George Wein wasn’t just at the ground floor of Newport Jazz Fest, Newport Folk Fest and New Orleans Jazz Fest. He arguably crafted the archetype of the modern music festival—and was a stouthearted and unforgettable character to boot. Despite being perhaps the most important concert producer to ever live, George Wein didn’t disappear behind a curtain like the Wizard of Oz.

Anyone who’s been to Newport Jazz Fest probably remembers the suspenders-clad senior citizen zipping around the grounds in his golf cart, nicknamed “The Wein Machine.” The image seems to sum him up: Public-spirited, lovably avuncular, and darn near universally beloved. But as close compatriot Danny Melnick remembers, he wasn’t only zipping around looking for handshakes and hugs: Sometimes, Wein was on his way to yell at him about something.

“He would get driven backstage and go [Faux-screams] “Dannnyyy!” Melnick tells GRAMMY.com. “I would come over and he was like, ‘The goddamn craft vendors are too close.’ And I’m like, ‘What are you talking about?’ And he’s like, “Go over there and look.’” Eventually, Melnick says, he would have to excuse himself and deal with the crowd-congestion issue.

But although Wein could be “a tough boss,” their conflicts were always constructive and familial, never malevolent. “He deserves all the accolades and all the love and all the credit, but, definitely, he was a human being,” Melnick continues. “And for those of us that were close with him, we’ve definitely had all of those human experiences.”

Wein passed away suddenly in his Manhattan apartment on September 13, 2021, drawing to a close a seven-decade career. He was 95. The important information about Wein is out there, both in myriad obituaries and in his memoir with Nate Chinen, Myself Among Others: A Life in Music.

The pianist and concert producer wasn’t just at the ground floor of Newport Jazz Fest, Newport Folk Fest, and the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Fest; he arguably crafted the archetype of the modern music festival, both on a creative and structural level. His record on civil rights is unassailable. But what no Wikipedia rundown of accomplishments can elucidate is how he became himself: The raw intelligence, people skills, business acumen and adoration of music that enabled him to inhabit a once-in-a-generation role.

While it would take hundreds of interviews to get to the bottom of who Wein was and what he meant to multiple entire musical communities, GRAMMY.com rang up five musical figures with unique perspectives on him: Large-ensemble leader Darcy James Argue, trumpeter Gregory Davis, Preservation Hall creative director Ben Jaffe, jazz impresario Danny Melnick and the Recording Academy’s Senior Membership and Project Manager, Reid Wick.

Below are their heartfelt and sometimes surprising expressions about George Wein, whose likes we’ll never see again. All of them answered questions about the man through the same emotional lens: “How did he make you feel?”

These as-told-to quotes have been edited and condensed for clarity.

He saw so much of the evolution of the music over the course of his life and presented so much of it and documented it and was a real curatorial force in a way that I don’t think is truly possible for anyone to ever replicate.

Why was he the one to take on that role in the world? What made him the antenna to pick all this up?

I could not really say. Obviously, being a musician himself—a pianist—I think, gave him a perspective on the music. You know, there aren’t a lot of presenters who could get up there on the stage and play a few choruses.

So, I think that aspect of George’s love of the music, coming from a certain amount of lived experience as an actual player, is a big part of it. All I can really speak to is my own particular interactions with him.

But for me, the striking thing was when I first met him, when he came down to the old Jazz Gallery to hear Secret Society in person. This was a very small venue and audience. He might have been one of 40, 50 people in the room. Just the fact that he was still doing that. At that point, he was in his eighties and still getting out to hear new music.

At a time when most people would be more than happy to rest on their laurels after an entire career of presenting the highest possible musicians in jazz—Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, and that same person who had such incredible long-term fruitful associations with those artists was also coming down to our little Jazz Gallery show.

Having that sort of insatiable curiosity and desire to hear things with his own ears, just blew my mind and blew the mind of everyone in the group.

Why was he the one to take on that role in the world? What made him the antenna to pick all this up?

I could not really say. Obviously, being a musician himself—a pianist—I think, gave him a perspective on the music. You know, there aren’t a lot of presenters who could get up there on the stage and play a few choruses.

So, I think that aspect of George’s love of the music, coming from a certain amount of lived experience as an actual player, is a big part of it. All I can really speak to is my own particular interactions with him.

But for me, the striking thing was when I first met him, when he came down to the old Jazz Gallery to hear Secret Society in person. This was a very small venue and audience. He might have been one of 40, 50 people in the room. Just the fact that he was still doing that. At that point, he was in his eighties and still getting out to hear new music.

At a time when most people would be more than happy to rest on their laurels after an entire career of presenting the highest possible musicians in jazz—Why was he the one to take on that role in the world? What made him the antenna to pick all this up?

I could not really say. Obviously, being a musician himself—a pianist—I think, gave him a perspective on the music. You know, there aren’t a lot of presenters who could get up there on the stage and play a few choruses.

So, I think that aspect of George’s love of the music, coming from a certain amount of lived experience as an actual player, is a big part of it. All I can really speak to is my own particular interactions with him.

But for me, the striking thing was when I first met him, when he came down to the old Jazz Gallery to hear Secret Society in person. This was a very small venue and audience. He might have been one of 40, 50 people in the room. Just the fact that he was still doing that. At that point, he was in his eighties and still getting out to hear new music.

At a time when most people would be more than happy to rest on their laurels after an entire career of presenting the highest possible musicians in jazz—Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, and that same person who had such incredible long-term fruitful associations with those artists was also coming down to our little Jazz Gallery show.

Having that sort of insatiable curiosity and desire to hear things with his own ears, just blew my mind and blew the mind of everyone in the group.and that same person who had such incredible long-term fruitful associations with those artists was also coming down to our little Jazz Gallery show.

Having that sort of insatiable curiosity and desire to hear things with his own ears, just blew my mind and blew the mind of everyone in the group.

Gregory Davis (trumpeter, Dirty Dozen Brass Band) had to say…

Of course, I met him as a promoter—a festival producer and all that stuff. But as I got to know him personally, I personally became more and more impressed with him just as a human being, beyond music.

I lived by myself. I was doing well, earning money here in New Orleans as a musician. And my wife, at that time, was teaching school, but we couldn’t get approved for a loan to buy a house, because I was a musician. I was making three or four times what she was making, but primarily because I was a musician, we couldn’t get approved.

George caught wind of it and he put me in touch with a banker, who made sure that I was able to get the loan to buy the land but then get the money to build a house. And although he did that as a human being, he never brought it up again. He never made me feel obligated. He never made a big deal about it.

And then even after that, I attempted to buy some rental property and I had problems again. And then I mentioned it to him. He said, “Hey, go see that same banker. He’ll take care of it.” He made it possible just for me to do things. Maybe those things would have happened later on, but he just stepped in.

Speaking with the woman who was his caretaker, I later found out that he had done similar things for other musicians that had a hard time paying medical bills or mortgages. That kind of stuff you’re not going to find on the internet.

Hardly anybody has a bad word to say about the guy. His legacy spans the latter half of the 20th century and the first two decades of the 21st.

It’s a rare occurrence that you would meet a person that just checks so many boxes on the humanitarian side. OK, yeah, he had an effect or played a part in furthering jazz just because of his involvement as a performer, producer, promoter, whatever.

But what we go through—what musicians go through on a personal level—affects what happens to them musically, whether or not they even sustain just playing music. He affected that greatly, and it’s just rare in life that you meet a person that checks so many boxes.

There was no pretense about how much money he might’ve made or what he meant to the festival world, to the music world, whatever. For me, personally, that was the best quality about him—his humanism that he just exuded. That’s the thing that I will always remember and cherish about him for the rest of my life.

Morgan Enos – Grammys