1. Walkin' Shoes
2. Sweet And Slow
3. Blueport

Saturday, 1960

 LINER NOTES

The Newport Jazz Festival began in 1954 and was the first major American jazz festival. At first it was just a glimmer of an idea by the Lorillards of Newport. They sought out George Wein, then a young jazz presenter and pianist, for advice on how to put an evening or two of jazz programs together. Whitney Balliett once noted that the early local audience was ". . . not a typical jazz audience, many were be-minked, be-jewelled and white-haired"; their support helped breathe life into the festival, which soon became a model for jazz presentation worldwide.

Wein, who became festival director, booked top-flight mainstream artists, but he also booked musicians whose work was on the cutting edge of jazz developments in the mid-'50s - Dizzy Gillespie's adventurous small groups, Gerry Mulligan's pianoless quartet, Miles Davis, Charles Mingus - providing a wealth of styles and personalities in this fertile period for modern jazz.

From the outset, the jazz press was in attendance, but so were reporters from Look, Life, The New Yorker, Saturday Review and Newsweek. In the next few years, attention from the media reached an unprecedented level. The 1960 festival expanded from two days and nights to five. But success had its pitfalls; the town was as much a magnet to young people looking for a good time as the festival was to a devoted jazz fan. A riot broke out on Saturday night among the many restless youngsters encamped right outside Freebody Park, the festival site. Though concerts were scheduled through Monday night, events were cancelled following the Sunday afternoon blues program.

But that Saturday night, 15,000 people, the largest festival audience yet, attended the concert. In his August, 1960, festival review for Downbeat, John S. Wilson, now the senior jazz critic for The New York Times, wrote that he ". . . heard some of the best programming and production the festival had offered in its seven years of existence. . ."

By the time of this recording, alto saxophonist Cannonball Adderley had emerged as a leader after his work with Miles Davis' groundbreaking quintet in the late '50s. The warmth of his sound, plus his incisive sense of harmony and unerring phrasing proved a winning combination. Work Song was a crossover hit in its day, helping create a "soul-jazz" fusion of sorts that was emulated by many groups from the '60s on.

Gerry Mulligan made his reputation in the late '40s and early '50s as an arranger for Gene Krupa, Stan Kenton and others, and as a collaborator with Miles Davis and Gil Evans on the now-legendary "Birth of the Cool" scores. A featured artist at Newport since its inception, in 1960 Mulligan performed with his then newly-formed Concert Jazz Band. The band swung through scores that display the kind of wit, falling-off-a-log intricacy and harmonic sophistication that have given his work - as performer, arranger and bandleader - a signature sound for over four decades.

Oscar Peterson has continued to hold sway as one of the world's greatest modern jazz pianists since his 1949 U.S. debut at Carnegie Hall. Perhaps one of the only performers on that Saturday night who had to get escorted through the mob to reach the festival site, his performance here is nonetheless just about perfect. With Ed Thigpen on drums and Ray Brown on bass, the trio seems airborne here, fueled by Peterson's drive and rush of ideas.

The program closes with the Dizzy Gillespie Quintet, his main group in the late '50s following his historic State Department tours with his big band a couple of years earlier. His set percolates with Latin-tinged polyrhythms, a seductive and influential aspect of his work since the late '40s. And his improvisations throughout show the Gillespie genius - risk-taking, quickly moving from intimate to expansive moods, all expressed through his stratospheric virtuosity.

Three decades later, Gillespie, Adderley, Armstrong, and many other jazz luminaries have passed on. But recordings such as this can transport you. There you are, at Newport on a hot summer night, with a whiff of the sea, and a succession of 'jazz giants tossing off their magic before you.

-Notes by Stephanie L. Stein