Wein, then 81, reacquired the festival names two years later. In 2010, he established and was named chairman of the non-profit Newport Festivals Foundation.
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