​In a previous blog, I discussed a jazz concert sponsored by the Kennedy White House that was held at the Sylvan Theater on the Washington Monument grounds on the night of August 28, 1962. A gathering of mostly government summer interns heard the classic Brubeck Quartet followed by singer Tony Bennett and his trio. Columbia Records, with prominent producer Teo Macero on hand, recorded the music and belatedly released Bennett/Brubeck: The White House Sessions, Live 1962, on Columbia CD in 2013. 

But surprise, surprise, there was another jazz group on the bill that night—the Newport All-Stars—led by jazz festival impresario and pianist George Wein. In fact, they opened the show, and Columbia recorded them as well but did not release the music. The sounds the interns heard that balmy summer night are now available to the public, thanks to the staff at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC (more on this later). 

A swing Dixie outfit, the Newport All-Stars had been in existence since 1956 under the tutelage of George Wein. Over the years, numerous talented musicians have cycled on and off the roster. But during the 1958–1963 period, the core slots remained rather stable: George Wein (piano), Pee Wee Russell (clarinet), Ruby Braff (cornet), and Marshall Brown (valve trombone), supported by a pickup bassist and drummer, as was the case for the Kennedy-sponsored gig. 

At the time, according to New Yorker critic Whitney Balliett, Wein’s group represented a type of jazz that was rapidly disappearing—relaxed, emotional, unpretentious, and of no school, firming the heart and brightening the eye.[1]

Pianist Wein was a swing stylist somewhere between Fats Waller and Teddy Wilson (Balliett again), though still comfortable in a bebop setting. His playing always amazed and exceeded expectations, especially for one burdened with the managerial complexities associated with staging festivals.

Clarinetist Pee Wee Russell’s playing was, well, a poet’s delight. From Balliett: “hopefully eccentric, squeaks, coppery tone, querulousness, growls, and overall hesitancy—most original stylist in jazz.”[2] And from another, writer/pianist Dick Wellstood, “crabbed, chocked, knotted tangle of squawks with which he could create such woodsy freedoms, such an enormous roomy private universe.” Nonetheless, all would agree that Pee Wee Russell could also coax pure and gentle notes from his instrument when he wanted to.[3] 

Cornetist Braff took a pre-Bebop approach to improvisation, perhaps using more embellishment and vibrato than modernists, similar to his idol Louis Armstrong. Overall, he was a relaxed melodist, unique like his frontline companion, and should have been much better known.

Trombonist Brown had earned his festival wings with Wein back in 1958, when he worked his tail off to form the International Youth Band, which performed at Newport. The venture ultimately failed, done in by too many negative critical reviews. A later attempt at establishing a youth band made up of American high school kids succeeded, thereby reinforcing his exemplary leadership and teaching skills.[4]

As a trombonist, Brown never ranked at the top of the jazz polls, his reputation based on being a solid ensemble player. Wein once commented, “Marshall played decent valve trombone, although he never really had a trombone lip.”[5] 

The rhythm section for the Kennedy gig consisted of Washington, DC, natives Billy Taylor Jr. on bass—yes, the son of famous pianist Billy Taylor—and Eddie Phyfe on drums. 

The evening’s mostly youthful audience may not have been familiar with the Newport All-Stars and their brand of “rapidly disappearing” jazz. Their appearance occurred largely because three months prior, Rhode Island Senator Claiborne Pell, a former Newport Jazz Festival board member, invited the All-Stars to play a concert in the rotunda of the old Senate Office Building in Washington, DC. 

The All-Stars played a lunch-hour show on Monday June 18 to some 500 senatorial staff members. It was the first such concert in the rotunda; the occasion was noteworthy enough to prompt the distribution of an AP Wire Service photo across the country. The next morning the All-Stars appeared on the NBC Today Show[6], and the Washington Post featured a front-page photo with the following caption:
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​Wein and the boys followed their historic rotunda rendezvous with a series of appearances leading up to the 1962 Newport Jazz Festival, where Senator Claiborne Pell delivered the festival’s opening remarks on July 6. 

The remainder of July and early August, Wein busied himself with establishing the inaugural Ohio Valley Jazz Festival outside Cincinnati, and on the festival’s last day, August 26, he joined the All-Stars on stage.[8] Two days later, after opening remarks by Rhode Island’s tireless Senator Pell, the band mounted the Sylvan Theater stage to perform for hundreds of summer interns (some with their parents) gathered on the Washington Monument grounds.
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​The band played six tunes, a well-paced mix of swing-era standards, four up tempo, one change of pace, and a Pee Wee special. Wein announced the title of each tune:
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Solos were plentiful on the up tempos numbers with Kansas City style riffs backing the soloist.

Applause from the largely student audience was respectful—if not overly generous—after individual solos and at the conclusion of a song, and then at the close of “Pee Wee’s Blues,” it was lengthy and loud, no doubt helped along by George Wein’s initial setup that promised a historic moment: “Pee Wee’s going to play the blues on the Washington Monuments grounds!” Drummer Eddie Phyfe also drew a huge ovation at the finish of his drum break on “Saint Louis Blues.”[9]

Thanks to the splendid work of Library of Congress staff, especially Bryan Cordell of the Music Division (Recorded Sound), the Newport All-Stars segment once lost has now been found. The entire Kennedy White House 1962 Sylvan Theater concert can now be heard at the Library.
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Take a listen if you can, and I’m sure you will agree that the All-Stars proved to be an excellent opening act for jazz headliners Brubeck and Bennett, whose hit tunes (“Take Five”) and (“I Left My Heart in San Francisco”) were well received by the youthful summer crowd.

As previously mentioned, fans can listen to the Bennett/Brubeck segments on a Columbia CD. Additionally, George Wein and the core group recorded in studio on October 12, 1962, which is available on George Wein & the Newport All-Stars LP/CD (Impulse).

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CODA
There were only two Kennedy White House jazz events, the one described above and the other by the Paul Winter sextet for 10- to 19-year-old children of diplomats and government officials held in the East Room on November 19, 1962. 

Interestingly, we have the music for both concerts, the former on Columbia CD (Bennett/Brubeck) and at the Library of Congress (Newport All-Stars), and for the latter, on Living Music CD (Paul Winter Sextet, Count Me In, 1962 & 1963).

There was only one other White House jazz event for which we have the music: President Nixon’s birthday extravaganza for Duke Ellington in the East Room on Blue Note CD: 1969 All-Star Tribute to Duke Ellington. 

And that’s that! 

How about all the other jazz events? For Presidents Johnson, Ford, Carter, Reagan, and the others? Isn’t it about time the music at the People’s House (as George Washington called it) is released to the people?

1. Whitney Balliett, Collected Works: A Journal of Jazz, 1954–2001 (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2002), 174.
2. Ibid., 76–77.
3. Robert Hilbert, Pee Wee Russell: The Life of a Jazzman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), xiii.
4. George Wein with Nate Chinnen, Myself Among Others: A Life in Music (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2004), 184–86; 194. 
5. Ibid., 183. 
6. Ibid., 233.
7. Photo caption “Joint’s Jumping on the ‘Hill,’” photographer Vic Casamento, Washington Post, Monday, June 18, 1962, page 1. 
8. George Wein, Myself Among Others, 432–35; Robert Hilbert, Pee Wee Russell, 241.
9. George Wein comments, tunes played, and crowd reaction transcribed by the author from the audio: White House Jazz Seminar, Sylvan Theater, White House, 1962-08-28 (digital ID: 2603586), Library of Congress, Washington, DC.​

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The most notable jazz event of 1969—and one of the most notable in all of jazz history—was the Duke Ellington gala held at the White House on April 29. This six-hour event included a banquet, a 90-minute concert of 27 Ellington songs performed by an all-star jazz ensemble, and a jam session with dancing. Hundreds of guests attended the celebration, during which President Nixon awarded Duke the Medal of Freedom.
 
This was the first time the award was given to an African American and the first time it was given to a jazz musician. This gesture, at a time when jazz was not yet fully recognized as an art form, set the jazz arts community abuzz like never before. Not only did the medal go to the most respected, honored, and accomplished jazz musician in over four decades, but it was as if the award had gone to jazz itself, bestowed at the highest level of government. Greater recognition was bound to follow, and it did.
 
Jazz received its first federal grant in 1969, which grew tenfold over the next five years and also set the stage for jazz to receive significant grant money from reluctant foundations for the next ten years. Shortly thereafter, jazz was accepted as a fully recognized American art form.
 
And it all began at the Ellington tribute in the spring of 1969, well described by jazz critic Dan Morgenstern: “Though there were moments of appropriate solemnity, the tenor of the evening was one of cheerful warmth and friendly informality, set by the president himself.”

More in-depth information can be found in my book Ellington at the White House, 1969, and the recorded concert can be heard on All-Star White House Tribute to Duke Ellington, Blue Note (2002). 
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The “Year of Duke” continued. His orchestra came in first in DownBeat magazine’s critics and readers polls, and he topped those polls in the composer and arranger categories as well. Moreover, his album And His Mother Called Him Bill was voted the year’s best by critics and the year’s fourth best by readers.[1]
 
Mother Called Him Bill is the maestro’s homage to his long-term composer-companion, Billy Strayhorn, who passed in 1967. The record is notable for its celestial tracks by altoist Johnny Hodges, particularly in “Blood Count,” “After All,” and “Day Dream,” the latter a late-at-night, sob-in-year-beer favorite. Stray’s compositions brought out that special, sensuous Hodges sound. As singer Lillian Terry recently put it, “Heavens, when he blows those long, languid notes . . . it’s an actual caress.”
 
The flip side of the Hodges coin—the bluesy side—Billy also knew well, as illustrated by “Snibor,” “The Intimacy of the Blues,” and “Acht O’Clock Rock.”[2]
 
In the year 1969, DownBeat fairly embraced the avant-garde movement while also fully embracing rock. Regarding the former, reviews of new thing musician albums were well represented and, generally speaking, highly rated (there were exceptions, like altoist Lou Donaldson’s scorching article declaring it was a bunch of noise made by amateurs[3]).
  
For example, albums by Gunter Hamphill, John Carter and Bobby Bradford, Don Cherry, Archie Shepp, Pharoah Sanders, Ornette Coleman, Sonny Simmons and Prince Lasha, Albert Ayler, Roscoe Mitchell, and Joseph Jarman were all received. And, oh, the movement’s founding father, Ornette Coleman, was entered into the DownBeat Hall of Fame in 1969.
 
DownBeat had tippy-toed around rock in years past but dove deep into the music in 1969. Besides establishing a regular column for the first time (by Alan Heilnman), the magazine featured articles about the following rock musicians and groups, as well as reviews of their albums: Tim Hardin, Steve Miller Band, George Benson, Mike Bloomfield, Bob Dylan, Mothers of Invention, Blood, Sweat and Tears (BST), Ten Years After, and Chicago.[4]
 
The Newport Jazz Festival followed suit, inviting a slew of rockers to perform, including BST, Lighthouse (a BST clone), Ten Years After, Jethro Tull, Jeff Beck, Mothers of Invention, Sly and the Family Stone, and James Brown. In one respect it worked—the festival drew a larger crowd. But it wasn’t a jazz crowd; it included a sizable number of youthful, rowdier fans (think Woodstock), resulting in a host of security problems. Impresario George Wein concluded, “The kids destroyed the event and the experiment was a failure.” The Newport town council concluded, “No rock next year.”[5]
 
It was also the year of Miles Davis. DownBeat readers voted him jazzman of the year and best trumpeter and combo leader. They also voted his albums Filles de Killimanjaro (FDK) and In a Silent Way the year’s best and third best, respectively.[6]

While not fully appreciated at the time, these two stepping-stone albums represented Miles’s first breakaway from the hard bop aesthetic (and his occasional romantic excursions) that had begun with Walkin and continued from the first great quintet (Round Midnight) and sextet (Milestones and Kind of Blue) to the second great quintet (Miles Smiles and E.S.P.). His breakaway sound would soon be labeled jazz fusion, jazz rock, or electric Miles (Bitches Brew).

Interestingly, neither FDK nor In a Silent Way stirred much controversy at the time of their release—that would come later.

Paul Tingen notes the following regarding the FDK tracks:
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“Filles de Killimanjaro” and, to a lesser extent, “Toot de Suite” indicate for the first time a real integration of folk and rock influences, and no one got upset—many people enjoyed it. DownBeat readers loved FDK and selected it as their favorite album of 1969.

The quintet that recorded FDK consisted of Miles on trumpet, Wayne Shorter on sax, Chick Corea on piano, Dave Holland on bass, and Tony Williams on drums. (Replace Tony Williams with drummer Jack DeJohnette, and this group would have been called Miles’s “Lost Quintet,” a quintet that never made a studio recording). 

Cook and Morton describe In a Silent Way, the second stepping-stone album, as a collage using “found objects” put together with a view to the minimum details and coloration required to make an impact—the “found objects” being British guitarist John McLaughlin, Austrian pianist Joe Zawinul, whose “In a Silent Way” became a centerpiece of the album, and Columbia producer Teo Macero, who stitched repeats of certain recorded live studio passages back into the fabric of the music, giving it continuity and a certain hypnotic circularity. 

In effect, three new players of electric instruments (Chick Corea on piano, Joe Zawinul on piano and organ, and John McLaughlin on guitar) joined four members of the second classic quintet (Miles Davis on trumpet, Wayne Shorter on soprano sax, Herbie Hancock on electric piano, and Tony Williams on drums) to give the band a sound completely unlike any previous incarnation.[8] 

Producer Teo Macero’s post-production role was crucial to the outcome (quite unusual for jazz at the time). Teo edited two hours of recorded music and trimmed it with Miles to 27 minutes of original music. He then expanded it to 38 minutes (to fit two sides of a 12” LP) by repeating certain sections.[9]

Cook and Morton praise In a Silent Way as a beautiful album, touching and centered. The title piece and “Shhh/Peaceful” are among the most atmospheric recordings in modern jazz.[10] 

In a Silent Way became an important forerunner of ambient music. Not certain what to make of the album, the DownBeat reviewer awarded it three and a half stars.[11]

Another 1969 album of note featured the venerated Modern Jazz Quartet. Released on Beatles label Apple Records in 1968, Under the Jasmin Tree featured the lengthy three-part suite “Three Little Feelings” and “Exposure,” both poised structured fare with swinging elements, as well as two surprises: “The Blue Necklace” and “The Jasmin Tree,” both based on the Afro-Moorish rhythms of Morocco, with drummer Connie Kay and bassist Percy Heath front and center. 

On “The Blue Necklace,” a very active Kay rang his triangle, shook his jingle bells, and tappety-tapped his snare’s skin and rim alternately, and at times simultaneously, while Heath plucked a high-note, clave-like rhythm on his bass. 

On “The Jasmin Tree,” Heath held the bottom with a steady boom-boom-boom as Kay maintained a clack-clack-clack, sock cymbal clucking away underneath, a triangle keeping the pulse on top (instead of a ride cymbal), and—the coup de grâce—a tambourine gospel shaking that sounded like the quick one-two hand claps of a church choir.

​In the middle of this throbbing stew, John Lewis on piano and Milt Jackson on vibes twined their way through a folk-like ditty, stating the melody, comping, and soloing, first one then the other, back and forth. 

About three-quarters of the way through, the gospel-ish rhythm came to a halt, and a new but related melody (Moroccan folk song) was introduced, played in unison by piano, vibes, and bass. Following this interlude, it was back to the Moorish church, and the tune concluded as it began. 

DownBeat magazine awarded five stars to this welcome departure from a much-revered group, which, by the way, also played the White House in 1969.[12]

1. Critics Poll, DownBeat magazine, August 21, 1969; Readers Poll, DownBeat magazine, December 25, 1969.
2. Edward Allan Faine, “Faine Favorites: Top 10 Alto Sax Albums,” Jazz Blog, August 31, 2018. 
3. Lou Donaldson, scorching review of new thing music, DownBeat magazine, February 1969.
4. All issue review of both avante-garde and rock music coverage, DownBeat magazine, January 9–December 25, 1969.
5. Coverage of Newport Jazz Festival, DownBeat magazine, August 21, 1969.
6. Readers Poll coverage of Miles Davis, DownBeat magazine, December 25, 1969.
7. Paul Tingen, Miles Beyond: The Electric Explorations of Miles Davis, 1967–1991 (New York: Billboard Books, 2001), 46. 
8. Richard Cook and Brian Morton, The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 7th ed. (NewYork: Penguin Books, 2004), 408–409. 
9. Tingen, Miles Beyond, 60.
10. Cook and Morton, Penguin Guide, 66.
11. DownBeat magazine, October 1969.
12. Edward Allan Faine, The Best Gig In Town: Jazz Artists at the White House, 1969–1974 (Takoma Park, MD: IM Press, 2015), 27–32. ​