My name is Monk Rowe. We are filming for the Hamilton College Jazz
Archive in New York City. I'm especially pleased that George Wein has
found a little time for me today, and I'm most appreciative. GW: Anybody with the name of Monk can't be
all bad. MR: I'll take whatever entrance I can get,
believe me. You know I usually introduce somebody as a
saxophonist or whatever, and with you I'd have to spend five minutes. So everyone knows your reputation. I want to see if I can take you back a little
bit. Music obviously must have been in you from
the start. Can you recall as a child what music started
to really make an impression on you and where did you hear it? GW: I go back a long way, Monk. I was born in 1925. And I used to sing the pop songs when I was
six and seven years old. I go back to songs, and my mother used to
play a little piano and I used to sing songs like "I Want to Go Back to My Little Grass
Shack in Kealakekua, Hawaii" and once in a while on a Saturday morning she'd take me
down to these kiddie shows where you audition and you'd sing and then get paid. I mean it wasn't a gig but you'd sing over
the radio. That was such a thrill, to sing over the radio
when you're six, seven or eight years old. And I learned all the popular songs. "Darkness in the Delta," was one of my favorite
tunes. And one night I was on tour with Thelonious
Monk and he played an encore. He liked to play solo piano on chorus and
he played "Darkness in the Delta." I had never heard anybody play that tune,
"Darkness in the Delta" except when I sang and when I was a kid. And I said, "Thelonious, where did you learn
that tune?" People don't realize that Thelonious came
out of that era. And he knew all those songs. It was a great thrill for me to hear Thelonious
playing "Darkness in the Delta." MR: I suppose he gave it his own unique treatment
too. GW: It wasn't like I heard it in 1934 or whatever
year it was. MR: Wow that's neat. And you say the pop songs of the day, these
were things that would be like on the radio with vocal groups? GW: The tin pan alley songs of the 30s. All these, you know, Bob Hope had "Thanks
for the Memories," all those tunes. I used to sing them all. "Hold Me Honey, Won't You Hold Me." You don't know any of those, because nobody
knows those tunes. MR: But you could go out and buy the sheet
music I suppose? GW: Yes, my mother would buy the sheet music
and she could play it. She had to buy the ones she could play. She had a lot of ones she could play because
she wasn't a great piano player but at least she could read a little sheet music and accompany
me. MR: Was your mother - if you said to your
mother C7- GW: No, she didn't know that at all. She didn't know anything about that. MR: No, okay. But she could read the sheet music and so
forth. Oh that's great. So you kind of naturally, you had the piano
in the house. Did anybody have to push you into it? GW: I studied classical piano when I was about
seven or eight years old and I started. I played classical for about four or five
years. I studied with a very famous teacher, but
she wasn't famous when I studied with her, Mrs. Chaloff and she later became Madame Chaloff
at the Berklee College, and her son was Serge Chaloff, Serge went to school with me. And she was a wonderful woman, and she really
gave me a technique. She didn't teach me a lot about music, which
was unfortunate, because that's one of the reasons I never knew more about music. But she taught me how to play the piano. Which, I still know how to play the piano
but I don't have a great grounding in harmonies and voicings. But I have a lot of fun playing. MR: Was there a point where the classical
lessons just wasn't enough? GW: They petered out and I wanted to learn
how to play popular so I could - I don't know why, I didn't think of myself as a singer
- but I liked to play and sing and so I wanted to accompany myself instead of having my mother
accompany. Because I just sang at parties in the house,
"Georgie you've got to sing a song, Georgie you've got to sing a song, Georgie you've
got to sing a song." And I don't want to give you the impression
I was a good singer, but I was a kid that could sing a song and I wasn't any boy wonder. But to my father and mother I was the greatest. I wasn't the greatest to anybody else, but
to my mother and father I was the greatest, which is nice. When you grow up with a feeling of security
and love it's nice. And the next thing I knew my brother brought
home some records of Louis Armstrong and Glen Gray and Jimmie Lunceford. He ordered a little record player and got
thirteen free records with the record player and they were all jazz records. He was four years older than I was and he
used to go to the dances. And this was, I guess I was eleven or twelve
years, I don't know. And then I really became interested in jazz. And not jazz but big band, you know, Tommy
Dorsey, Benny Goodman. The next thing I knew I had formed a band. Like kids form rock & roll bands, I called
- I was in junior high school - and we used to rehearse every Sunday in my cellar at the
house we had in Newton, Massachusetts, and I found four saxophones and two trombones
and three trumpets and piano, bass - I was the piano player. I went out and bought stock arrangements,
we all bought them. And my mother knew somebody from New York
and I went down there, we took a trip, I got free arrangements from the publishers. Just like a kid has a rock & roll band, in
those days I had a dance band. We used to play Tommy Dorsey's "Song of India"
and Glenn Miller's "In the Mood" and Erskine Hawkins' "Tuxedo Junction" and we had a lot
of fun. We used to work occasional - somebody took
pity and hired us for a gig and we made two dollars a night, you know. But then I got interested in small band music
and I started to learn. I studied with a great jazz teacher by the
name of Sam Sax and he taught me about chords and taught me about how to play in different
keys and things like that. And we'd take a standard and I'd have to play
it in all twelve different keys and so I learned a lot from him. And next thing you know my name got on the
list of a non-union booker while I was in high school. I was working gigs in what you'd call the
buckets of blood, the Walt's Grill and the Silver Dollar Bar for two dollars a night,
three dollars a night, five dollars a night, and while I was going to school. I didn't work a lot but I'd go in. I didn't know much. I didn't know any musicians we were playing
with and none of us knew anything. But we did it. And we learned. And I became very involved with jazz music. And then I became friendly - friends of mine
knew Lionel Hampton, they knew Frankie Newton, my brother knew Red Allen and J.C. Higginbotham
and I'd sit in with them and it was a big thrill. Lionel Hampton I met when I was I think sixteen. It was at a party and he heard that I played
a little piano and then I remember I sat down and played the bass while he did a two finger
thing on "Lady Be Good." I mean this was - I mean what a thrill - I
mean Lionel Hampton and I'm playing "Lady Be Good," the chords. And you know it gets in your blood. And a couple of nights later we went down
to see Lionel at the Tic Toc Club. My mother and father were with me. My mother and father loved music. And Lionel calls me up from the audience and
I'm on the stage of the Tic Toc Caf� with Lionel, Illinois Jacquet was in the band,
Dexter Gordon. I didn't know who they were at that time. Joe Newman was in the band. And I'm playing on the stage and people are
plotting the rest of your life when that happens. MR: Isn't that interesting. You know I have to remind myself, when you
talk about some of those tunes you were playing with your first band, they sound old but for
you guys, that was the current music of the day, is that right? GW: Oh yes. We were not playing old music. Old music was Bix Beiderbecke. We were playing Teddy Wilson, Benny Goodman,
it was swing. That was the hit music of the day, before
bebop. It was before the war and we were trying to
be - you know, Duke Ellington. But I was getting into it. MR: Did your parents like the direction you
took? GW: I had no direction. I was a kid playing the piano. I mean my folks would pick me up at one o'clock
in the morning when I was playing some of these joints, and I mean they were joints. I mean I would play in joints. And they would be out in the car waiting for
me. I was sixteen or seventeen years, maybe I
was even fifteen years old, I don't know. I don't recall exactly. But there were a couple of years, you can't
believe some of those joints in Boston, you know, they were sailor joints, there were
fights and everything. And we were non-union musicians. I mean I knew about twelve songs. And I was trying to play the others by ear
and I didn't have a good ear, I did all the wrong changes. But still learning. It was a great, great period of learning. MR: I guess you could hide behind the piano
if things got too rough in there. GW: Sometimes you did, yeah. Because the war had started and there were
a lot of sailors and they would get drunk and the MPs would come in there. I remember once they hit a guy over the head
and the blood spurted up to the ceiling. But this wasn't the way I made my living,
I was still a high school student in a nice middle class city of Newton, Massachusetts
you know. But it was fun. And the next thing you know I was in the Army. I graduated from high school and it was 194-
it was January 1944 I went in the Army and all during the Army I was never in a musical
group. But we always played music. Whatever group we were in of musicians, we
would form a band, and there were some good musicians there. And I really had fun playing. I was a combat engineer so I wasn't in an
easy group. We were lucky that we didn't see combat. Like when we were in Europe we were waiting
for - we were rehearsing bridges to cross the Rhine and then one day we woke up and
there was what they called the Remagen bridge head, which historically was the bridge that
they captured and crossed the Rhine. The Germans didn't blow it up in time. And that saved us because we never had to
go in combat. But we were in England waiting to be told
to go there. An outfit we had trained with at the same
camp in Oklahoma, Camp Gruber, was there. And they got shot up pretty badly. So playing the piano saved a lot of problems
for me in the Army because we played the officers' dances. And we'd get in trouble the officers would
say, "What's the matter" when you're having a problem. I says, "No, sir, I'm fine, but this Company
punishment is killing me," because I'd be talking back to a sergeant or something like
that. And the next thing I'd know I'd be off Company
punishment because they wanted us to be able to play the officers' dance. So playing the piano had its plusses. MR: Excellent. Did you fellas get to listen to those V-disks
that came over? GW: In England I found them. I found them in a little, we had little huts
where we could get tea and there were some record players, and there were always some
V-disks there. And I didn't know what they were because we
couldn't buy those. And it was great stuff with Fats Waller and
Louis and a lot of them that were not ever put out on records. Maybe some of them have been re-issued at
this point. But they weren't re-issued for years. But I had a good time in the Army. I hated every minute I was in the Army. And when I got out, I mean when they dropped
the bomb, the atomic bomb, which has since become such a controversial thing, I remember
I was in Marseille and I sat down on a dirt road, it was a camp you know, and started
to cry with relief. I was going home. So when I hear all the controversy about the
atomic bomb, I can never forget my feeling when we dropped that bomb and I knew we were
going home. I going to be in- But I was supposed to take
a boat and be involved in the invasion to Japan. Because we were in a staging area in Marseille
where you would go through the Panama Canal all the way to Japan. And I never left. And I went home. So that was an interesting part of my life. MR: I bet you weren't alone in that feeling
too. GW: Oh everybody did. But the thing I learned in the Army that was,
hey, you were only yourself. You were not Dr. Wein's son. You were not a nice Jewish kid from a middle
class family. Economics, background, nothing meant anything
except you, yourself. And you had to compete with the other guy. Now the other guy might have been a brilliant
guy from Harvard, he might have been some poor guy from the mountains in Kentucky, he
might have been a tough mug from the factories somewhere in Detroit. You had to be equal with them. You had nothing going for you except yourself,
and you learned how to handle yourself. And that has been a benefit to me all of my
life. And I'm very happy I went through that. I would never ask anybody to go through it
again because it's - Army life is not any fun you know. It's terrible. But if you go through it, it's worth it. MR: A lot of the musicians I've talked to
have been fortunate that they were musicians, much like yourself. GW: But I had an opportunity to go to Warrant
Officer's School, which would have meant I would have had a really plush life in the
Army. But somebody told me that we would go in what
you call the Army Special Training Program and take Basic Training and then go to college
for four years and then get a Commission and go in the Army. Well they wiped that program out and we were
all thrown into the Infantry. And that was it. From the Infantry I went to the Combat Engineers. So I never had the benefit of being in a musical
outfit. But because we played, we always found guys
that played. On every camp that we went to there were guys
that played. Even on the boat coming home there was a group
of musicians on all the trip home, which in those days took eight or nine days on the
ocean, ten days, you know they weren't fast ships. We'd play music all the time. So it was always a saving grace for me. MR: I have a very short quote from the All
Music Guide to Jazz, who describes you as "an Earl Hines-influenced pianist." GW: Sam Sax, my teacher, was a disciple of
Earl Hines. And in those days of course you didn't have
Bud Powell stamps. Earl Hines was the piano player for the big
bands. I loved Teddy Wilson and Earl Hines. Teddy Wilson was a refined version of Earl
Hines. Earl Hines played with octaves and tremolos. Teddy played single finger. But they had the same basic approach to the
music, the same melodic approach. And so I loved both of those players. And later on I studied with Teddy Wilson,
when I was in college in my junior year. I came to New York and studied with him at
Juilliard. And I got to know him. But all during college I was playing the piano. And then I got involved with a lot of jazz
players in Boston. And then one time they had a band coming to
the Ken Club in Boston with Pee Wee Russell and Max Kaminsky and Miff Mole. And they needed a Boston rhythm section. And the regular piano player that normally
played those Dixieland and traditional tunes that they played wasn't available. And I knew him and he taught me the tunes
and the next thing I know I was playing seven nights and Sunday afternoon for four or six
weeks while I was still going to college. It was a seven day program and a Sunday afternoon
program and I was still going to college. But I loved that. And at the same time that I loved that, work
with Pee Wee Russell, I mean I've been in love with Pee Wee Russell ever since. And I think that that engagement was what
determined that I was not going to make my life as a professional piano player. Because I saw the way that these world famous
musicians lived. In cheap hotels. I was making $60 a week. They were making $120 a week. They were the stars. You know $120 a week in 1948 was a week's
pay, but it sure wasn't much money for somebody that was a world famous star. Because people collected his records everywhere
you went. And I think in seeing them drunk in their
rooms at night, you know, and so lonely and so out of it, I said I'm not sure that this
is the life I really want, even though I love playing and I love the music. And I don't think I consciously made a decision
at that time. I know I didn't consciously make a decision. Because the next year I played with Edmond
Hall and his quartet at the Savoy. And I was working, Jesus, and I was playing
gigs and I was having a ball. I was making money while I was in college. I arranged my senior year in college so I'd
only have classes Monday, Wednesday and Friday so I could at least get to sleep four days
a week, you know what I mean, you know in the morning when I woke up. Because I was playing so much. And when I graduated college I was playing
a lot of gigs, playing in clubs, I was booking the bands at the Savoy, a jazz club in Boston
and playing and getting a different band every week because the woman that owned the place
said, "Why don't - since you're the piano player, - why don't you bring the musicians
up from New York" because we knew them. And I found myself organizing things. And then one day somebody says, "Well why
don't you open up your own club?" I mean I never had a direction, a motivation
you see. I says, "I have no money to open up a club." But I had five thousand dollars that had been
saved for my education. My folks weren't rich. They had a little money but they were frugal. My father was a doctor, he never saved much
money. He went to the race track every afternoon. He did his work in the morning and made enough
money to support the house and lost the rest to the races. For 25 years. But it saved his life. He lived to be 96 years old. So he always said all his friends were dead,
they worked too hard, but he was still alive. So I had this money because I'd went to college
on the GI bill. And I made a deal with the hotel and opened
up Storyville in the fall of 1950. And I've been in business ever since. MR: It's like you were improvising from the
moment, every time a moment came up. GW: I had never been in business. I didn't know what it was to be in business,
I wasn't a businessman. And I was a graduate, I was playing piano,
and somebody says, "Open up a club." I opened up a club. But I knew everybody in Boston. I knew the whole jazz world. I knew all the radio people, because I'd been
playing at clubs all the time. And I'd done one concert with Edmond Hall,
it was Edmond Hall and George Wein present, and then Nat Hentoff wrote the liner notes,
because he was a Boston D.J. at that time and a good friend of mine. And Wild Bill Davison and a few other guests. We sold out Jordan Hall. And the first promotion I ever did we sold
out. A thousand tickets. So man, who knows? You're a star, right? You sold out a concert. Boy. MR: Well as clubs go, you had a great run. I mean when you think about how quickly some
clubs open and close. GW: Well we made it for ten years. We never made any money. We couldn't make any money. But we did have good weeks. The bad weeks zapped away the money from the
good weeks. So we were always, at the end of the year,
we were always a few thousand dollars in the hole. We could borrow. I was drawing salary of eighty or ninety dollars
a week and paying my expenses. I had a little cash in my pocket to go to
restaurants and things like that. But I started the Newport Jazz Festival in
1954 when the Lorillards came into my club from Newport, Rhode Island, and they wanted
to do something in Newport to make the summer a little more exciting. And Elaine Lorillard, that was the first one
to come in, she brought her husband back a few nights later and a professor from Boston
University said to them, because Elaine was taking some classes at BU and the professor
was a jazz fan and a friend of mine, Donald Vaughan, and he said, "Why don't you get George
Wein to do something with jazz in Newport?" We didn't know what to do. But I said, you know, there's a classical
music festival in Tanglewood. Why can't we have our own jazz festival. And would you back a three day, two day event
for jazz? And he said sure, and he authorized his bank
in Newport to give me a line of credit for twenty thousand dollars, which was a fortune. I never saw that kind of money. And then they went to Capri and I got together
with my people and I knew everybody in New England that came to my club, see this was
1954. And I knew what artists would sell tickets. And I put a program together for the first
festival in '54 and the next thing you know we made international news and we were off
to the races with the Newport Jazz Festival. And that of course established my international
reputation. MR: And what a run you had. Unbelievable. GW: It's been an interesting run. It is still running. Our life is busier than ever. We're doing more festivals than ever. We just signed a new deal with Verizon to
do three festivals, JVC is going to stay with us another few years and we're doing festivals
with Playboy in New Orleans and Mellon Bank in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, we do the
Essence Music Festival for Essence Magazine, we do events for JVC and all over, five or
six different JVC festivals. The Newport Folk Festival we do still and
we're back in Newport after all these years to do the big festival in New York. We do things at Saratoga, a big weekend at
Saratoga. We're busy. And I've got a lot of wonderful people working
for me that make it possible for me to do it. MR: If I could ask you, mention a couple of
names, and maybe the first, just something that comes to mind about them. Joe Williams? GW: Joe Williams was a great singer. Everybody thought he was a blues singer. Well put it this way, Joe Williams could sing
the blues. But he was a great ballad singer. And that's, I think in his heart he wanted
to be a ballad singer. But he sang the blues as well as anybody. Big band jazz blues. He wasn't an old time blues singer with a
guitar walking the streets, you know, sort of like Blind Lemon Jefferson. He was a jazz blues singer like Jimmy Rushing. Jimmy Rushing wasn't a blues singer. He sang the blues. He wanted to be a crooner. You know all these people came out of their
era. Joe Williams wanted to be Frank Sinatra or
Billy Eckstine. But his life became a blues singer. Great artist. Wonderful, wonderful man and when he first
came to Storyville with Count Basie and was singing "Every Day," that song, you know "Every
Day I Have the Blues," we knew something very exciting was happening. And he was around then as a star, right to
the end of the days. And he worked for me many, many times. I loved him dearly. MR: Good statement. What about Basie? What did you learn from Basie as perhaps - I
mean the fact that he led his band for so many years. GW: I learned a lot from Basie. I learned how to comp rhythmically. I learned how to lead a band without making
a very ostentatious presentation. You didn't have to be a big shot up there
waving your arms, and I learned how to pace. He knew how to pace things. Above all, if you just listen to him you learn
about swinging. There's a couple of people - you learn, like
Lionel Hampton and Basie - but they knew one thing, they knew how to swing. And also you learned about how to let your
band stretch out without ever disrupting the structure of the number, but yet the musicians
got a chance to play and without taking over and playing too long or whatever it was. You learn how to program things. But I also learned what a great man Bill Basie
was. I mean again, I love these people. You can't believe or know what they meant
to me. And to be on the road - one time I was in
- I'm telling you a couple of stories here for the archive. I'm going to use these in my book. We were in Burma one night. And I had said to Lockjaw Davis, Eddie Davis,
in Tokyo, "You know Basie doesn't play an encore." I says, "You're the straw boss. Why don't you speak with him." He said, "Well you speak to Basie yourself." So the next day we were in Burma. We'd been sent there by the State Department. And I said, "Bill, why don't you play an encore." He says, "George," he says, "I learned one
thing in Birdland. Never give them too much. Leave them wanting more so they'll come back." I said, "Bas'" I says, "I understand that
completely. But when is the next time you're going to
be in Burma?" That night he played an encore and he played
encores the rest of the tour. And he was supposed to fly to Laos the next
day. And my father was with us. I brought him along on the tour. And he loved my father. He had tremendous respect for my father. And so his contract, for him to only fly scheduled
airlines, no non-scheduled airlines. But the date in Laos was an Army date and
they had Army planes, bucket seats, the Vietnam war was on and so they were flying to Laos
the next day. And Bas' says, "I'm not going unless you go." I says, "Man, if you want me to go I'll be
there." Because I hadn't intended to go. About seven o'clock in the morning I'm at
the airport, Basie's there, he says to me, "What are you doing here?" I says, "You said you weren't going unless
I went so I'm going." He says, "Your father back at the hotel?" I says, "Yes." He says, "you get out of here and go back
and take care of your father." He went to Laos. That's the kind of man Basie was. So, you know, it's a beautiful story. MR: It's a lot, yeah. GW: Basie tells it differently in his book. He says I wanted to go so I played piano with
the band so he wouldn't go. That's a nice story, that's a better story
than mine, but that wasn't the story. He told the story his way. He says, "George wanted to go so he could
play piano with the band." MR: Yeah, you stay home, Count. That's a good one. Wow. What about Coltrane? GW: John Coltrane was a giant. No question he was a giant. And I have a few wonderful stories about Coltrane,
but the saddest one was when I called him, I guess it was six, eight months before he
died, and I wanted to do a European tour with him. Because he did go to Europe for me a couple
of times. He played my festivals many times. He played Storyville with Miles and he played
Japan for me. And I wasn't close to John Coltrane but I
knew him well enough. I had tremendous respect for him, I guess
he had a little respect for me. But I called him and I said, "John I'd like
to talk to you about going to Europe." He said, "Well I don't want to talk about
anything now" he says, "I'm not eating." I says, "What kind of a regime are you on,
what kind of diet you on?" He says, "I'm not on a diet, George," he says,
"I'm not eating." I says, "John, you can't do that. You can't fast. I mean you have to have something, even when
you fast you have to feed yourself some nourishment." He says, "No I'm not doing anything because
I want to clean out my system." I didn't know what to say. I says, "John you just can't do that." So we hung up. He was dead a few months later. But he knew the sickness was inside of him. He had a liver problem you know, and all that
he had absorbed, all the drugs and alcohol in his early days. And it just got to him eventually. And he was a magnificent saxophone player. And when I heard him and then I hear the people
that copy him, it's two different worlds. He influenced too many saxophone players. MR: Too many. GW: Too many. MR: Do you have an idea why, for that stretch
of time, well for too long, that drugs were so much connected with jazz and so much a
part of it? GW: I don't have any story about why it was. I don't know. And I'm not a sociologist in any way. I do know that prior to Charlie Parker, marijuana
was - because Louis Armstrong was a big influence on people smoking marijuana. Alcohol was a very big thing with musicians. A lot of musicians were heavy into alcohol
- Pee Wee Russell or Vic Dickinson or J.C. Higginbotham, all the guys with Basie's band
and Dickie Wells. They were real alcoholics. And so there is something about the music
business and the lack of stability and the life and the road and everything that drives
people into substitute drugs and substances or anything that can give you a lift or take
you out of the reality of the, really, not such a nice life you're living. Because the only good life is when you're
on the stand playing the music. The rest of the time you're living in - in
those days you're living in two bit hotels and eating junk for your dinner and you had
no money. Nobody made any money. The guys in Basie's band, Ellington's band,
I don't care what night club players, they were playing 52nd Street for $40 a week. All this great legendary time, when you read
about what a great place 52nd - it was great for everybody, but the musicians were making
nothing. And so they needed something. And there were always people that led the
way. Bird came along and he was into drugs. And Bird took over - I mean Bird completely
wiped out people's minds with the way he played. Nobody had ever heard that, and everybody
wanted to play like that and be part of it. And I guess they thought they had to be on
drugs to play like Bird. I mean I don't want to say that that was the
case, because I've never studied it that much, but there's no question that drugs were rampant
in the bebop era, and were not rampant before that. So that's all I can say. MR: Okay. I brought a little piece of music to play
for you. It might jog your memory. It goes back quite a ways. GW: Ruby Braff. "The Magic Horn." Am I playing piano there? MR: Yes you are. GW: I must have been reading the music or
something. It doesn't sound like me. There's a funny story about that. We had this story, "The Magic Horn" was the
story of a trumpet player and I guess Sal Mineo was the young guy, and Ralph Meeker. It was a television show. And I was the musical director. I put the band together. And - God I haven't heard that in ages - I
wouldn't have guessed that - I knew it was Ruby, because nobody plays like Ruby. And so the story was the trumpet player who
plays Sal Mineo was just an average trumpet player. And then when he got the magic horn he became
a great trumpet player. So I never made it out this way. I had Jimmy McPartland playing the trumpet
for the Sal Mineo before he got the magic horn, and Ruby Braff playing the trumpet from
after he got the magic horn. And so I never told Jimmy. He just loved being in the show. He didn't know what was going on. MR: He didn't know? GW: I thought Jimmy McPartland was beautiful. But Jimmy didn't have the greatest chops world
but he had a great musical head and he could play wonderful music. But Ruby had chops as strong as an elephant
or a crocodile, he had chops. He could bite you like a crocodile too. So Ruby became the magic horn on television
that Sal Mineo played. But that's nice to find that record. That's good. MR: Yeah. That's part of our collection at the college. GW: That's good. I had a lot of fun playing the piano. I played with great, great people. I played with Sidney Bechet and I did I think
two albums with Bechet. I played with Buck Clayton and Vic Dickinson
and Doc Cheatham and Buddy Tate and I did a week in Boston with Lester Young. Bird even came up and played with us one day
in Storyville and we had a jam session in the afternoon. I mean, when I make a list, Buddy Rich and
Gerry Mulligan, we recorded with them and Ruby and I at Newport, Bud Freeman, all these
great players. I mean I played with them. The fact that I did and knowing that I wasn't
in their league, but at the same time I didn't hurt them and the records I made sound nice. I listen to them, I enjoy them. There's a couple that are bad that I can't
listen to. But most of them, because I'm my own severest
critic. Because I know how badly I can play and I
know when I don't play badly. Because I know my own weaknesses. And so I'm very proud of the way the records
are made because the music on them is good. MR: I'm glad you are still listening to them. GW: I do listen to them once in a while. I think a lot of them haven't been put on
out on CDs and I might make a compilation of a lot of them and print up a few hundred
CDs to send to my friends so they can use them for whatever value or whatever they want
to use them for. But I am always impressed when there's - I've
gotten some terrible reviews in playing the piano. I've had reviews where some said, "Those musicians
wouldn't have played with George Wein unless he hired them." Well that might have been true, but that doesn't
mean that that's the reason they played with me. Because many times they would call me and
say, "Hey man are you available for the gig," you know, even though, who's going to play
piano, are you going to play? Because they wanted me to play. Because I never got in their way. They knew what they could count on. But other times, Dan Morgenstern is one of
my big fans. He's always written good things. The English critics have always said nice
things. George Wein played nice piano, surprisingly. People didn't realize, surprisingly enough,
George Wein played nice piano. That'll be on my tombstone, the epitaph. You know, I mean, we didn't know he could
play like that. Every so often a musician comes up to me and
says, "I heard this record, and the piano, I didn't know who it was, and I found it was
you." He says, "man you were wailing." I love that. I mean that makes my day when that happens. Because a lot of people, you live with a lot
of things when you're the producer and I've been - excuse the expression - I've been the
man so long, producing festivals and everything. And you know when I first used to sit down
at the piano they didn't think that I should sit down at the piano, a lot of critics. Who the hell was I to sit down at the piano? But man I love to play the piano. One time people said it's a bad use of power. Peter Watrous wrote that once. And I called Peter and I says, "You don't
know what the word power means." I said, "I have no power. I have a little privilege because it is something,
but power," I says, "power is what's happening at Lincoln Center now where they spend a hundred
million dollars just to build a theater for Wynton and the Lincoln Center Jazz. That's power. I mean I'm scuffling to hire a musician to
get him to work at a price that maybe we can make some money and he can make some money
and I can break even at least, and let my sponsor pay the money. And every deal is a negotiation. Every single year we fight it out. We have no power. I mean I have the privilege of doing the business
that I do and I work very hard at it and I enjoy it. And I try to make as many friends as I can
as I go along. And a lot of the older musicians, we had our
problems over the years, they're all friends of mine now. Because I was always consistent. They were consistent. And it we couldn't get together at one time
one year, three or four years later we got together. And things change. The regular relationship changed, and I don't
care who it is. I don't think I have any enemies among the
older musicians. Maybe the younger musicians who are in the
same position, I don't know. I don't even think I have many enemies among
the younger musicians. At one time I had a lot of people who resented
the fact that I was the man at the Newport Jazz Festival and they couldn't get on the
festival unless I hired them. But I was still looking for the right people. Hell it wasn't a matter of power. I hate that word. I hate it like poison. MR: You've seen the business change an awful
lot and I think it's to your credit that you've found a way to negotiate, as you say, through
the changes. What do you think of jazz, like this whole
thing that goes on here? Fifteen years ago-
GW: What's happening here, and we're on the archives, but this is 2001 in January and
there are seven thousand people here for an IAJE jazz educator's convention. I've never seen anything like this in my life. Because I don't think these people know much
about jazz. They're jazz educators but they don't have
the knowledge that the people that used to come to the Newport Jazz Festival thirty years
ago or forty years ago did. Because there was a concern about every musician
that was on the stage. Who was playing bass? Who was playing drums? Who was the new drummer with Basie? You know, I mean everything. There was some concern. It was like Ted Williams was traded for Joe
DiMaggio, you know, from the Yankees to the Red Sox, like when Cootie left the Duke to
go to Benny Goodman, they wrote a song about it. That's the way jazz fans were in those days. I don't think people care like that anymore. They don't know that much. But there's some mystique about the word jazz
that doesn't translate itself into record sales or ticket sales. And we have to compromise all the time at
our festivals to draw people. By compromising I mean we have to play good
music with a certain degree of credibility, but maybe not the purity of jazz. Because I don't know for sure what the purity
of jazz is now. A lot of critics think that the purity of
jazz has nothing to do with the jazz that I love. Ken Burns is being crucified because he's
spending so much time with Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington and the Swing Era, Wynton
is always being shot at, at the same time they have everything going for them. They've got all the money in the world, they've
got the subsidies and you have the Ken Burns jazz, you know, that Ken Burns is a man of
jazz. At the same time the critics are killing him. There's no in between. There's no saying well what Ken Burns did
was good for everybody that's involved with jazz. Because it is good for everything involved
with jazz. If you were a jazz musician and somebody says,
"What do you do for a living" and you say, "I play jazz," there's a little more respect
for you because of the Ken Burns show. "You play jazz. I don't know much about jazz but that must
be an interesting life. I heard about this show. I saw this show on TV." The Lincoln Center jazz program is the most
important institutional program for jazz in the world. That will spread to other cities, it already
has spread to other countries, and as it spreads the different kinds of music will be involved. It won't just be what Wynton's idea of music
is. Because other musical directors will become
involved. Jon Faddis at Carnegie Hall has a totally
different concept of music from Wynton Marsalis. There will be people with the new jazz, with
contemporary things who will find their voice, who will find their place. And it really is only because for the first
time major institutions are supporting and raising money for jazz. So you don't have to criticize what Wynton
does. Wynton is doing his thing. Wynton Marsalis is a breath of fresh air in
the jazz world. I love Wynton. I can criticize Wynton. That's unimportant. I don't criticize him. I don't criticize any musician because they're
doing their thing. And one of these days if their thing means
something it will pay off. I don't know whether they're going to make
millions of dollars but it will pay off in making a good living and being accepted as
the artist they want to be accepted as. MR: Wow. That's a good statement. And I appreciate you making it. I'm going to get you on your way here. GW: All right. MR: And I'm so appreciative. GW: You get me to talk. I love to talk. I like things like this because I can say
whatever the hell I want. MR: That's right. GW: I won't be on a panel. You'll never get me sitting on a panel. Because I don't like panels. You know, you want me to talk, if I can teach
you something, if I can help you, or you can teach me something, great. Sitting on a panel - I was asked to be on
a panel just recently and it was an interesting panel, but I said I had made a pact myself. I nearly weakened. And I had made a pact with myself. I wrote them a very nice note. I said, "I can't break the pact I made with
myself, I won't sit on panels." Last year I did something. I organized with Bob O'Malley of Columbia
a symposium. And I said to Bob, I said, "I don't want any
of the older jazz critics in this symposium. I want a lot of the jazz educators and the
younger writers, people that have been writing about jazz. We did it at Newport. Salve Regina College let us use the college. I called a bunch of different people and a
few foundations and raised the little money we needed. We needed about fifty thousand dollars. I raised about thirty-five and I put in the
balance myself. And we had the most fascinating symposium. Because I paid all the speakers, I think twelve,
fifteen hundred or a thousand, I forget what it was. But they got an honorarium. But they had to write a paper and they had
to speak for an hour, hour and a half, whatever time they wanted. And we'd have subjects. Now we might have two or three speakers on
the same subject. But they'd have a different approach. But not a panel. Because I wanted something done on an intellectual
level that didn't become self-serving. That they had - they weren't just complaining
that their records weren't played on the radio or that they went in a record store and they
couldn't find their records or that jazz is this or jazz is that. I wanted a point of view of people who were
looking at this music, who have not lived this music. They were intellectuals. People with doctor's degrees, Ph.D.s, who
are now carrying the ball all over the country in universities. Many of these people are here right now. And it was fascinating. And we'll do that again. If we won't do it this year, we'll certainly
do it next year. But it created a different kind of thing than
the panel's discussion where you have four people and somebody talks for five minutes
and then somebody says something and somebody says well I don't agree with that. I'm not interested whether you agree with
it. Agree with it before or after the fact. And answer it in a paper. That's fine. But just don't - panels - I've been involved
with panels for nearly 45, 50 years. And they never say anything. Because it ends up being, "No that's not the
way I-" you know everybody. And I was very proud of that symposium. We made a lot of friends. What Bob O'Malley is doing up at Columbia
is very important in his jazz studies program. And a lot of the older critics were a little
upset with me until I wrote them a letter, Dan Morgenstern and Ira Gitler, I wrote them
a detailed letter about, you know this is what you guys were fighting for all your life. These - a lot of them were African Americans
- they were in universities teaching jazz. I says this is what you wanted. I says they will never know the jazz that
you know. You lived it. I said but they're the ones that are going
to be writing the books in the next twenty years. The history of jazz is in their hands. We have to reach these people. And so Dan Morgenstern came to the symposium
as a guest. You know, he paid his own way to come. Because I invited them but they had to pay
their way. Because there were 80 people. We didn't charge a fee, but they had to pay
their own transportation. Dan came and he was treated so beautifully
by these people because he was like the senior citizen that really was the expert. And they would keep calling - say, "Dan what
do you think about it, Dan is this right?" Dan left there on cloud nine. MR: Oh I'm so glad. GW: And he's one of the sweetest guys you'd
ever want to meet, Dan Morgenstern, and one of the most knowledgeable guys. But I didn't ask him to do a paper. I wanted a different point of view. The next year I may ask the older critics
to do it. You see what I mean? Now that my point of view has come across
and they realize why I did it. And I didn't make any enemies from it. It looked like I was making enemies, because
they said, "Why aren't you using us, why are you using those people, they don't know anything
about jazz." I says I know they don't know anything about
jazz. I said but if they're going to be writing
the books they better start learning." MR: Well listen, I really appreciate your
time. Thank you so much. GW: It's a quarter to four, or quarter to
five- MR: All right, okay. GW: I hope you got what you wanted. MR: I did.
