On July 4th KSDS-FM will be celebrating a major event. Sure, it's the nation’s birthday. But, in the season where jazz festivals predominate, we're going to celebrate the foundational one, the granddaddy of them all: the Newport Jazz Festival. It is to jazz festivals what the Rose Bowl once met to college football’s postseason and still means to parades. Of course, there's Monterey and Montreal and Marciac, North Sea and New Orleans, Copenhagen and even Clearwater, but Newport's the one that just matters more. 2024 marks the 70th anniversary of the first Newport Jazz Festival, and we plan to honor it's legacy, from the famous to the infamous and every legendary performance and recording in between. So join us at 8 a.m. on July 4th — and keep the radio or streaming device on till midnight — as we cover all things Newport Jazz Festival.
We will have some of KSDS’s finest cover each period of this festival, from its inception, in chronological order. Here’s the schedule (July 4th):
- 8 a.m. to 11 a.m.: Loren Schoenberg plays recordings from the early years of Newport, most released on Columbia Records, from 1954-1956.
- 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.: Ken Poston on Newport '57 and '58, the Verve and Columbia recordings that emerged from those festivals, and the iconic documentary film about the 1958 festival, Jazz on a Summer's Day
- 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. Will Friedwald revisits Newport '59 through the 1962 festival
- 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.: Chuck Granata will play music from the '63-'65 period, with special focus on Frank Sinatra's appearances at Newport during this period.
- 8 p.m. to 11 p.m.: Matt Silver will play recordings from late-stage Newport when "The New Thing" was the new thing, as practiced by the likes of John Coltrane & Archie Shepp
- 11 p.m. to Midnight: Loren Schoenberg returns to close out our Newport retrospective with music from the 1970 festival and special focus on Louis Armstrong's farewell Newport performance.
