On The Spinning Stage

Across six decades, from its initial production in Chicago to its current Los Angeles home, the Playboy Jazz Fest has become a summer tradition of note

- Sean J. O'connell

It was an outrageously confident promise: “See and hear more great stars in one weekend than most people see in a lifetime,” declared ads for the first ever Playboy Jazz Festival. But the three-day August 1959 event more than delivered.

The brainchild of Hugh Hefner, the first jazz festival was part celebration of PLAYBOY’s five year anniversary and part marketing strategy, a way to raise the magazine’s profile and stake out cultural territory. The powerhouse line-up featured such first-ballot hall of famers as Dave Brubeck, Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong,b Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Coleman Hawkins, Nina Simone and Sonny Rollins. Five concerts showcased more than three dozen acts, and the cheap seats cost a little more than a buck. That August weekend Playboy had taken the first step in creating what would become one of the liveliest and longest-running jazz festivals in America — though two decades would pass before it took the second step.

From the introductory issue of PLAYBOY in December 1953, jazz had supplied the soundtrack. It was one of four topics Hefner suggested his readers would enjoy discussing with women — Nietzsche, Picasso and sex being the others. In 1957 the magazine introduced an annual reader’s poll of the hottest jazz acts and released vinyl collections featuring the winners. Music reviews and ads for hi-fi systems and the newest releases from Gerry Mulligan and Charles Mingus abound in early issues. “Jazz is the most personal of arts,” Hefner declared, “and, if we bring our passion to it, we are rewarded.” For Hefner, that passion demanded a living, breathing outlet.