Tales from the Book of Wein: Christian McBride Remembers George Wein
On Sep 13, 2021, music impresario George Wein passed away at age 95. Wein was responsible for launching and shepherding the Newport Jazz Festival in 1954, followed by the Newport Folk Festival (1959), the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival (1970) and many other events throughout his storied career.
“I’m not sure how many people realize that it all began with George Wein,” observes bassist Christian McBride, who was selected by Wein to succeed him as the Newport Jazz Festival’s artistic director. “When it comes to the outdoor music festival, his fingerprints are on that forever. It’s even bigger than Jazz or Folk. It also applies to festivals like Coachella. If you want to run a festival, you’ve got to look in ‘The Book of Wein.’”
Can you remember the first time you heard of George Wein?
I was 11 years old when I really started to go deep into this great tradition known as jazz. When he found out that I was playing the double bass, my great uncle—who is a bass player—was so excited and he said, “Now it’s time to get you into jazz.” There were quite a few records—Miles and Monk at Newport, Dizzy Gillespie at Newport, Ella and Billie at Newport, Coltrane’s New Thing at Newport—where I remember seeing the name George Wein. I later discovered that the Mellon Jazz Festival in Philly, where I grew up, was booked by a company called Festival Productions. Somewhere along the way, I found out that the man who ran Festival Productions was George Wein, and I put it together: “Oh, that’s the same guy I see on the back of all those live albums from Newport.”
Then, in the spring of 1988, the Mellon Jazz Festival announced that Dizzy Gillespie was going to be the featured artist that year and play multiple concerts throughout the festival. They had a big press conference announcing this and I was invited to perform at the press conference. So I got to meet both of them briefly.
I soon came to discover that George was not only the man behind the Newport Jazz Festival, but also the Newport Folk Festival, the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, the Nice Jazz festival, the Playboy Jazz Festival and the Hampton Jazz Festival. And, he had been the man behind the Kool Jazz Festival, which had also been in Philly. So, at that point, George was looming large in my universe.
When did you realize that George was also a fellow musician who had played with some of the greats?
I finally moved to New York during the summer of 1989 to attend Julliard. By the time I moved to New York, I’d already become good friends with Wynton Marsalis. He became a very important big brother to me. He invited me over to his house one day—in late ‘89 or early ‘90—and George was there, which was a pleasant surprise.
I had my bass with me because Wynton always wanted to jam. But it was actually George who said, “Hey, why don’t we play a little bit?” In my brain, I’m thinking, “Where’s the piano player?” Then, George sits down at the piano and starts playing. I remember being completely knocked out. That was my first extended hang with George Wein.
When it came to running the festival, one of his favorite mantras was: “We play all forms of jazz from J to Z.” He was very proud of the fact that he had such a diverse festival, where you could find anyone from Anthony Braxton to George Benson to the Count Basie Orchestra at the same event. But it was very clear that his heart was with swing. He had a very passionate love affair with music from the ‘30s and ‘40s. He loved people like Teddy Wilson, Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, Milt Hinton, and, of course, Louis Armstrong.
So any time George played the piano, he played something in that vein. The older I got, not only did I continue to think that it was beautiful that his passion was there, but I also realized that you could learn a lot from cats who really focused on that swing-centric era because not a lot of musicians did. That music was popular in America just before the bebop era broke open. So not only could you learn a lot from George from the business end, but you could learn a lot from him musically as well.
Did you remain in touch during the early phase of your career?
I never really thought I was in George’s frontal lobe but he did extend some opportunities to me. In 1991, he put together the Jazz Futures, sort of like the young, up-and-coming all-stars. He really helped solidify our place in the jazz business. Roy Hargrove was in that band along with Marlon Jordan, Tim Warfield, Antonio Hart, Mark Whitfield, Benny Green, Carl Allen and me. Getting the George Wein stamp of approval—and having him put us on his tour circuit— really helped set up our careers nicely after that tour was over.
I later got called to play at the 40th anniversary of the Newport Festival, which was at the White House. It happened in 1993, although I know the 40th anniversary would have been 1994. That was my first visit to the White House. All of these great cats were there—I can’t even start naming names— and it was filmed for a PBS television special.
I recently looked at the program for the 1978 White House Jazz Festival, just to gaze at the amazing roster of musicians, and happened to notice that, sure enough, George was the producer.
I don’t know exactly what part he played in this, but Duke Ellington had his 70th birthday at the White House. This was [in 1969], just after Nixon had been sworn in. Some people didn’t want to go because they didn’t like Nixon’s policies but I remember Jim Hall telling me that most of the musicians thought, “This is for Duke Ellington. If we’re getting invited to play at this legendary man’s 70th birthday bash, then we’ll be there.”
There’s some video footage of it, a short 20-minute doc. You see people like Milt Hinton, Joe Williams, Clark Terry, Benny Goodman, Dave Brubeck. And, who’s playing piano? George. It’s incredible. At one point, you see George looking into the audience and waving like, “I shouldn’t be on the piano. You come over.” When I first saw that, I was thinking, “I wonder who he’s waving up?” It was Duke Ellington. He’s like, “Come on, Duke!” I thought, “Wow, there was nothing he didn’t see or do or experience when it comes to the music business.”
Can you describe the conversation in which George asked you to take over as artistic director of Newport Jazz?
In 2015, my trio was booked to play at the festival and we had a really good performance. About a month later, I get a call from George inviting me to come to his apartment for lunch. Now, I knew that George had a tradition of inviting musicians up to his apartment for lunch. Anat Cohen had been one of his favorite musicians and she went up there often. Wynton still came over as well.
I had been living in New York for 26 years and this was my first invitation to lunch. I felt like I’d finally climbed up George’s ladder a little bit. My assumption was that he wanted to offer me a featured artist thing at Newport, where he’d invite a particular artist to play all three days of the festival.
So I got to his apartment, he welcomed me into the dining room, and he told his assistant to shut the door. Now, I was getting a little nervous. Then, he spoke about the history of the festival and explained that, at a recent board meeting, he had said, “I’m 89 years old, and the fact that we don’t have a successor plan is foolish. I’m not going to be running this festival forever. I’ve got to start getting my ducks in order.”
So now I’m thinking he wants a recommendation and I’m going through this Rolodex in my head, trying to identify who would be a good artistic director for Newport. But then George says, “After deliberation with the board and my staff, we all agree that you should be the next artistic director of the Jazz Festival.”
It was all so overwhelming and unexpected. He mentioned some of the things that I had been doing with the LA Philharmonic, as well as with my wife [musician/educator Melissa Walker] in Montclair, N.J. He also mentioned my work on SiriusXM and with the Jazz Museum in Harlem. Then, he said, “What I like more than anything else is that you really don’t seem to have any particular musical biases or prejudices. You work with Wynton and you also work with The Roots. You’ve worked with Laurie Anderson and you’ve done things with Edgar Meyer. That’s the attitude I want in the person who is going to replace me.”
Eventually, we did have a little lunch, but I was too shocked to eat. [Laughs.]
You mentioned learning from George on the business side. What did you take away from him in that setting?
Let me say a couple things about the way George carried himself. He was a true boss and I mean that in every sense of the word.
First, I really liked the fact that not only did he create his own competition, but he also helped his competition. That’s another extremely rare thing. When other people wanted to start jazz festivals, his attitude was “the more festivals, the better” because they provided opportunities for musicians to work. That’s what a real boss does. His thinking was “This will be better, not for me, but for the musicians that I love so much. So if that means you’re starting a festival, go right ahead and do it. I’ll help you.”
Now, George wasn’t warm and fuzzy all the time. I’ll never forget a situation from my first year as artistic director, where I came to admire him even more for how things turned out. My Big Band played and whoever was on before me went over a little bit, so my set got started about 10 minutes later than scheduled. We were supposed to play a 75-minute set, and I asked the stage manager: “Now that we’re 10 minutes late, do you want me to stop the set early?” He told me to go on and play our full set, so that we wouldn’t lose the 10 minutes.
This set was sort of like the torch passing. George introduced us and he was sitting on the side of the stage with one of the board members watching us in plain view of the audience. But George didn’t know what the stage manager had told me. So, when I walked over to him after our set to give him a hug, he was livid that we had gone 10 minutes over our allotted time. He really tore into me and I was upset about it.
That night we had our gala and the first thing George did when he got on the microphone was say, “I want to make a public apology to Christian McBride.” What was also really George-esque about all of this is that he went into this whole story of why he was apologizing. This was a man who really had no problem exposing his weaknesses or his missteps.
I always admired the fact that he never tried to double down on something that he knew was wrong. I don’t know a lot of people in similar positions who are willing to acknowledge their mistakes and say, “Hey, man, I’m sorry I did that. It won’t happen again.” But George was willing to do that, whereas most other people would be like, “No, I’m the boss and this is how I run the show. You’re just gonna have to get used to it.”
What sort of conversations would you have with George about the festival after you assumed your new role?
Even though he stepped down as artistic director—sort of retiring officially—we all knew better. We still kept George on all the email chains. We wouldn’t make any decisions without running them by George. We’d ask him if he was OK with something and he’d say, “Look guys, I don’t have anything to do with this anymore. This is your show now, but I appreciate you checking in.” Then, he’d go, “But, on second thought, I do have something to say about this.” [Laughs.] So he was always involved, even when he wasn’t. George was still sending emails or making phone calls.
Now, this is one of my favorite George stories: I got an email one night from George. The title of the email was “Urgent” and the body of the email said, “We need to talk ASAP.” So my first thought was fright, like, “What did I do wrong?”
I called George the next morning and I said, “Hey, George, I got your email.” And he said, “When can you come over?” I said, “I can come over today.” He answered, “OK, you do that.” Click.
Now I’m paranoid that I did something wrong. So I went over to his apartment and I was told: “George is in the living room waiting for you.” Now, I’m thinking, “Oh, my god. What did I do?” So I walk in and George says, “Hey, man, how are you doing? Have a seat. Can I get you a drink? Your usual? Vodka on the rocks?”
We make some small talk for a minute but I’m scared to death. Then he says, “Do you have Spotify on your iPhone?” I said, “Yes.” Then he says, “Pull it out.” So I pulled it out and then he says, “Punch up Lester Young playing ‘Sometimes I’m Happy.’” So I punch up Lester Young, and we listen to “Sometimes I’m Happy.” Then he says, “Play Louis Armstrong’s ‘Just a Gigolo.’” We listen to Louis Armstrong’s “Just a Gigolo” and then he says, “Play Coleman Hawkins’ ‘Body and Soul.’” We listened to Coleman Hawkins.
Finally, I said, “George, what did you call me up here for? What was so urgent that you needed to talk with me about?” And he says, “I just wanted someone to listen to music with. There are not a lot of people I can talk to about this era of music. I know you like this stuff as much as I do. Man, how come nobody plays like this anymore?”
It was one of the sweetest, most beautiful visits I ever had with him.
