Classical Music Critic Lloyd Schwartz

DATE July 5, 2004 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: George Wein discusses his career in music as performer,
club owner and festival organizer
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

This summer marks the 50th anniversary of the Newport Jazz Festival. Musical
highlights are collected on a new three-CD box set called "Happy Birthday
Newport: 50 Swinging Years." My guest, George Wein, founded the festival and
remains its producer. He virtually created the concept of outdoor jazz and
folk festivals. He founded the Newport Folk Festival in 1959, and later
started the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, the JVC Festival and other
music festivals around the world. I spoke with him one year ago after the
publication of his autobiography, "Myself Among Others." He started his life
in music as a jazz pianist. Here he is singing and playing, recorded in 1955.

(Soundbite of music)

Mr. GEORGE WEIN: (Singing) The bird with feathers of blue is waiting for you
back in your old backyard. You'll find your castles in Spain 'neath your
window pane back in your own backyard. You can go to the east, go to the
west, someday you'll come weary at heart back where you started from. You'll
find your happiness lies right under your eyes back in your own backyard.

GROSS: George Wein singing and playing piano. In 1950, before Wein started
his festivals, he opened a club in Boston called Storyville that featured the
top jazz performers of the time. I asked Wein how his experiences as a
musician helped determine what he wanted out of the club.

Mr. WEIN: I guess I wanted to make a living. I didn't know much about what I
was going to do for my life, but I wanted it to be known as a musician's club,
a club owned by someone that loved the music, was part of the music and
presented the best possible jazz available.

GROSS: As opposed to--what kind of clubs had you performed in that weren't
very friendly to musicians?

Mr. WEIN: Most of the clubs were people--owned by individuals who had a
liquor license, and they wanted to sell liquor and put in music hoping that
they'd draw some people.

GROSS: You write in your book, "I didn't know what it was like to be `the
man' until opening Storyville. Suddenly, I was in a position of hiring
musicians, most of whom were older than I was and often famous. Many were
African-Americans who had an inherent distrust of whites, never mind white
nightclub owners." What were some of the difficulties you faced being `the
man'?

Mr. WEIN: The basic thing was that I loved these musicians, and I found out
that they did not love me. I was, as I say, `the man.' And I would ask them
things and they just would look at me with a blank stare sometimes because
they didn't trust what I had to say or what I asked of them. That was
difficult to understand. It took me years to fully comprehend and how to
accept that.

GROSS: Well, how did you learn to gain the musicians' trust?

Mr. WEIN: It's a good question, and every musician had a different reason.
I was talking about Thelonious Monk, being on the road with him, when I had to
run up and down the stairs five or six times to get him on the stage. And I
finally yelled at him, `Thelonious, get the hell on the stage!' And he went
up and played for 45 minutes a drum solo, had the drummer featured. Then he
came off the stage and I said to him, `What was that all about, Thelonious?'
He said, `You hadn't ought to yelled at me.' And I told him I ran up and down
the stairs and I was getting too old and fat for that. He says, `You had to
run up and down the stairs? I don't blame you for yelling at me.' And that
was when I gained the trust of Thelonious Monk.

In many areas with different musicians, they were different story. With Miles
Davis, I bounced a check on him and he got the message that we were going to
be equals and he wasn't going to push us around, and I wasn't going to push
him around.

GROSS: But wait. You intentionally bounced a check on him?

Mr. WEIN: No, no. I intentionally bounced it because he didn't play the job.
And he figured that I had paid him two days before the job, and I bounced the
check on him. And he says (imitating Miles Davis), `Well, why did you bounce
the check?' And I said, `Why didn't you play the gig?' (In normal voice) And
so that solved that problem.

GROSS: Did it bother you to have to sometimes play the heavy with musicians
who you kind of idolized?

Mr. WEIN: No. I never really played the heavy except when it actually was
necessary. Basically, I established a rapport with them. I found out that
they respected me for playing the piano. And then when I married my wife,
they knew where my feelings were, my deepest feelings were, and that meant a
lot in gaining the respect of African-American musicians.

GROSS: Your wife is African-American.

Mr. WEIN: My wife is African-American. We've been married since 1959, which
is a long time, since we'd have been put in jail in 25 percent of the states
at that time.

GROSS: You have hired many of your idols over the years to play at festivals
and to play in your club when you owned it. Did some of your idols not really
remain your idols because you saw their behavior offstage?

Mr. WEIN: I used to say to Stan Getz--I'd say, `Stan, how can you be so evil
and play so beautifully?'

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. WEIN: And Stan would say to me, `Man, I'm changed. I'm changed. I'm
not going to be the same.'

GROSS: What kind of behavior did he display that led you to call him evil?

Mr. WEIN: He was evil, what evil is. He treated musicians badly, he treated
club owners badly, he was involved with drugs and you couldn't trust his word.
And you had to be very careful with him, but he was a great, great musician.

GROSS: Did he lie to you about performances that you expected him to play?

Mr. WEIN: I think he lied to me about everything we ever talked about at
different times, but I loved him. I really did. And at the end, we were very
close friends.

GROSS: You gave up your club, Storyville and then ended up starting the
Newport Jazz Festival. So what was your first concept of the out-of-doors
summer jazz festival?

Mr. WEIN: The concept was to present jazz from J to Z. I always had that
feeling. So I presented a group, like, with Eddie Condon and Wild Bill
Davison on the same bill with Lee Konitz and Lennie Tristano, and in the
middle, you know, Ella Fitzgerald and Gene Krupa; a total view of the spectrum
of jazz. I always felt that's what a jazz festival should be. We can't
always do it, but in those days, it was not difficult, 'cause there were so
many great jazz musicians still with us.

GROSS: What were your first thoughts about getting good sound outside?

Mr. WEIN: That was difficult because there was no history of good sound
outside, and we experimented for two or three years before we found out what
to do. The second year in particular was difficult, and that was the year
that Miles Davis put his horn right in the microphone and came out with a
beautiful "'Round Midnight." And Columbia signed him, and that was the
kickoff to his great career in the '50s.

GROSS: One of the most famous performances at a Newport Jazz Festival was the
Duke Ellington performance in 1956. Why was this a turning point in
Ellington's career?

Mr. WEIN: Ellington, to me, was a god always. I didn't realize that he
wasn't doing business wherever he went. Well, he made a record of this
incredible performance. It was recorded, and it was the biggest selling album
he ever had. What happened that night was literally a happening. A woman
started to dance in the audience. It made news the next day, `Ellington broke
up the festival.' The crowd was orderly, but for the first time, they were
all standing on their feet. And Ellington reached out. He made the cover of
Time magazine very shortly after that. And ever after that, he said, `I was
born at Newport in 1956.'

GROSS: The musical centerpiece of that night was a performance of "Diminuendo
in Blue," and the saxophonist, Paul Gonsalves, blew about 27 choruses on that
in his solo. That's a lot of choruses. That's a long time. What were you
thinking when his solo went on and on?

Mr. WEIN: I was worried about crowd control, 'cause I saw the crowd coming
towards the stage and standing up. But really, there was no serious problem.
I think the record shows that I was saying, `Duke, take it out, take it out.'
But it was so exciting that we were all caught up in it. And what I learned
that night was the way Duke Ellington brought the crowd down after Gonsalves
finished. He had Johnny Hodges play a beautiful ballad and a blues, and the
crowd just settled back into their chairs. It was a beautiful experience.

GROSS: Well, let's hear part of the Paul Gonsalves solo on "Diminuendo in
Blue."

(Soundbite of "Diminuendo in Blue")

GROSS: That's Paul Gonsalves soloing on Duke Ellington's "Diminuendo in Blue"
in the Ellington Band's performance at the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival. My
guest, George Wein, was the creator of the Newport Jazz Festival and many
other festivals.

Well, George Wein, a little later in that evening, the Duke Ellington
performance was going on and on. You wanted the performance to end, and
Ellington wasn't ending it. Why were you anxious to wrap things up?

Mr. WEIN: I was anxious 'cause I was concerned that--it was the first time I
ever felt any nervousness about a crowd, and I don't remember it that well. I
really recollect it from the recording, where my voice is heard telling Duke,
`No more, Duke. No more,' you know. But Duke was not going to give up that
moment. That was one of the great moments in his life with 12,000 or 15,000
people cheering for him and the band sounding so great, so he just kept doing
it until he realized that the evening was over. But he did the right thing.
He really did the right thing.

GROSS: He did the right thing in keeping going and not listening to you to
stop?

Mr. WEIN: Absolutely. I mean, you know, look, I'm only me. I mean, Duke
Ellington's Duke Ellington. He did know a little bit more than I did. I was
very young, and I was learning from him every minute.

GROSS: Let me play the track that's called "Riot Control" on the CD version
of this 1956 Newport concert. And here you are at the mike trying to end the
concert as people start booing you.

(Soundbite of "Riot Control"; crowd booing loudly in background)

Mr. WEIN: That's it. Let's go. That's it, though. I mean it. That's it
now. That's all right. No! No! No! I mean it now.

GROSS: George Wein, what's it like to stand before thousands and thousands of
people who are booing you, 'cause you want to end the concert?

Mr. WEIN: I never was a great baseball player, so I don't know what it was
to strike out with the bases loaded, but I really didn't hear the booing. I
mean, in all honesty, you don't hear those things. Your mind is so involved
with what you're thinking at the moment that you don't hear those things.

GROSS: At the Newport Jazz Festival, when you started the festival, were the
audiences pretty integrated? Because there were obviously black and white
fans for the performance that you were presenting, but it was an area of New
England that I think was very predominantly white.

Mr. WEIN: We had a small percentage of blacks at the beginning of the
festival. There were always blacks that liked jazz. The mass audience was
usually white. We had a few racial problems the very first year when some of
the hotels weren't used to blacks coming to the hotels and registering, and
they were refused. But after one year, that ended, and a few years later,
they elected an African-American mayor of Newport. So you have your
influence, and what you do influences the attitude of people, and we're very
proud of that. Problems are always there. The whole thing is to just not
fight the problems. In a sense, just make people aware that these problems
are useless and that they don't have any meaning, and let's go straight ahead.

GROSS: My guest is music impresario George Wein, founder of the Newport Jazz
and Folk Festivals. We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest is music impresario George Wein. He's created music
festivals around the world. This summer marks the 50th anniversary of his
Newport Jazz Festival.

OK, well, you not only did the Newport Jazz Festival. You created the Newport
Folk Festival. Were you interested in folk music?

Mr. WEIN: I'm interested in all musics, including opera and symphony and folk
music and world music. I love artistry. Artistry is what draws me. It's not
the style or the concept. If a person's an artist, I can appreciate him. And
I used to play a lot of folk artists in Storyville and was needing an
attraction every week, and I was influenced from Barnie Josephson's Cafe
Society and Max Gordon at the Village Vanguard. I went to their clubs before
I had my own club. And so Pete Seeger and Odetta and groups like that and
artists like that had played Storyville.

Now we had presented tap-dance afternoons and gospel afternoons at the Jazz
Festival. And I said, `We'll do a folk afternoon.' But I found out we had
much more available, and we should do a festival.

GROSS: Why don't you share one of your personal high points from the Newport
Folk Festival?

Mr. WEIN: I think that one of the personal high points was when we brought a
tin whistle player from South Africa, Spokes Mashiyane, and we didn't know how
he got there. I mean, we sent him the fare for a ticket, and he was lost, so
we thought. And finally, he showed up just on our doorstep in Newport. He
went on the stage, and we used to draw 15,000 people at that time, all avid
folk fans. And he played with that tin whistle, and he had a jazz feeling.
And Pete Seeger and I went up to play with him--I played the piano, and he
played the guitar. And he just played, sounded like Lester Young on a tin
whistle. And when he finished playing, the entire 15,000 people stood up and
cheered. It was a magical moment.

GROSS: One of the most famous moments from the Newport Folk Festival was when
Bob Dylan performed with his band and they used amplifiers, so it was
electric. Dylan had gone electric.

Mr. WEIN: And that was the expression: Dylan went electric.

GROSS: Yeah. And a lot of his fans felt betrayed that one of their, you
know, folk music heroes had now plugged in. What were you thinking when he
plugged in?

Mr. WEIN: That was a time I was aware of the booing. Some people have tried
to write that there wasn't any booing. There was a lot of booing, and there
was a lot of consternation backstage. And there were legends that have come
down and are untrue about Pete Seeger wanting to take an axe and cut the sound
system. That just was not true. He was in a car holding his ears and asked
me to do something about it. I said, `There's nothing we can do, Pete.'

But what I did was I went up to Dylan after he finished on the stage, and I
said, `Bob, you've got to go back and do an acoustic tune.' And he said, `I
don't have a guitar.' And I said, `It's a folk festival.' I turned around,
`Does anybody have a guitar?' Naturally, about 40 guitars went in the air, and
Pete Yarrow gave him a guitar, and he did go back and sing "It's All Over Now
Baby Blue," and it was a very poignant moment. It was more important
historically than it was to me at that moment 'cause I was just acting as a
producer and acting by instinct.

GROSS: Why did your instincts tell you that he should go back on stage and
play something acoustic?

Mr. WEIN: Again, I was not concerned with the riot, but I was concerned with
the crowd, the feeling of the crowd. It was a terrible disappointment to the
real Dylan fans who didn't know anything about his going electric. And it
really was an important moment that had changed the approach to music by young
people who were folk fans, because a lot of their friends had adopted the new
music of The Beatles and they were fighting them, saying, `No, the real music
is our folk music.'

And when Dylan went electric, it gave them the right to go along with their
friends. And then they all became lemmings and went in the direction of The
Beatles and the Rolling Stones and were part of their whole youth situation,
which was great, you know. But it took away a lot of individuality in
listening to music.

GROSS: If you really thought it was great, you wouldn't have used the word
`lemmings.'

Mr. WEIN: Well, you know, music had never had that feeling before. Everybody
had a--the concept of what was good didn't always relate to what was the most
popular. So once the rock 'n' roll world came in, the most important groups
were the ones that sold the most records. In jazz, Glenn Miller sold more
records than Duke Ellington ever dreamed of selling, but Duke Ellington was
still the boss. In piano, there were a lot of great piano players, but all of
the piano players stood up when Art Tatum came into the room. In rock 'n'
roll, they stood up when the guy that sold the most records came into the
room, and that's always the way it's been.

GROSS: George Wein, recorded one year ago after the publication of his
autobiography, "Myself Among Others." We'll hear more of the interview in the
second half of the show.

This summer marks the 50th anniversary of Wein's Newport Jazz Festival.
Highlights are collected on the new box set "Happy Birthday Newport,"
including this 1955 Miles Davis performance. I'm Terry Gross, and this is
FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

(Credits)

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: Count Basie & His Orchestra, recorded in 1957 at the Newport Jazz
Festival from the festival's new 50th anniversary CD. Coming up, we continue
our conversation with the festival's founder, George Wein. And classical
music critic Lloyd Schwartz considers the music in the Marx Brothers films
included in a new DVD box set.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross, back with music impresario George
Wein, founder of the Newport Jazz and Folk Festivals, the Kool Jazz Festival,
the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival and other festivals around the
world. He started his career as a jazz pianist. Last year, he published his
autobiography, "Myself Among Others." This summer marks the 50th anniversary
of the Newport Jazz Festival. The festival highlights are collected on the
new three CD set "Happy Birthday Newport." It includes this 1963 Thelonious
Monk performance of his composition "Blue Monk." Pee Wee Russell is featured
on clarinet, Charlie Rouse on tenor saxophone.

(Soundbite of "Blue Monk")

GROSS: One of the music festivals George Wein did not create was Woodstock.
He didn't even attend. But I asked about his reaction to the festival's
impact.

Mr. WEIN: I really didn't comprehend hit. I didn't understand it. That was
the year that I played a lot of rock groups at Newport in 1969, and I had
played them because the underground press, which had become so important, was
demeaning jazz and saying that Ian Anderson was a better flute player than
Rahsaan Roland Kirk, or as good, and Ginger Baker was as great a drummer as
Elvin Jones. And so I called a friend of mine and I said, `Which of these
groups can really play?' and I put a lot of them on the festival. And there
was so many groups on the festival that Jimi Hendrix called me personally,
which nobody believes. He called me personally and said he'd like to be on
the festival. And I said, `Jimi, I don't have any room for you.' And anybody
says you didn't have room for Jimi Hendrix has to be crazy in the legends of
what's happened in the rock 'n' roll world.

But I knew there was something going on up there, but I was not aware of it
till I was standing on Broadway and I saw hundreds of kids with backpacks
getting on buses to go up to the Catskills. It was an amazing phenomenon. I
had never seen anything like it, and I wasn't aware that it was happening.

GROSS: When you watched the news footage of it, did it strike you as, like, a
good thing for the future of festivals or a bad thing?

Mr. WEIN: Well, it wasn't a good thing for the future of Woodstock; they
didn't do another festival for 25 years. And we did 25 festivals in between
that. So I don't know. That's a tough question. They're two different
worlds, rock festivals and jazz festivals. They're closer now than they used
to be because music is--there is a curiosity developing among young people to
hear different kinds of music. And world music and everything has been
influenced by electronics now so it's very seldom you hear any group that
doesn't have some electronic concern in their presentation. So they're closer
now, but I don't know.

Rock 'n' roll is so huge in our society; it's affected our clothing, it's
affected our food, it's affected our style, everything. And we're, in a
sense, an anachronism in our love and the direction for jazz, but we still
stay alive and we find that festivals like New Orleans Jazz and Heritage
Festival can still draw 100,000 people when we have great programs, and people
come for the food and for the crafts and for the many diverse musics we have.

GROSS: A couple of years after Woodstock, in 1971, you ran a festival that
you ended up basically closing early. There nearly was a riot in this one.
What was it about?

Mr. WEIN: That was 1971. There were no rock festivals and the underground
press, which was quite important in those days--it's not so important
now--they said there were no festivals happening, but there were some good
sounds in Newport. And if you went up to Newport, you could stay in the hill
outside the festival and hear the music. So hundreds of kids--thousands of
kids started coming into town and camping on the hillside. And I had asked
the police to keep the hillside clear, but they ended up double-crossing us
and sending people to the hillside to keep them out of town.

What happened was that those kids sat there and they were getting stoned and
really getting stoned. The drug scene was very full in those years, very
important in 1971 to young people. And they just announced they were going to
be on the stage at 9:00 on Saturday night and they got together. We had a
chain-linked fence. They put 2, 300 bodies together at the fences in various
places, and when they finally broke down, it looked like tanks had gone
through the fences. They want on the stage. I went up on the stage with my
wife and we said, `Please file out.' We had 20,000 people at that time. The
crowds had grown from 15 to 20,000. They filed out without incident, a sense
of resignation that there was no control over what was happening in the world
at that time, in the world of young people. Free music was what it was all
about.

GROSS: So they wanted to storm the stage; not to perform on stage, but just
to make a statement that the music should be free and open to everyone.

Mr. WEIN: I asked them, `Why? You didn't have any talent.' They said, `How
do you know we don't have any talent?' I said, `Because you wouldn't be silly
running around out here trying to break this fence down if you had any
talent.' I was standing right there at the fence when they were breaking it
down. Father O'Connor, a Catholic priest, was with me. It didn't stop them
from doing it. It was just part of a way of life at that time. Music should
be free, and they were just doing their thing and that's all.

But there was no riot at the festival. The cops cleared the hillside and
cleared the kids. At 5:00 the next morning, it was all over.

GROSS: That must have left you with a really bad feeling.

Mr. WEIN: It left me with a sense of emptiness for a while, but my wife tells
me that even as things were happening, I was planning on what I might do the
next year. And I realized that the Newport Festival had significance and
meaning not only to me and to America as a jazz phenomena, but to the world as
a symbol of what jazz was. And I knew that you could not do a festival at
that time in suburban areas and vacation areas and resorts. So I said, `We
have to take it to an urban area,' and I says the best place to do it would be
New York City. And so that's when I took the festival, which is now the JVC
Jazz Festival, to New York and then established the format for all urban
festivals throughout the world right now.

And what it did was the use of many facilities: boat rides in the Hudson
River, midnight jam sessions, Carnegie Hall, Philharmonic Hall, dances,
forums and panels and just, you know, like, 40 events during the course of a
festival going, of course, for 10 days. We kept Carnegie Hall and
Philharmonic, which is now Avery Fisher Hall, open after--they both agreed to
keep it open for me because they used to close for the summer. And now New
York is just a festival all summer long as before it was dead. We were
responsible for bringing New York to life in the summer. We really were.

GROSS: My guest is music impresario George Wein, founder of the Newport Jazz
and Folk Festivals. We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest is George Wein, the founder of the Newport Folk Festival,
which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this summer. Wein also founded the
Newport Folk Festival, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival and other
music festivals around the world. Let's hear another track from the new 50th
anniversary CD "Happy Birthday Newport." This is tenor saxophonist Ben
Webster and pianist Billy Strayhorn playing Strayhorn's composition "Chelsea
Bridge," recorded at Newport in 1958.

(Soundbite of "Chelsea Bridge")

GROSS: You've seen many of the musicians who you've loved most, who you were
closest with and who are among the greatest musicians, you know, in the
history of the music--you've seen many of them die. Do you ever feel lonely
out there, like you've outlived so many of the people who you came up with?

Mr. WEIN: It isn't that I feel lonely, but sometimes I hear music and it's
talking to me and I literally get tears in my eyes, 'cause the music means so
much to me. And having known so many of these great players--not just the big
names like Duke or Louis--I knew them all--but you know, the ones that I write
about in the book that are not necessarily the genius, but they're the troops,
you know, the ones that made jazz happen and to which we owe an unfathomable
debt. And when I hear those people--and, you know, not only did I list them,
I played with a lot of them. A lot of them toured with the Newport All-Stars.
I mean, I played with people like Lester Young and Sidney Bechet, some of the
greatest artists in the world, and Clark Terry and Buddy Tate and Buck
Clayton, you know, from the history of jazz. I've had the good fortune to
have played with and worked with so many wonderful players. And they talk to
me and I get a beautiful feeling about it. Not a sad feeling, it's a
beautiful feeling that I knew those people and was close to them and they were
part of my life, and maybe I was part of their lives.

GROSS: There have been festivals where I could see that the big draw was
going to be, say, the fusion group--this would be a few years ago--and that,
you know, a few musicians on the bill who I figured were your personal
favorites that they were going to be with the smaller performance spaces
'cause they weren't going to do quite as well as, say, the big commercial
fusion group. Has being in this business for so long ever made you cynical
about popular taste?

Mr. WEIN: Oh, yes. I mean, you do get cynical of all popular taste. There's
no question about that. If I wasn't cynical about that, I'd be a rock 'n'
roll producer and would have made a lot more money. I mean, I'm a great
compromiser in many respects, 'cause I believe the formula for my longevity is
a concept of commercialism with credibility. All these little musicians you
talk about are people that I have great respect for. We did a concert just
the other week about--saluting two veterans like Frank Wess and Joe Wilder,
and we didn't have a big audience, but the response was electric and it was
just total warmth.

So the point is credibility and presenting young musicians and new musicians
and new things along with the artists that sell tickets, that's the reason
we're still alive. That's the reason that we're still in business after 50
years.

GROSS: In writing this memoir, you had to pick through your mind and
hopefully some journals that you had, if, in fact, you had any journals, in
order to revive the past, you know, as you lived it. What was that process
like for you of trying to remember things that happened to you over the years?

Mr. WEIN: The process of remembering was relatively easy 'cause I only
remembered what I remembered. A lot of that sounds strange, but what I
remembered I remembered vividly and that's what I put down. The things that I
didn't remember too vividly I didn't use. The young man that worked with me
on the book, Nate Chinen, did some research on things, and he went through a
lot of my papers. And we found some fascinating things--for instance, letters
I had written to Miles Davis that I had forgotten all about--that I use in the
book, where I start off one of the letters, `I always knew you were evil, but
I never knew you was stupid or crazy.' And...

GROSS: What were you writing him about?

Mr. WEIN: Well, we made an offer for a European trip and he was holding me
off, you know, and we couldn't get an answer out of him. And I said, `Look,
if the other guy gives you a better offer, go with them,' you know, something
like that. And then he met my wife on the street and said, `I like George,
but he doesn't respect me.' And so then I wrote him another letter saying how
much I respected him and, you know, that he was one of the important figures
in jazz, and my whole life was working with important people, you know. And
after that, you know, along with other things, we developed a good friendship.
But Miles liked to be talked to that way 'cause that's the way he talked to
people, you see. So I established a rapport.

But we had to dig to find those letters, and when I found them I was so happy
to use them, because they did reflect my attitude and how I worked with Miles
and how I established a relationship with a guy who was really a unique human
being, Miles Davis, and in his way a very beautiful, beautiful man.

GROSS: George Wein, recorded one year ago after the publication of his
autobiography, "Myself Among Others." This summer marks the 50th anniversary
of his Newport Jazz Festival. Music highlights are collected on the new box
set, "Happy Birthday Newport." Here's Billie Holiday recorded at the
festival in 1957 with Mal Waldron at the piano.

(Soundbite of music)

Ms. BILLIE HOLIDAY: (Singing) The sky is blue and high above. The moon is
new and so is love. Oh, this achin' heart of mine is singing, `Lover, come
back to me.' The sky is blue, the night is cold, the moon is new and love is
old. Oh, this achin' heart of mine is saying, `Lover, where can you be?'
When I remember every little thing you used to do, I go lonely. Every road I
walk along I walk along with you. No wonder I am lonely. The sky is blue and
high above. The moon is new, but love is old. And while I'm waiting here
this heart of mine is singing, `Lover, lover, come back to me right now.'
Thank you.

GROSS: Billie Holiday recorded in 1957 from the new box set "Happy Birthday
Newport." Five Marx Brothers movies are collected in a new DVD box set.
Coming up, music critic Lloyd Schwartz considers the music from these films.
This is FRESH AIR.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Profile: New DVD box set, "The Marx Brothers Collection"
TERRY GROSS, host:

A new DVD box set collects seven great Marx Brothers comedies. One of those
is classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz's favorite film about opera.

(Soundbite of "A Night at the Opera")

Unidentified Marx Brother: Is the opera over yet?

Unidentified Man: Not yet, Senor. In a few minutes.

Unidentified Marx Brother: Hey, you, I told you to slow that nag down. On
account of you, I nearly heard the opera.

LLOYD SCHWARTZ reporting:

Hollywood's greatest film about opera, the one that does the most justice to
all the social pretensions and artistic absurdities surrounding the opera
world is the Marx Brothers' "A Night at the Opera," one of their films in a
new five-DVD box set of their MGM movies. What opera fan wouldn't love the
way Groucho, Chico and Harpo deconstruct, at times quite literally, the
behind-the-scenes machinations of the opera world? Especially visible in the
rivalry between Groucho and the veteran German character actor Sig Rumann over
the affections and the pocketbook of the deliciously clueless dowager,
Margaret Dumont, who thinks her social standing can be improved by investing
in opera.

(Soundbite of "A Night at the Opera")

Ms. MARGARET DUMONT: Mr. Driftwood, I think we'd better keep everything
on a business basis.

Unidentified Marx Brother #1: How do you like that? Every time I get
romantic with you, you want to talk business. I don't know. There's
something about me that brings out the business in every woman. All right.
We'll talk business. You see that man over there eating spaghetti?

Ms. DUMONT: No.

Unidentified Marx Brother #1: Well, you see the spaghetti, don't you? Now
behind that spaghetti is none other than Herman Gottlieb, director of the
New York Opera Company. Do you follow me?

Ms. DUMONT: Yes.

Unidentified Marx Brother #1: Well, stop following me or I'll have you
arrested. Now I've arranged for you to invest $200,000 in the New York Opera
Company.

Ms. DUMONT: I don't understand.

Unidentified Marx Brother #1: Don't you see? You'll be a patron of the
opera. You'll get in the society. Then you can marry me, and they'll kick
you out of society, and all you've lost is $200,000.

SCHWARTZ: Music actually plays an important part in all Marx Brothers
comedies. The plot of "The Big Store" involves funding a music school for
inner-city kids. Chico was a self-taught pianist and in "The Big Store," he
plays a Schubert piece and teaches the kids how to gun down the piano keys
just the way he does. In Harpo's very best harp-playing scene, he wears a
Louis XIV costume and plays a trio with images of himself in a double mirror.
Tony Martin sings a remarkable song called the "Tenement Symphony," which was
Hollywood's vision of the American melting pot; although in 1941,
African-Americans were still excluded from it.

(Soundbite of "The Big Store")

Mr. TONY MARTIN: (Singing) Schubert wrote a symphony. Too bad he didn't
finish it. Gershwin took a chord in G and proceeded to diminish it. I sought
a variation on a theme that I thought pretty, and I found my inspiration on
the east side of the city. The combs and the callies(ph), the candles and
vermicellis all form a part of my Tenement Symphony. The combs...

SCHWARTZ: The great musical numbers, though, are all Groucho's. His best
song is in one of their weaker films, "At the Circus." As the lawyer J.
Cheever Loophole, he sings about the unforgettable "Lydia the Tattooed
Lady." The Marx Brothers surrounded themselves with some very distinguished,
creative people. "Lydia" was written by no less a songwriting team than
Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg, the same year they wrote the songs for "The
Wizard of Oz."

(Soundbite of "At the Circus")

Mr. GROUCHO MARX: (Singing) Oh, Lydia, oh, Lydia. Say, have you met Lydia?
Lydia, the tattoed lady. She has eyes that folks adore so, and a torso even
more so. Lydia, oh, Lydia, that encyclopedia. Oh, Lydia, the queen of
tattoo. On her back is the Battle of Waterloo. Her side, at the wreck of the
Hesper Estu(ph). And proudly above waves the red, white and blue. You can
learn a lot from Lydia.

(Soundbite of Marx whistling)

Cast: (Singing) La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la.

Mr. G. MARX: (Singing) When her robe is unfurled, she will show you the
world. If you step up and tell her where, for a dime you can see Kankakee or
Paris or Washington crossing the Delaware.

Cast: (Singing) La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la.

Mr. G. MARX and Cast: (Singing) Oh, Lydia, oh, Lydia. Say, have you met
Lydia? Oh, Lydia the tattooed lady.

Mr. G. MARX: (Singing) When her muscles start relaxin', up the hill comes
Andrew Jackson.

Mr. G. MARX and Cast: (Singing) Lydia, oh, Lydia, that encyclopedia. Oh,
Lydia, the queen of them all.

Mr. G. MARX: (Singing) For two bits, she will do a mazurka in jazz with a
view of Niagara that nobody has. And on a clear day, you can see Alcatraz.
You can learn a lot from Lydia.

SCHWARTZ: The earlier Marx Brothers movies are scandalously unavailable on
DVD; though there's a wonderful documentary called "The Unknown Marx
Brothers." Some of Groucho's most hilarious ad-libs were on his TV quiz show,
"You Bet Your Life." The ones that were too racy for a network audience were
cut from the show. But these outtakes were shown every year at his sponsors'
corporate convention. Some of these are now included on a new three-DVD set
called "You Bet Your Life: The Lost Episodes," and they're among the funniest
moments on any DVD.

GROSS: Lloyd Schwartz is classical music editor of the Boston Phoenix. He
reviewed "The Marx Brothers Collection," a new five-DVD box set from Warner
Bros.

(Credits)

GROSS: I'm Terry Gross. Happy holiday from all of us at FRESH AIR.
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.