Jam in Newport

Cats, hipsters, vipers, and even a few moldy figs swarmed last weekend among the stately mansions of Newport, R.I. for the second Newport Jazz Festival. Neckties were not worn and tea was not drunk; cries of "Go, go, go!" burned the sea-cooled air, and other un-Newportian manifestations jarred the Old Guard as they had last year (TIME, Aug. 2) and probably would again. But the general consensus on Bailey's Beach and along Bellevue Avenue was that this year's foreigners were considerably more "dignified" than before.

Newport had taken no chances. The board of governors of the famed 75-year-old casino flatly refused to lease its grounds to the festival as it did in 1954; only an unseasonable dry spell that summer, they pointed out, prevented the tennis courts from being ruined by stomping feet, and what they called the "sanitary facilities" had been deplorably inadequate. Jazz-loving Socialite Louis L. Lorillard promptly paid $22,500 for Belcourt, the enormous, run-down pile of the late O.H.P. Belmont, and announced that this was where things would jump during the festival's three days. At this the neighbors set up a well-modulated howl and complained to the city fathers. Eventual compromise: jam sessions in the city-owned ballfield, Freebody Park (seating 11,800), lectures by hipsters ("Jazz from the Inside Looking Out") and social scientists ("Jazz from the Outside Looking In") to be held during two afternoons at Belcourt.

Everybody was on hand-Count Basie and Louis Armstrong, Pee Wee Russell, Dave Brubeck, Woody Herman, Roy Eldridge, Gerry Mulligan, the Modern Jazz Quartet, and plenty of others as "far out" as mortal men can get. Tabulating receipts at week's end, Impresario George Wein grinned from ear to ear. Not only would the festival be continued next year, he predicted, but it might well spread to Europe.

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