On July 4th (2024) KSDS-FM celebrated a major event. Yes, it was July 4th. But this was an extra special festival weekend because we used the occasion of our nation's founding to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the inaugural Newport Jazz Festival.
Jazz festivals have long dominated the American summertime landscape, but this Independence Day, we celebrated 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. July 4th, 2024 marks the 70th anniversary of the first Newport Jazz Festival, so we honored its legacy, from the famous to the infamous and every legendary performance and recording in between. So please enjoy an encore streaming of our July 4th, 2024 programming, honoring Newport's 70th anniversary by bringing you the landmark performances from the festival's golden age, 1954 to 1970.
On July 4, 2024, KSDS hosts brought listeners six shows over the course of 16 hours -- from 8 a.m. to midnight -- featuring music from six distinct periods during Newport's golden age. This music immortalized the musicians who presented it, and we think the music ought to be immortalized, too. Scroll to the bottom of the page to hear each of the six programs, in their entirety, as originally broadcast, so that this music shall live on in perpetuity.
- Part 1: Loren Schoenberg plays recordings from the early years of Newport, most released on Columbia Records, from 1954-1956.
- Part 2: 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.
- Part 3: Will Friedwald revisits Newport '59 through the 1962 festival.
- Part 4: Chuck Granata plays music from the '63-'65 period, with special focus on Frank Sinatra's appearances at Newport during this period.
- Part 5: Matt Silver plays recordings from late-stage Newport when "The New Thing" was the new thing, as practiced by the likes of John Coltrane & Archie Shepp.
- Part 6: 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.
