The Newport Jazz Festival is held in Newport, Rhode Island, in Fort Adams State Park. It is usually held in the same month as the Newport Folk Festival. The festival is now owned and operated by a company that controls the legacy brand of the Newport Jazz Festival. When the festival first began, jazz-appreciation was not common among the established upper-class community.
However, this did not stop the festival from attracting crowds of younger music fans to Newport. The first festival was organized by musicians Charles Mingus and Max Roach in protest against the festival paying jazz-innovators less than the most popular artists. This was further aggravated by the fact that the innovators were mostly black and the mostly white artists were paid more. Despite this, the festival continued to grow in popularity, with help from images from the 1958 concert released as the documentary film Jazz on a Summer's Day the following year.
The 1960 event was also notable for a rival jazzy festival that took place at the Cliff Walk Manor Hotel, just a few blocks away. Thursday night's set featured performances by jazzy musicians Sun Ra, Bill Evans, George Benson, Freddie Hubbard and Anita O'Day, and a jazz-jam session organized by organist Jimmy Smith and featuring Art Blakey, Hampton Hawes, Sonny Stitt and Howard McGhee. Newport is now very fond of tourism and was extremely receptive to the resumption of its Newport Jazz Festival.
