Mixed up but so together

George Wein looked at the overflow crowd at Saturday’s Playboy Jazz Festival and smiled knowingly. It was a familiar sight.

For 25 years, the veteran producer’s two-day Playboy events have consistently drawn some of the largest single-venue audiences for jazz anywhere in the world.

This year was no exception, although some would question whether the silver anniversary celebration might more accurately have been labeled a “music” rather than a “jazz” festival. But not Wein.

“Years ago Pete Seeger and I were working together on a folk festival,” he said, seated at his backstage position close by the festival’s perennial host, Bill Cosby. “One of the things we wanted to do was go to Africa to find groups that hadn’t been contaminated by the media and the communications industry. And we realized all folk musics are connected. And jazz fits in there too.

“We realized that any music with a beat has a relationship to the spirit and the feeling of jazz. Can you say it’s jazz in the traditional sense that we know the art? No. But it’s just like folk music. It’s all connected.”

Wein’s comments were underscored by the appearance of Fan-fare Ciocarlia, a Gypsy brass and woodwind band from Romania, playing a wildly enthusiastic music that eluded specific definition.

“Take these guys, for example,” he said. “When they went out there, I wasn’t even sure what they were -- a flamenco group, or what? But listen to them. Man, what excitement. Cosby called them the Romanian Dirty Dozen -- after that street band from New Orleans.”

Later in the day, the arrival of the stirring gospel group Blind Boys of Alabama provoked a similar reaction from Wein.

“Here’s another example of something you can’t label as jazz,” he said. “But they still fit into a jazz festival, the same way a flamenco group does, or an Arabic group, or a klezmer band.”

Mixing and matching is not a new process for Wein, who recalled a period in the late ‘60s when the rise of rock generated cries that jazz was dead.

“They said that Ginger Baker played better drums than Elvin Jones, that Ian Anderson played better flute than Rahsaan Roland Kirk,” Wein recalled. “And that was when I weakened for the first time. So I did a Newport Festival in 1969 with Frank Zappa, Ginger Baker and about 12 other rock groups. But the thing was that it wasn’t a festival anymore. It was just a big rock concert, and that wasn’t what I wanted to do. It wasn’t where I came from.”

Where Wein, now 77, came from is engagingly described in his just-published autobiography, “Myself Among Others: A Life in Music” (Da Capo). Wein’s first ambition was to play jazz piano, which he still does on a regular basis with his all-star ensemble. Moving beyond his own performances, he became, by the mid-’50s, one of the jazz world’s two (with the late Norman Granz) primary jazz impresarios.

“But it’s a different time now,” Wein said. “After that experience with rock in 1969, I realized that the only way to do a contemporary festival and still play good music was to mix things up. We started doing that 30 years ago when we brought people like Ike and Tina Turner to Newport. Of course, now the balance has turned around, since we don’t have the big names, the real world personalities such as Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie and Sarah Vaughan. So we try to put on a program that has musical credibility -- whatever label you might apply to some of the acts -- along with commercial appeal. That’s how you stay in the festival business.”

A strategic combination

As Saturday’s program continued, Wein’s strategy -- executed in carefully crafted fashion by program producer Darlene Chan -- continued to unfold.

Singer Lizz Wright, looking sleek and elegant, offered a set of selections from her new, highly praised debut album, “Salt.”

“I’m very interested in Lizz for several reasons,” Wein said. “Jazz needs stars, and I wanted to see if she had star quality. I think she’s close. She’s got a sound that people like, and all she really needs is a little more experience. Vocalists are important because they connect well with the public -- think about Sarah Vaughan and Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald.”

Other artists further displayed Wein’s goal of blending musical credibility with commercial appeal: the band Hiroshima, the L.A. Home Grown All Star Big Band, Boney James, Poncho Sanchez and Brazilian singer-dancer Daniela Mercury.

Wein noted the link between pop artist Boz Scaggs, who sang a program of standards, with other rock artists -- Rod Stewart, Phil Collins, Charlie Watts -- who have turned in recent years to the Great American Songbook for inspiration.

“They all love jazz,” he said. “And Boz is great because he helps younger listeners make a crossover. He gives something to relate to, even though he’s within a jazz mode.”

Wein, who has always deflected credit for his numerous accomplishments to the musicians rather than himself, ended the day with a characteristically modest evaluation of his career.

“It didn’t take a genius to think up the phrase ‘jazz festival,’ ” he said. “It really wasn’t anything more than the desire to bring people together, in a pleasant setting, to experience music that they wanted to hear. My model was classical festivals such as Tanglewood and Salzburg. But in our case, it was jazz.

“And the funny thing,” he said, “is that you don’t realize you’re making history when you’re in the middle of doing things. But here we are, 25 years after we started the Playboy Festival, 50 years after Newport, we’re still going strong, and we’ve still got a lot more on the agenda.”

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Don Heckman will review Saturday’s and Sunday’s Playboy Jazz Festival

programs in Tuesday’s Calendar.