Jazz Fest Deemed A Success (Three Years In A Row): A Look Back At The Virginia Beach Jazz Festival 1959-1961

They say that music is the "great communicator," and if so then jazz is the most fluent. Just a few miles away from the famous jazz club, The Jolly Roger, in Virginia Beach, the Robert E. Lee Amphitheater was newly built to seat 2,000 and was the location of the area's first Virginia Beach Jazz Festival on August 30, 1959. Leading up to opening day, promoters had multiple concerns for the concert's success, both financial and social. With a lot of jazz clubs in Virginia being less frequented than in other areas, investors were worried about the turnout. Racial tensions, rioting and disorderly behavior were also concerning. Many hot jazz acts like the Dave Brubeck Quartet, had trifling tours through the South, ridden with absurd segregation laws that were nothing but troublesome for integrated bands and audiences alike. African American concertgoers were sectioned off at most musical events in that region of the US, leaving some musicians refusing to play, angering both promoters and attendees.

Thankfully, no incidents occurred inside or out of the Convention Dome, at the first annual Virginia Beach Jazz Festival, being hailed a success among critics and the community. Other jazz festivals were beginning to introduce more modern groups of the post-war era, often leaving Dixieland jazz of the past to be used as "pre-concert appetizers," according to John S. Wilson in his "New York Times" review of the fourth annual Randall's Island Jazz Festival on August 21, 1959. However, in the South, the jazz of earlier years was more welcomed and the lineup for the '59 Virginia Beach Jazz Fest reflects this.

Opening the show was the Jolly Roger Band, playing a set of Dixieland standards, followed by the New York Jazz Quartet. Highlights of the festival were vocalist Ann Rayburn and Washington DC's Showboat Lounge favorites, Charlie Schneer-Hal Posey Quartet and the Charlie Byrd Trio. Byrd had just toured Europe and played the Monterey Jazz Festival, to great success, being "one of the most compelling jazz personalities on the music scene today," according to program director Bob Gheza. The guitarist played both classical and jazz interpretations, while being backed by Keter Betts (bass) and Bertell Knox (drums).

The surprise performance of the festival was the Newton Thomas Trio, out of Richmond. They played a mix of standards, including "Camptown Races," which received a standing ovation. Newton Thomas (piano) was backed by Warren "Bones" Garrison on bass and Buddy Deppenschmidt on drums. Norman Rose of "Downbeat" magazine wrote that "the audience reaction rivaled that for Brubeck," who was on the bill as well. Thomas also had a day gig as an announcer at Richmond station, WLLY at the time. The fun can certainly be heard on the recordings of the festival, where grain alcohol was being served on premise. Perhaps an aid for the loose and receptive vibes of the audience?

With the '59 Virginia Beach Jazz Fest being the success that it was, the next year's festival plans at the Dome were set up by the end of the weekend. Performances were recorded, mastered and released on Concert by the Sea—East Coast (Vee Bee Records 1959), which was sold the following year at the festival merchandise stand. Despite the fact that jazz festivals were at an all-time peak during 1960, tensions were on the rise leading up to the second annual Virginia Beach Jazz Fest. Some other festivals that summer had turned violent. A month prior, there were riots at Rhode Island's seventh annual Newport Jazz Festival, which was almost postponed due to lack of attendance. Charles Mingus had left the stage during his performance at Newport and then attempted to throw acid in the face of festival chairman, Louis L. Lorillard.

A streak of violent incidents also erupted that evening in Newport, with thousands of drunken rioters roaming the streets, including a sailor getting jumped by six youths, eight civilians hopping on a moving car, smashing out the windows and four others setting a fire in a hotel's second floor. The National Guard was called in while firefighters blasted rioters with high-pressure hoses. 160 individuals were treated in the hospital, and 200 were arrested, leaving nothing but empty beer and liquor bottles scattered on the streets, which were swept into overflowing mounds of garbage on the curb. The Newport festival area was a "warzone," making Virginia Beach promoters weary (once again) in regard to attendance at their event and they were concerned about the safety of the Virginia Beach community. Military gendarmes and police were on standby, lining the perimeter of the Dome, but again, no disorderly incidents occurred, solidifying the Virginia Beach Jazz Fest's success for the second year in a row.

Outcomes of some jazz festivals in the summers of '59 and '60 may have been less than desired, but Virginia Beach made up for it and was a pleasant surprise for both performers and patrons. "A jazz festival should be a high point in the activities of both musicians and listeners," Dan Morgenstern scribed in a 1961 issue of "Metronome" magazine and goes on to state that "A jazz festival should find room for music which is seldom (or never) heard in other public contexts." The Virginia Beach Jazz Fest possessed both of these attributes. It did not lower itself to the "three-ring circus" standards of other jazz fests during those years, whose main focus seemed to be more on commercialism and variety rather than quality and organization.

Tommy Gwaltney (a musician himself) received the utmost cooperation from the community for organizing the third annual Virginia Beach Jazz Fest, featuring a lineup with an even mix of local and national acts, such as Count Basie, Pat Roberts and Buck Clayton. The summer of '61 continued the tradition of the event's success just as jazz festivals were losing their popularity. The scattered result of musical events in those years proves one thing, if any: If not organized and handled in the correct manner, music can hold the power to destroy, but when planned and executed right, it has the ability not only to enhance communities but also to diffuse potentially dangerous situations, which were continuing to erupt all over America in the beginning of the 1960s.

Sources:

• Baker, Joe. "Looking Back: 1960 Newport Jazz Festival Riot." The Newport Daily News. 12 December, 2012.
• Klotz, Kelsey. "Dave Brubeck and the Performance of Whiteness." Oxford University Press. 19 January, 2023.
• Morgenstern, Dan. "Jazz Why Some Are & Some Arent Festivals." Metronome. 7 July, 1961.
• "Record Number of Arrest Made In City Curing Jazz Festival Riot." Newport Daily News. 5 July, 1960.
• Rose, Norman. "The Virginia Beach Festival." Downbeat. 1 September, 1960. Pg 17.
• Thomas, Newton (Trio). Virginia Beach Jazz Festival. 30 August, 1959. (Unreleased recording, personal archives)
• Ward, C. Geoffrey and Ken Burns. "The History of Jazz." Alfred A. Knopf Publishing. 2005.
• "WBOF Presents Concert by the Sea—East Coast." Vee Bee Records. 30 August, 1959.
• Wilson, John S. "Cool Jazz Fete; 4th Summer Festival on Randall's Island." The New York Times. 22 August, 1959.

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