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| George Wein (CAS’50) and Sarah Vaughan at the 1987 Newport Jazz Festival. Wein first booked the legendary singer at his Storyville jazz club in Boston in 1952. Photo from the collection of George Wein |
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by Brian Fitzgerald
Jazz wasn’t just a minor distraction when George Wein was a student at Boston University. In fact, he once said, it “ruined” his high school and college career as far as marks were concerned. Haunting Boston-area jazz bars certainly made it tough to study.
Wein (CAS’50), who with his wife, Joyce, recently presented a $1 million gift to BU’s African-American Studies Program, worked his way through college playing the piano in nightclubs. He had been addicted to jazz since his early teens, but his obsession turned out to be a blessing for both him and the music industry.
Wein went on to become one of the most influential jazz impresarios of the 20th century. He founded the Newport Jazz Festival in 1954, when large outdoor music festivals were few and far between. Today, he is CEO of Festival Productions, which also produces the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, the JVC Jazz Festivals, and numerous other concerts worldwide. Through the years his music events have helped launch the careers of Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, and Mahalia Jackson.
“George made the statement that jazz ruined his high school and college career,” said BU Chancellor John Silber at a June 12 press conference announcing the gift. “Most of us would be delighted to be ruined the way George has been ruined.”
After founding two legendary Boston jazz clubs, Storyville and Mahogany Hall, Wein battled to enlist support for the first Newport Jazz Festival in a town known for being a posh summer retreat. Many of its politicians and citizens were not enthusiastic about the prospect of a crowd of multicultural performers and audiences invading the Rhode Island seaside playground for the wealthy. But after making just $142 its first year, the event became successful and is now an American institution.
Responding to Silber’s comment, Wein said that he “got through” college, although he “wasn’t a distinguished undergraduate.” However, he said, when he received an Alumni Award from Boston University in 1981, “I enjoyed the difference between being an undistinguished undergraduate and a distinguished graduate,” prompting laughter among those gathered in the School of Management’s Executive Leadership Center. “I’d rather have it that way than the other way around.”
CAS African-American Studies and History Professor Allison Blakely pointed out that for half a century, Wein has been fostering harmonious interracial relations in the music industry. For example, he refused to produce the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival until the city had eliminated segregation laws prohibiting integrated audiences and preventing black and white musicians from performing on the same stage. He said that Wein’s promotion of jazz has helped improve understanding between people of all races and cultures, “and I think that if our program can emulate that in the academic sphere, we will have great success.”
Impact on world history
The African-American Studies Program’s aim is to develop appreciation of the African-American impact on world history, and an understanding of global and cross-cultural influences on African-Americans. Founded in 1969 by Adelaide Cromwell, now a CAS professor emerita of sociology, the program “thrived under Dr. Cromwell’s leadership,” said current director Ronald Richardson, a CAS associate professor of African-American studies and history. “It became one of the best programs in the nation. With a new century, African-American studies at BU has adopted a new focus, reflecting developments at home and abroad. Our reoriented program explores the African-American experience in a global and comparative perspective. That means uncovering connections between Americans of African descent and other populations, both in the United States and around the world.”
Richardson also announced that John Thornton, one of the top historians of Africa in the world, and his wife, Africanist Linda Heywood, will join BU this fall. “Clearly, we’re on the move,” he said.
Wein, born in Lynn and raised in Newton, stressed the importance of African-American studies in higher education, and said that such programs “need support everywhere.” He pointed out that when he took premed courses in his college days, largely because his father, Barnet Wein (MED’20) was a doctor, he never dreamed he would ever be able to contribute to such a program in a meaningful way. “I know that my family never thought I’d be in a position like this,” he said, “and my friends never thought I’d be in a position like this.”
Once he realized as an undergraduate that he didn’t want to pursue his father’s career path, he followed a different beat: jazz. And that transformation led him to become a “cultural innovator,” according to a lifetime achievement award he received from the DaCapo Foundation and the Friends of the United Nations in 1999.
With his gift to the BU African-American Studies Program, Wein continues to innovate -- and promote racial tolerance, said Blakely, who thanked the Weins “for the faith they are demonstrating in BU and in its African-American Studies Program, showing that they have been convinced that we will advance the humanitarian ideals of social justice, as they have done throughout their careers. I’m pledging that we will be true to that trust.”
28
August 2003
Boston University
Office of University Relations