Next Newport Folk Festival July 28-July 30, 2023 is SOLD OUT. To get on a waiting list for tickets visit: newportfolk.org/tickets/.

The world-famous Newport (Rhode Island) Folk Festival was founded in 1959 by folk-singer/activists Theodore Bikel and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Pete Seeger, folk musician, songwriter, radio broadcaster and Broadway play-write Oscar Brand, and perhaps most importantly, George Wein and his partner Albert Grossman (most famous as Bob Dylan’s manager).

George Wein deserves much of the credit for founding not only the Newport Folk Festival, which was preceded in 1954 by Wein’s successful establishment of the Newport Jazz Festival, but for his formative work in organizing large (mostly jazz) festivals. Wein has been recognized as the first concert promoter to secure corporate sponsorships for music events, a development which of course has led to the perpetuation and growth of events in music throughout the world.

The Schlitz (beer) Salute to Jazz and the Playboy Jazz Festival, organized by Wein, were two of the first “corporate sponsored” events in the history of the live entertainment industry.

In 1969, George Wein founded Festival Productions, Inc., which now has offices in six cities and produces hundreds of musical events, nationally and internationally, each year, including the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, and the numerous JVC Jazz Festivals (formerly the Kool Jazz Festival).

“A professional pianist from his early teens, George Wein went on to lead his own band in and around his native Boston, frequently accompanying visiting jazz musicians. In 1950, he opened his own club in Boston, formed the Storyville record label, and launched his career as a jazz entrepreneur. In 1954, he was invited to organize the first Newport Jazz Festival. He subsequently played an important role in establishing numerous other international festivals, including the annual Grande Parade du Jazz in Nice, the South of France. Joyce Wein, George’s wife of 46 years played an integral role in the development of every festival Wein produced.” —George Wein Biography from Festival Productions.

The Newport Folk Festival draws from a wide and diverse range of “folk artists.” Aimee Mann, Billy Strings, Maggie Rose, The Backseat Lovers and the Harlem Gospel Travelers are just a few of the bands in the NFF’s mix for the 2023 event.

The NFF has been held every year since 1986 but took a hiatus from 1971-1985 due to what some might call a “lack of interest” in acoustic music, beginning in the 1960s with the “British Invasion” (Beatles, Rolling Stones, et al.) and the coming of age of the electric guitar.

In fact, the Newport Folk Festival’s fame (or perhaps notoriety) can largely be attributed to the controversial appearance of folk hero Bob Dylan at Newport in 1965. It has been widely reported over the years that the folk audience in attendance that year booed Dylan vociferously in response to his performing his set on an electric guitar. This viewpoint was fueled by the 2005 Martin Scorcese film, No Direction Home, in which booing can be heard upon Peter Yarrow’s (of Peter, Paul and Mary) introduction of Dylan and during the opening musical passages of “Maggie’s Farm,” and into the next song, “Like a Rolling Stone.”

There are numerous contradictions offered, however, to the reason for the booing before, during and after Dylan’s set in ’65.

Folk icon and event co-founder Pete Seeger has represented that he and others were simply upset with the distorted sound quality rendering Dylan’s all-important lyrics inaudible.

Festival Director Bruce Jackson, also in attendance, has elaborated his position in the great-reading article, “The myth of Newport ’65: It wasn’t Bob Dylan they were booing,” concluding from a tape of the event that, “…all the booing you can hear from the stage is in response to things Peter Yarrow said, not to things Bob Dylan did.” (Peter Yarrow was trying to make announcements about subsequent acts to appear and the crowd, according to Jackson, wanted MORE Dylan, not less.)

Singer/songwriter, columnist, and frequent Bob Dylan observer Peter Stone Brown, put it this way:

“That night at the evening concert, Dylan, in a leather jacket and white shirt with snap-tab collar, launched into ‘Maggie’s Farm’ and in the three minutes it took to play the song changed music completely. Many in the crowd didn’t like what they heard – whether it was the rock and roll band or the inadequate sound system remains a topic of debate – and booed. Dylan did two more songs, the early version of ‘It Takes A Lot To Laugh’ (titled by some ‘Phantom Engineer’) and his current single, ‘Like A Rolling Stone,’ and walked off the stage. Called back to the stage by Peter Yarrow and performing alone, he sang ‘It’s All Over Now Baby Blue’ and ‘Mr. Tambourine Man.’

“Thirty-seven years later the controversy of what went on that night still rages with much revisionist history. Some newspaper articles claim that [writer/historian] Alan Lomax got in a fistfight with Dylan’s manager Albert Grossman over it. They did have a fistfight, but it was over Lomax’s introduction to the Paul Butterfield Band, not Dylan. The most legendary story is that Pete Seeger looked for an axe to cut the sound cable. According to Seeger in an interview published in Gadfly magazine, he said to the person doing the sound, ‘Clean up that sound so we can understand the words,’ and they shouted back, ‘No, this is the way they want it.’ I said, ‘Goddamn it, if I had an ax, I’d cut the cable.’ Not all that surprising since Seeger toyed with electric guitars in the forties and there were electric guitars on the albums [Seeger’s band] The Weavers recorded for Decca Records, not to mention that various other performers including Howlin’ Wolf and Johnny Cash had appeared at Newport with bands. Some contemporary writers, based on tapes of the show, are claiming no one booed. However all press accounts at the time as well as people I’ve spoken to who were there said there was booing and shouting….”

Whatever the actual events of Newport ’65, the historic festival remains [albeit with a 15 year interruption from ’71-’86] an important fixture of the “folk scene.” Dylan returned to perform once again in 2002.

Concludes Peter Stone Brown, “…And so, after all these years, Bob Dylan returned to the Newport Folk Festival. But there was no doubt that Newport itself had changed and if there were any old ghosts hanging around, they weren’t going to be acknowledged.”

The show, of course, must go on.

SIDEBAR: George Wein’s autobiography, Myself Among Others, with a foreward by jazz aficianado/comedian Bill Cosby, was recognized by the Jazz Journalists Association as 2004’s best book about jazz.