Word: jazzing
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...idle hour, Jazz Columnist Ralph Gleason of the San Francisco Chronicle staged a tongue-in-cheek interview with a fictional hipster named Shorty Pederstein. His old friend, he reported, had deserted the beard-and-sandal set of the Beat Generation, now boasted a Nob Hill address, clean shaves and tennis togs...
...Next year," said Saxophonist Paul Desmond, "maybe they could arrange to have Eisenhower at the same time." Just about everybody else, it seemed, was on hand last week for the opening of the fifth and biggest Newport (R.I.) Jazz Festival. The Duke was back for a Tribute-to-Ellington night; Benny Goodman was there for nostalgia. Trumpeter Miles Davis had declined this year's invitation: "What, me dig that crazy scene? Never!" But he too was there last week-along with Gerry Mulligan, Dave Brubeck, Lee Konitz, Sonny Rollins and a clutch of others-because the "crazy scene...
...were delivered to a trombonist, who translated them to a trumpeter, who again translated them for the confused saxophonist. The situation was further complicated by the fact that Brown's band was to play mostly new works, especially commissioned for the festival, e.g., John La Porta's Jazz Concerto for Alto...
...establish a free clinic for narcotics-addicted jazzmen). The 1958 festival is almost certain to clear even more than that. But as Newport's popularity with the public soars, its reputation among jazzmen is declining. They regard it as a giant public relations carnival-"a jazz supermarket," Trumpeter Davis calls it. Saxophonist Desmond feels that Newport is all right "for the young fellows just getting started," but that established stars "have nothing specially to gain, and the critics present can give us a roasting...
That kind of talk is profoundly disturbing to Elaine Lorillard, socialite wife of Festival Founder Louis L. Lorillard. Says she: "We've been chided for putting on a show, as if it were degrading for jazz to be played in theatrical surroundings for money . . . But we see no point in jazz being private and ingrown. Jazz is a full sphere, not an empty circle...