Wolfgang's Vault now streaming vintage Newport Jazz Festival performances

November 11, 12:30 PMOakland Jazz Music ExaminerBrian McCoy

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Wolfgang's Vault has purchased thousands of hours of performances from Newport.

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I have already posted a number of items regarding Wolfgang’s Vault, that treasure trove of live music that stands as a 24/7 celebration of the life and legacy of the ultimate concert impresario, Bill Graham. While not surprisingly dominated by the rock shows that were Graham’s bread and butter, jazz is represented in vintage sets from Miles Davis, Return to Forever and others.
Well, get ready to see (and hear) jazz’s presence in the Vault increase significantly. The New York Times is reporting that Wolfgang’s Vault has purchased, remastered and is going to stream thousands of hours of music from decades of the Newport Jazz Festival.

The company, based in San Francisco, bought the archives of the Newport festivals from the Festival Network last year. Bill Sagan, founder and chief executive of Wolfgang’s Vault, says the archives include many, many tapes: 1,000 to 1,200 individual performances, dating at least to 1955, the festival’s second year, and continuing to the end of the century. It is not a complete audio record — certain years contain only a small number of performances, or are missing completely — but it is a major one nonetheless.
Since the purchase, Wolfgang’s Vault has spent almost $5 million, Mr. Sagan said, on making audio transfers and mixes of the tapes. (Neither Mr. Sagan nor Chris Shields of the Festival Network would reveal the amount spent on acquiring the archive itself.)

(Today) the company will begin posting free streams of a handful of performances from the 1959 Newport Jazz Festival, at wolfgangsvault.com: the first offerings include Count Basie, Dakota Staton and Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. By next Tuesday, when more are added, there will be 27 sets from that year’s jazz festival, including some by Ahmad Jamal, Joe Williams, Thelonious Monk and Horace Silver. The plan is to have hundreds more online in the coming months, from other years of Newport Jazz and from the Newport Folk Festival as well.

True, lots of Newport sets have been released commercially (check out just a smattering below). That said, putting that music and so much more on line is a major boon for jazz fans. Check it out by clicking here.

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