History invades

Jelly Roll Morton (1885-1941), who claimed to have “invented jazz in 1902” and who began his career playing piano in New Orleans whorehouses, would certainly be surprised by how far the music has come. The Newport Jazz Festival’s 50th Anniversary All-Star Tour celebrates the golden anniversary of that historic first festival in July 1954 in Newport, R.I. Put on by club owner George Wein and Newport socialites (and tobacco magnates) Louis and Elaine Lorillard, the posh production set in stunning surroundings overlooking Newport’s bay was the very first of its kind and established an outdoor jazz festival tradition that has since spread around the globe.

That first festival featured Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald, Gerry Mulligan, Billie Holiday and other big names and was such a success that it was able to overcome the stigma of two riots (1960 and 1971), the latter of which caused the festival to move to New York City the following year with sponsorship by KOOL cigarettes, then JVC, which continued to sponsor the NYC event and the Newport fest after it moved back there in the ‘80s.

What this and other festivals have in common is the custom, first established in the ‘40s by Norman Granz with his Jazz at the Philharmonic tours, of getting players of different styles on stage together, sharing their musical thoughts. (Although I had to grit my teeth during the generally solid “Jazz on a Summer’s Day,” a record of the 1958 Newport Festival, when an off-form Chuck Berry fronted a group that included trombonist Jack Teagarden and drummer Jo Jones.)

The complete tour, which began in January and is divided in two segments, will play in over 50 cities before it concludes in Olympia, Wash., on March 27. The West Coast tour opened on March 7 and will hit 16 cities (!) in just three weeks. They should certainly have their act together by the time they hit Chico. When asked how audiences were responding, Wein—who’s still the sparkplug behind the event—shared, “The response has been amazing—there seems to be a hunger for jazz.”

Featured on this leg of the tour are tenor sax man Lew Tabackin (who appeared here in 1983 with his wife, Toshiko Akiyoshi, and their band); clarinetist Ken Peplowski and guitarist Howard Alden (who’ve united on several Concord Jazz recordings); pianist Cedar Walton (who gigged at the Sierra Nevada Brewery with Vincent Herring a couple of years ago and during the ‘60s was a vital part of the Blue Note house band); bassist Peter Washington (who’s rapidly assuming “first-call” status on record dates); and three names new to me: trumpeter Jeremy Pelts (who was voted as “Rising star on trumpet” in Down Beat’s 2002 Critics’ Poll), vocalist Lea DeLaria and drummer Karriem Riggins.

The group’s dynamics should be very interesting, as veterans Tabackin (a longtime Newport All-Star veteran and sensational flutist) and Walton (who graduated from the “University of Art Blakey” some 40 years ago) are both rooted in bop, while Peplowski and Alden (also a Newport All-Star vet) were initially Dixielanders. They’ve since joined the ranks of the “modernists,” and Peplowski is considered to be one of the most outstanding clarinetists to have appeared in the ‘80s.

The musicians are, obviously, all on the same page here; when I asked Wein if there was a predetermined set list, he stressed that, “These musicians belong to what I call ‘the family of jazz,’ and the family has a large repertoire that they can draw from. You never know what tune they’re going to call out at any given time.”

Critic Whitney Balliet once described jazz as "the sound of surprise," and this concert promises to "surprise" and please those in attendance.