Newport Jazz Founder George Wein 'Makes It Happen'

Even though a picture from a concert benefiting a scholarship in the name of his late wife was on the living room floor of his 69th Street Manhattan apartment recently, George Wein counts it among his most prized possessions.

“I commissioned a young man to make a painting of the photo from that night,” the founder of the Newport Jazz Festival said of the photo featuring him on the Boston Symphony Hall stage with an ensemble cast of jazz musicians (including Herbie Hancock and Branford Marsalis).

“Right now it’s on the floor of my living room to let the painting dry. You have to let a painting dry for weeks.”

That Symphony Hall concert — a Celebration of Jazz and Joyce — kicked off the 2007 BeanTown Jazz Festival and a Berklee College of Music scholarship for an incoming minority freshman in the name of Wein’s late wife, who grew up in the South End.

“That was one of the greatest nights of my life,” the world-renowned jazz impresario from Newton said during a telephone interview.

That’s saying a lot considering the 85-year-old pianist has been putting on the Newport Jazz Festival since 1954 and its sister festival, the Newport Folk Festival since 1959.

This year’s Folk Festival will be on Saturday and Sunday at Fort Adam’s State Park in Newport, RI while the Jazz Festival will be Aug. 5, 6 and 7, at the same location. Wein, who played in Rockport, Mass. this past weekend with his band the Newport All-Stars, said the music is what keeps him excited about the event year in and year out.

This year’s Jazz Festival features one of the youngest lineups in years, including Berklee alum/instructor Esperanza Spalding. And while Justin Bieber fans didn’t know who the bassist, vocalist and composer was when she beat the pop star out for the Best New Artist Grammy in February, Wein was instrumental in helping launch her career about four years ago.

“I asked her to play with my band and she said ‘It will be an honor Mr. Wein,’ and I said ‘Don’t say it will be an honor you haven’t played with me yet,’” Wein said. “She’s been a friend every since. Esperanza is very special. She is someone who is very special to me.”

The 26-year-old has played Newport Jazz Festival several times but this will be her first year as a headliner.

“It’s marvelous,” Wein said of Spalding headlining. “She’s a very talented young lady. To me, when you get to know them the way I do, playing with them, working with them, it’s great to see the world
recognize them and say ‘Hey you’re part of something.’ She’s a very brilliant young lady and aside from her talent she’s smart as a whip."

“It’s her creativity," Wein continued. "She has a unique vocal sound and she’s looking to establish herself with a hit record. She writes music, plays impeccable base. She has a wonderful personality and she projects from the stage. She’s still searching [for her sound]. She’s got an identity but she needs more of a musical identity.”

As smitten as Wein is with Spalding, his admiration for her is nothing compared to the admiration he had for his wife.

A Simmons College student with a jazz column for her student paper, Joyce Alexander was chatting with a writer named Nat Hentoff backstage at the Boston Opera House one night in 1947 when Hentoff introduced Joyce to her future husband.

“I was attracted to her immediately,” said Wein, who never thought twice about being in an interracial relationship. “I was always interested in music and jazz ... I didn’t think of it that way. That’s what I was affected by, blues and everything that came with it became a part of my life.”

While Wein was stopped by police one night while walking Joyce to her Braddock Park home, the South End was otherwise hospitable to a white teenage from Newton.

Musicians such as Henry “Red” Allen and Frankie Newton used to come home with Wein to Newton to eat his mother’s red beans and rice.

“They were supportive and they loved the music, I was never forbidden anything,” Wein said of his folks. “Those were my growing days. I didn’t have any money but I was learning. I was getting to know the world. I was making it happen."

Wally’s Café is the only one of Wein’s former haunts that still exists. Estelle’s and the High Hat were among the other clubs he frequented but the Savoy Café, which opened on Massachusetts Avenue and eventually moved to Columbus Avenue, was his favorite of all when he was 16 and 17 years old.

Three years after meeting Joyce, Wein opened his own club on Huntington Avenue called Storyville that was the hottest place in town before closing in the 1960s. His greatest accomplishment was starting the Newport Jazz Festival at a time when naysayers said a non-classical event wouldn’t work as an outdoor event. Wein went on to launch several other festivals including the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and the Playboy Jazz Festival in Los Angeles. He has been criticized for making the festival scene too corporate but defends himself by saying large scale events are too expensive to produce without corporate sponsors.

But sponsorships were hard to come by during the recession and Wein turned the Newport festivals into a nonprofit organization earlier this year to make sure they would be preserved during good and tough economic times.

“It’s not a business for me anymore,” he said. “I’m working pro bono. I want to maintain the festival so it can keep going after I’m gone.”

But while his festivals are sure to survive for years to come, Wein isn’t so sure about putting on another benefit concert to raise money for the scholarship fund in his wife’s name — although the idea often comes up in conversation with Berklee President Roger Brown.

Wein said the scholarship fund is currently about $250,000 to $300,000 and he will deed a “good sum” to it in his will.

“I don’t know, you have to feel those things in a certain way,” Wein said. “At that point Joyce just passed away and a lot of the musicians knew her. There has to be a certain feeling and spirit that you just don’t manufacture."

“It has to happen.”