The Original Newport Jazz Festival: 1968 and Before

The Newport Jazz Festival celebrated its 50th anniversary this August 13 – 15. The current Newport Jazz Festival draws significant crowds at its site on the water at Fort Adams State Park. I went in 1986 and saw Miles Davis and Gerry Mulligan up close but it was a different event from the original. I have been watching Bert Stern’s movie, Jazz on a Summer Day, filmed at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival which captures this earlier version. It features performances by Louis Armstrong, Dinah Washington, Mahalia Jackson, Anita O’Day, Thelonious Monk, and others.

I was too young for the 1958 event and still living in New Orleans anyway. But I did go to the festival in 1968 and 1969 when it made a significant transition. The 1958 festival was held at Freebody Park, which still exists. At some point between 1958 and 1968 it moved from Freebody Park to Festival Park. The history is complex so this post will cover 1968 and before. Tomorrow, I will cover 1969 and after.

George Wein, who also ran Boston’s Storyville Jazz club in the 1950s, started the jazz festival as The Jazz Festival of Newport, RI in 1954. It continued under that name until 1958 when it was changed to American Jazz Festival, Inc. You can get a DVD of the 1962 festival which includes Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Oscar Peterson, Joe Williams, and Pee Wee Russell. There is also some blues by Jimmy Rushing and Joe Williams but the reviews say the image quality is not great. In 1964, the festival was re-named the Newport Jazz Festival.

In the summer of 1968 I was working on Cape Cod as a windmill operator for the town of Chatham. I gave tours of the mill but managed to get some time off and went to Newport with a friend. For most of the festival we sat on a hill side with only a few other people overlooking the event and listened for free. There were two highlights for us. On Saturday night Rahsaan Roland Kirk played an amazing set we heard from our hill top. He primarily played the sax and like Ray Charles, was blind shortly after birth. Rahsaan was known for his ability to play more than one saxophone at once. John Kruth has a book on his life. The other highlight was on Sunday as we invested in tickets to get inside and see Ray Charles up close. I still have the program and some pictures I took.

I went back last year to find the site were the 1968 and 1969 festivals occurred. I was planning to write a story about the experience. After driving around Newport and looking at likely terrain, I took some pictures at a spot that might have been it but later found was not right. I asked around town and was directed to one of the local librarians, Lynda Bronaugh, who was around at the time. She was not in that day but we exchanged emails. Here is what she told me:

“It appears to have been held at Festival Field until it left Newport. Girard Avenue was in place at that time, and the ground does slope before it reaches Girard, so you probably were sitting on the slope west of Girard.” The old site now contains a shopping center and apartments.

Lynda said there was some trouble at the festival in 1968, at the last concert which featured Dionne Warwick. We had already left and missed this one so we did not see the trouble. The crowd drew over 22,000 people, the largest crowd in history. Contractually, only 18,000 seats could be sold, but after all the seats were sold, management began to sell standing room at $3.50 each. Other fans encircled the field and security was non-existent. However, this was nothing compared with what followed next year when things got much more complex as I will discuss tomorrow.