April 11, 2005

• MONDAY BOOK

  Myself Among Others
  A Life in Music
  by George Wein

  After many a sidetrack, I’ve finally returned to the midst of this book by the man who was behind the Newport Jazz and Folk Festivals, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, and music festivals all over the world. There was a period in my life when I listened to jazz quite a bit, but though my son’s father is a jazz musician I’ve never dived in headfirst and become an expert. So it’s fascinating to read the life story of someone who did, who met, played music, and worked with all the greats. George Wein was born in 1925 to a Jewish family in the Irish Boston suburbs. By his early teens he’d become a professional pianist who led his own bands in the Boston area and accompanied visiting jazz musicians. When he was 25, he opened his own club in Boston and formed the Storyville music label. That was just the beginning. Before he was 30, he organized the first Newport Jazz Festival, and he was off and running. As a fascinating sidenote, he met his African-American wife Joyce when he was a student at Boston University and she at Simmons College and for 50 year they have fostered harmonious interracial relations in the music industry, recently creating the George and Joyce Wein Endowment in African American Studies at B.U. I’m reading now at the point in his life where he’s been invited to create the first Midwest Jazz Festival at the French Lick Springs Hotel in Indiana in 1958 (when he was 33). Here are some wonderful postcards from that hotel in its early days. The Sheraton Corporation was making a desperate attempt to resuscitate the resort and came up with the bright idea of a jazz festival. You might know French Lick as the home of Larry Bird who played high school ball there, but when this was going down he was still only two years old. Here’s a little excerpt:

  Roy Eldridge’s comment when he first heard about my plan to mount a jazz festival in French Lick was: “You mean you’re really going to do a festival in Cotton Curtain Country?” Even though it was in Indiana, French Lick was near the Kentucky border. Its culture was highly southern, and Jim Crow was still an official policy in the South. The musicians were wary of this fact: Art Farmer and Dave Bailey of the Gerry Mulligan Quartet expressed some doubts about using the hotel swimming pool. They lost all hesitation, however, when Dizzy Gillespie, arm in arm with Jimmy McPartland, dove right in–thereby integrating French Lick’s untested waters.

  Needless to say, the event was a success and continues today with an annual bash. George Wein has gone on to produce more festivals, play with more musicians, serve on executive boards at important music centers, perform as a pianist, and write this book which was recognized by the Jazz Journalists Association as 2004′s best book about jazz. He was named an NEA Jazz Master in 2005 at 80 years old. If you want to learn more about jazz, this is a great jumping off point.
  

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  Deep Thought: “A lot of times when you first start out on a project you think, This is never going to be finished. But then it is, and you think, Wow, it wasn’t even worth it.”
  Today I am grateful for: Home
  Guess the Movie: “You remember how it really was? You and me and booze – a threesome. You and I were a couple of drunks on the sea of booze, and the boat sank. I got hold of something that kept me from going under, and I’m not going to let go of it. Not for you. Not for anyone. If you want to grab on, grab on. But there’s just room for you and me – no threesome.” Answer: Days of Wine and Roses, 1962. Winner: eneventure.
  Iraqis Protest on Anniversary of Saddam’s Fall
  by Mussab al-Khairalla
  BAGHDAD – Tens of thousands of followers of a rebel Shi’ite cleric marched in Baghdad on Saturday to denounce the U.S. presence in Iraq and demand a speedy trial of Saddam Hussein on the second anniversary of his overthrow. (Rest of article here.)
  End of Day: 9:00 pm
  + = Lots of nice rain for the earth.
  - = Have to replace rear struts in car.

  • 12:00 pm
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