Crossover dreams Newport Jazz celebrates 50 years BY JON GARELICK

The Newport Jazz Festival celebrates its 50th anniversary this weekend. Never mind that since that first show in 1954, there have been at least a couple of hiatuses. In 1960, the kids ran amuck downtown, closing the festival, which didn’t return for two years. In 1969, rock came to the festival in full force — Jethro Tull, Sly and the Family Stone, and Led Zeppelin. And by 1971, it had become a Woodstock-like destination for rock fans. It sank in 1971 when audience members rushed the stage during a performance by, of all people, Dionne Warwick. After that, the festival decamped to New York from 1973 to 1980, then in 1981 returned to Newport, where as the JVC Jazz Festival — Newport, R.I., it continues this weekend.

Newport is often cited as the daddy of all jazz festivals, but it’s also come to represent jazz’s relationship with the mainstream. Newport founder George Wein (still at the helm in his late 70s) wrote in his autobiography that he always wanted to present "jazz in its widest definition," but his definition was more than a commercial sop. It’s the dream of this essentially minority art form to break through to a wider audience, even as in its purest forms it straddles the line between pop and classical. Wein remembered the closing sets in 52nd Street jazz clubs: "We could sit within ten feet of the musicians and have the room all to ourselves. At times, this seemed like the essence of jazz."

And yet, Wein followed those very American impulses — to make a buck, yes, but to find commonality with the mass audience. Entrepreneurs like Wein and Norman Granz — the creator of Verve Records and the touring Jazz at the Philharmonic — had another impulse: to take the geniuses they admired — Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, Count Basie, Billie Holiday — out of the dancehalls and the tiny saloons and put them on a concert stage in front of thousands.

This year, wanting to make the 50th anniversary "special," Wein has put together a festival that’s more purely "jazz" than it’s been in a long time — no Isaac Hayes or Natalie Cole. It’s as heavy a roster of jazz stars as the festival has had in years: Dave Brubeck, Branford Marsalis, the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, Chico Hamilton, George Shearing, Lee Konitz, Ornette Coleman, James Moody, the Mingus Big Band, Dave Douglas with Roswell Rudd, and on and on. It’s the whole spectrum — young and old, inside and out. If nothing else, this will be a chance to find out who the audience for jazz is these days, and how big it is.

ONE PLAYER who is a multiple-returnee to the Newport stage is 51-year-old trumpeter Jon Faddis, who began performing at Newport with the likes of Jimmie Smith, Art Blakey, and his mentor, Dizzy Gillespie. Faddis leads his own orchestra — the descendant of the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band, which he led for 10 years before Carnegie’s executive director decided to discontinue the program. On Saturday afternoon, the Jon Faddis Jazz Orchestra plays a salute to Dizzy, Charlie Parker, Benny Goodman, and Count Basie with special guests.

"Ken Peplowski [clarinettist] will be doing ‘Sing Sing Sing,’ the original Fletcher Henderson arrangement for Benny Goodman," Faddis tells me from his home in Connecticut. "And then we’re going to contrast that with an arrangement that was done for the band by Jim McNeely, which is the same tune but modernized, updated, the evolution of the tune through the times, featuring our lead saxophonist, Dick Oatts. All of the other soloists have at one time or another played with the orchestra — Clark Terry, James Moody, Jackie McLean, Phil Woods, and Ron Carter. Jackie McLean and Phil Woods will be doing a little bit of Charlie Parker, ‘Confirmation,’ which was arranged by Steve Turre. Ron Carter will probably do an arrangement of one of his tunes that was part of a suite that was dedicated to Miles Davis and was arranged by Garnett Brown for the band, ‘Eighty One.’ Ron may float and guest on some other things. He said, ‘If I’m going to be up there, I want to play!’ With James Moody, I think we’ll have him play on one of the Sonny Stitt tunes which is called ‘Eternal Triangle,’ or we may have him do something from Dizzy’s book, ‘Emanon.’ He [Stitt] played that famous solo in 1946, when he was 21 years old. And with Clark Terry, we’re going to try and get him to do a little ‘mumbles’ and some blues and things like that, and maybe have Moody join in with some scatting."

What Newport recordings does Faddis remember from his youth? "There’s Duke Ellington’s band in 1956 with ‘Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue,’ Louis Armstrong’s 70th birthday tribute. I’ll tell you one record I wore out was Dizzy at Newport!"

FOR A TASTE of what Faddis is talking about — and of what Wein is trying to achieve with the 50th-anniversary edition of Newport — check out the three-CD set Happy Birthday Newport! 50 Swinging Years (Columbia Legacy). It doesn’t actually span the entire history of the festival, or even, strictly speaking, Newport. The first performance is Louis Armstrong and His All-Stars doing "Tin Roof Blues" from 1956 and the last is the V.S.O.P. Quintet of Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams playing Hancock’s "Maiden Voyage," from a Newport@New York concert in 1976.

But there are serendipitous one-of-a-kind match-ups: Thelonious Monk with the odd and endearing clarinet genius Pee Wee Russell; pan-generational, pan-stylistic line-ups like Coleman Hawkins with Howard McGhee, Clark Terry, Zoot Sims, Roy Haynes, and Joe Zawinul. The great stride-pianist Willie "The Lion Smith" plays a beautiful "Echoes of Spring," cornettist Ruby Braff plays a vibrant, perfectly constructed solo on "Just You, Just Me," and then there’s Ellington’s historic, proto-rock-and-roll performance of "Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue" with tenor-saxophonist Paul Gonsalves’s famous 27-chorus solo that brought down the house, reignited Duke’s career, and led him to say, "I was born in Newport in 1956.’ There’s Muddy Waters and Mahalia Jackson and Chuck Berry.

You get the live ambiance — crowd noise, shouting grunting musicians at work. No, there’s nothing like the wonderful off-stage fussing of George Wein on the Columbia/Legacy Miles Davis at Newport 1958 ("Tell Chambers to leave everything alone!"), but you do get Wein’s notes on Davis’s performance with Thelonious Monk on " ’Round Midnight." "Tell Monk he played the wrong changes," whispers Davis to Wein as he comes off stage. "Tell him yourself," Wein answers. "He wrote the song."

RAN’S SUMMER THING. Speaking of Mahalia Jackson: composer, pianist, and New England Conservatory professor Ran Blake offers one of his intense summer workshops this year, open to music students, professionals, and amateurs, on the great gospel artist. The class will explore "the musical world of Mahalia Jackson — her position within the gospel music, her unique relationship with pianist Mildred Falls, and her exquisite vocal timbre, using selected recordings, articles, films, and conversations with those who knew and worked with her." The five three-hour sessions run from August 11 to 19. For more information, call (617) 585-1100, or visit http://www.newenglandconservatory.edu/summer