Scrapbooks have been a very popular part of this website–and we have plenty of them to share. It’s always enjoyable to share them, but sometimes it’s nice to tie one into an anniversary. We’re a little late, but a memorable occasion took place on August 10, 1960–65 years ago last month–that’s worth celebrating: The 5th Annual Lorton Jazz Festival.
If you only know of the big ones from that era like Newport or Monterey, Lorton might not ring a bell, and with good reason: the festival took place in the Lorton Workhouse Reformatory and Penitentiary, a prison in Virginia that was in operation from 1910 until 2001. Established in by two Catholic chaplains, Father Carl J. Breitfeller and Father Donald Sheehy, who successfully convinced Sarah Vaughan to perform at the prison in 1955, the Lorton Jazz Festival became an annual summer event (to read more about it, check out this excellent article from 2024).
Louis Armstrong had performed at Lorton with the All Stars once before when he was approached by Carl Breitfeller about performing there again in August 1960. The timing was perfect as Armstrong was performing a full week, August 9-16, at the American Jazz Festival in Washington D. C. at the Carter Barron Amphitheater. His opening act? Count Basie and His Orchestra with vocalist Joe Williams. Both Armstrong and Basie agreed to spend their afternoon performing for the prisoners at Lorton.
Before we get to the scrapbook itself, it’s worth sharing some of the newspaper coverage of what seemed like a very fulfilling event. The Army Times sent two writers, Bob Horowitz and their jazz critic, Tom Scanlan. Here’s Horowitz’s column, with a transcription to follow:
THE NON-MILITARY SCENE
A Visit to Prison With Satch, Basie
By BOB HOROWITZ
I WENT TO the penitentiary last Thursday —for a few hours. It was one of the pleasantest afternoons I spent since coming back from vacation. The occasion was the fifth annual jazz festival at Lorton Reformatory, the jail where the federal government and Washington city keep about 1800 prisoners who have committed serious crimes. This wasn’t just any ordinary local jazz festival; this was the real thing. Performing were Louis Armstrong and his group, Count Basie and his entire band, and batches of other jazz greats including Charles Byrd, who may be the world’s greatest guitarist.
I drove down to Lorton, about 20 miles south of Washington, with Army Times jazz critic Tom Scanlan. I was surprised when we got there — after being checked for firearms, whiskey and drugs, we were led into the center of the prison, where we found big beds of flowers, neat landscapes and the most painstakingly-manicured baseball field in this part of the country. When the field was dedicated recently, some of the Washington Senators said they wished their ball diamond were as good.
We got to the ball field, where the concert was held; just as the inmates began filing into the stands. The prisoners, who are averaging about four-and-a-haif years of time in the prison (quite a few lifers were included) were neat and orderly in their blue denim uniforms. Here and there I saw splotches of white shirts. The blue and white ranks were broken here and there by khaki-colored guard uniforms. The inmates were somewhat excited and a little boisterous — but better behaved than equivalent soldier audiences.
TOM AND I skirted around a big food truck in order to get into the VIP section, which was in the third base dugout. Inmates were preparing a handsome buffet for their guests, under the supervision of a white-uniformed chief steward who made sure I knew that his name was C. E. Wade.
From the dugout, we had a good view of a makeshift wooden stage built between home plate and the pitcher’ mound. By the time the concert began, inmates filled the stands in a semi-circle reaching from first base to third base.
First on the program was the Jazz Disciples, a 10-piece band of prisoners who were roughly twice as good as the jazz outfit you’re likely to hear at your favorite bar tonight. Some of the prisoner musicians were first-rate, and we were told that the Disciples will be even better next month — when two excellent musicians are scheduled to start prison sentences.
As the concert got under way, there was one female in the VIP section — blonde newspaper reporter who was amply curved and pretty. There were lots of eyes on that girl, but nobody around her heard anything that wasn’t proper and genteel.
While the Jazz Disciples blew up a storm — and they were mighty good — the KPs brought a big cake into the dugout. On the cake was a pink, blue and gold five-piece jazz band, and in big pink letters was the legend: “5th Annual Lorton Jass Festival.” The spelling may not have been perfect, but the art work was pretty good, and so was the cake. Behind the cake was a bowl of asters and zinnias.
While the prison band was playing, the crowd let out a roar as Satchmo Armstrong arrived and walked down the stands to the dugout, followed by his combo. Armstrong, who was 60 years old on the Fourth of July and who has knocked around the world for many years, still walks with a springy bounce. And he still blows a trumpet in a manner that every trumpeter in the world should envy.
ARMSTRONG soon was followed by Count Basie and his crew, and they drew an equally big cheer from the prisoners, some of whom had put towels on their heads to ward off the afternoon sun. Basie, unlike Armstrong who wore a proper shirt and tie (with coat carried over the arm), wore a blue plaid sport shirt, open at the neck. This was truly an informal jazz session.
A few minutes later, Basie singer Joe Williams walked in, an expensive camera hanging around his neck. “How come all the boys around here know you?” a musician asked Williams, who smiled, shrugged and took another picture of the audience.
The Jazz Disciples finished playing and got a respectable round of applause — but it was obvious that the audience was waiting for the real thing. The prison chaplain — Fr. Carl Breitfeller — started the show by pointing out that the program was better than anything that could be seen on the outside. And he was right–Armstrong, Basie, and the dozens of other musicians all volunteered for the job, at no pay, and they appeared to be considerably more relaxed and swinging than they were at their commercial performances in Washington. Some of the performers flew into town just for the Lorton affair. The chaplain said the show promised to be so good that a couple of former prisoners tried to hop on the bus in Washington to get back into prison–at least for the afternoon.
The master of ceremonies was Washington disc jockey Felix Grant, whose musical tastes are way above the average radio man’s. He said that a number of friends wanted to get inte Lorton for the jazz festival, and he had to explain that it was easy to get in — but getting out was a problem. The inmates thought this was funny, and their laughter filled part of the period required to set up Count Basie’s musical equipment.
Basie’s band came on — three trumpet men and the bass player wearing business suits, the rest in slacks and sport shirts — and the place rocked. The Count played some delicious piano solo. Despite an expanding pot belly. Basie can get close enough to that piano to thrill 1800 inmates and at least a couple of Army Times men. His band is strong, crisp and clear, and 1800 feet were tapping when the band wound up with “One O’Clock Jump.”
Before getting off the stage, the Basie crew accompanied vocalist Nancy Wilson, a gorgeous Negro gal in a white and bright orange dress. When the prisoners applauded her singing, they really beat their palms — especially when she sang “All of You.”
MISS WILSON was followed by guitarist Charlie Byrd and his trio, and seldom have I seen 1800 people listen to three musicians so intently. Byrd was great, but he suffered from the fact that he preceded the one American who is admired just about every place on earth, New Orleans trumpet man Daniel Louis Armstrong, Ambassador Satchmo, the king of them all (the State Department is sending him to Africa in October to build up American prestige, and Louis will do it, too).
As the guards patrolled in their watch towers, a homerun distance from the makeshift stage, Armstrong and his five-man group broke into “When It’s Sleepytime Down South,” the song he has used as his theme for several decades. Between fervent sessions of applause, Armstrong & Co. played “Indiana”; “Bucket’s Got a Hole In It.” “Blueberry Hill” and several others.
During the performance, one or two inmates at a time walked across the infield to within a dozen feet of the performers and snapped photographs.
After awhile, ample-sized Velma Middleton stood next to Armstrong and-sang the “St. Louis Blues,” Velma, a sweet doll who has. worked with Armstrong for 15 years, is a real pro in the music world, and she had the audience with her all the way. When she and Louis sang “Don’t You Know” while she did her comic dance, 3600 eyes were unwaveringly aimed at her.
LATER, Miss Middleton told me she didn’t mind volunteering to perform in the prison. Two years ago it enabled her to visit a friend in residence. “And,” she added as she watched the next jazz group perform, “I seldom get a chance to sit through an entire show in the audience. I am one of those entertainers who enjoys seeing other entertainers.”
Over in the corner of the dugout, Armstrong was preparing to leave for Washington. “Who is your favorite entertainer, Mr. Armstrong?” I asked of one of the most popular entertainers in history. “I like them all,” he said in his gravel-pit baritone, shying away from potential journalistic hot water.
By the end of the concert, Scanlan and I noted the decorum of the prison audience. But as we approached the gate, a guard asked to look into the car trunk. Finding it empty, he looked under the car to see if anybody was holding on to the axles. “Can’t let any of these fellows out, you know,” the guard said.
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Still with the Army Times, here’s Scanlan’s review; like most critics of the time, he felt the need to complain about the “set,” “tired,” and “predictable” nature of their sets, but he concluded that Louis “remains an amazing musician”:
Jazz Music
Louis Can Still Reach ‘Em
By TOM SCANLAN
“Well,” said one of the musicians in the third base dugout at the Lorton Reformatory Jazz Festival as Louis Armstrong finished playing Indiana, “they can say all they want about Louis doing the same old thing, but that same old thing can still send shivers up your spine.”
The jazz show on the prison baseball field, reported admirably by colleague Bob Horowitz on page 14 of this paper, proved again that the 60-year-old trumpet player can still, in the words of a Count Basie musician listening, “go up and reach ‘em, on the button.”
Louis favors a set repertoire, a tired and predictable and commercial one in many ways, but he remains an amazing musician. Few musicians half his age can match him for sheer technical excellence. At his best, when playing the kind of jazz he knows and loves and helped to create, Louis remains incomparable.
The Count Basie band, also featured at this unusual annual prison jazz show, favors a set repertoire too, similarly somewhat tired and predictable and commercial. Indeed, there are times these days when the Basie band leaves the impression that its major reason for being is to support Joe Williams, a stylized and perhaps overrated blues singer.
But the story of the fifth Lorton Jazz Festival does not concern the performers as much as it concerns the audience. And Lorton can claim the most attentive, most appreciative jazz audience of them all. Unquestionably, this jazz festival—unlike some—does a great deal of good.
I would think that the musicians who donate their time and talent to this project—this year Armstrong, Basie, the Charlie Byrd Trio, Nancy Wilson, Lambert-Hendricks-Ross — leave the prison with a feeling of accomplishment. Incidentally, they receive no pay of any kind and Lambert – Hendricks – Ross and Nancy Wilson were not even appearing in the Washington area. They flew down from New York to make the festival.
Prison chaplain Carl Breitfeller, and all the others who went to work to make this jazz show at Lorton a successful and meaningful reality, deserve praise.
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It’s worth pointing out that the quotes from and mentions of Velma Middleton are especially poignant, as this was one of her final performances in the United States; two months later, she’d head to Africa with Louis and the All Stars, passing away in Sierra Leone in February 1961. After she died, Scanlan referenced the Lorton performance in his obituary, writing the following in the Febraury 25, 1961 Army Times:
“Those who knew her even slightly would agree that singer Velma Middléton was one of the nicest and least pretentious people in show business. And millions who watched her perform with the Louis Armstrong band—she was with Louis for more than 17 years—would add that she was one of the hardest working singers in the business.
Her comedy gymnastics with the Armstrong band did not please those jazz enthusiasts who insist that jazz must always be serious, man, but they did amuse and delight many others. Miss Middleton brought a good deal of laughter into the lives of people who couldn’t care less about whether what she was doing was ‘jazz’ singing or not.
The last time I saw her—performing with Armstrong for prisoners at Lorton Reformatory, Va., last year — she wowed the prisoners as well as most of the hip guests who took part in the show for prisoners. Among these was the decidedly hip singer Annie Ross who belly-laughed at Velma’s standard and strenuous routine with Louis and his band. Like the prisoners, Annie wasn’t concerned with whether Velma’s performance should be called jazz, high comedy, low comedy, art or just plain show business. Whatever it was, no matter how many times it had been done before, it rang a bell.”
Back to the contemporary coverage in the mainstream press, here’s coverage in the Washington Daily News:
“The True Jazz Followers Are Usually The Top Men…”
Prisoners Have a Ball With Louis
By TOM KELLY
The year’s only major jazz festival to end without a riot came thru loud, clear and orderly yesterday from a temporary bandstand in Northern Virginia.
responsive audience in the land.
Louis Armstrong, who has been trumpeting around for what seems like several hundred years, came to play for 2,000 long-term inmates at the Lorton Reformatory ball park.
The inmates remained seated–that being a rule–stomped their feet, clapped their hands and shouted. As musicians have said at each of Lorton’s five annual Jazz Festivals, they’re the most responsive audiences in the land.
A PRESENCE
To the east, the west and south, solitary guards with rifles in hand stood and watched from parapets on top of the wall.
The prison cooks stood in a dugout serving spruced-up prison fare—Spam sandwiches, olives, pickles, orange drink and cake to the visiting musicians.
And in the front of the dugout, on a folding chair under a boiling canvas roof, sat Louis Satchmo Pops Armstrong, himself.
OPENING THE BILL
Count William Basie, no small name in jazz, walked to the center of the 24 acres, his heavy-lidded eyes snapping in the sunshine, sat down at the piano and roguishly started to play. Satchmo remained on his camp chair solidly, silently and happily, signing autographs, testing his mouthpiece and laughing low and easy every now and then.
Louis, quiet and contented, like a musical monument in the flesh, said, when asked, that he was 60 years old, born on the Fourth of July, and a professional musician since the age of 13.
An inmate trustee Jazz Festival edition copies of the prison paper, “Time & Tied.” The editor, Wimpy Holland, noted in the leading editorial that, “The true followers of Jazz are usually the top men in their chosen professions. It matters not what the profession is: an individual may be a hustler, thief, musician, artist, movie star, writer, model, accountant, pimp, or nuclear physicist.”
Mr. Armstrong picked up his golden horn and played like he wasn’t really a mere man at all and then sang like no one else can sing and the top men in all the professions represented in the stands, the dugout, and the grim towers on the edge of the field knew they were listening to the real top man in jazz.
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I know the scan is bad, but let’s just focus on the rare photo of Armstrong and Basie together–pure joy!
On a more positive note, the other blurry photo in the article is available through Getty Images in a nice, clean print:
With all of the descriptions and opinions out of the way, we can finally turn to the scrapbook sent to Louis some time after the festival concluded. Here’s the cover:
The first page is a delight for autograph hounds, as it’s signed by All Stars Louis, Velma Middleton, Billy Kyle, Barney Bigard, Trummy Young, Mort Herbert, Danny Barcelona (“Aloha”); vocalist Nancy Wilson; the vocal trio Dave Lambert, Jon Hendricks, and Annie Ross, along with their backing trio of pianist Gildo Mahones, bassist Ike Isaacs, and drummer; guitarist Charlie Byrd and his bassist Keter Betts; someone named “Patty” from NBC’s “Monitor” (could this have all been broadcast??); radio broadcaster Felix Grant, who served as emcee; Father Carl J. Breitfeller and Father Nicholas P. Pearl, op.; and two names I can’t make out, Eddie somebody, and Ralph somebody:
I’m going out of order here, but the inside back cover has the rest of the autographs, mostly of the Basie band–I spy Frank Foster, Al Grey, Freddie Green, Benny Powell, Marshal Royall, Sonny Cohn, Thad Jones, Billy Mitchell, Henry Coker, CJoe Newman, Charlie Fowlkes, Eddie Jones, Frank Well, Joe Williams, Sonny Payne, Count Basie, and Father Donald Sheehy:
Back to the front, you’ll want to zoom in to admire the many Ellis Holmes photographs that populate page three:
Next up, a comic strip by Ellis that I can only describe as interesting:
More photos of all of the acts:
A montage of newspaper coverage of the event:
The next page features a touching letter from Father Breitfeller, noting his apprehension in asking Louis to come back to Lorton and his relief about Armstrong’s “immediate and gracious acceptance.” “The thunderous applause that greeted you as you walked to the bandstand was, I am sure, proof to you that the prisoners here have long awaited your return,” he writes. “Once again your performance, as three years ago, left us all with a feeling that we had just witnessed one of the greats from the world of jazz at work.”
Finally, some nice, large photos of Armstrong in action:
A page on the history of “The Unique and Meaningful Lorton Jazz Festival”:
And finally, another montage of the other acts on the bill:
I’m sure Armstrong was grateful to receive this memento, saving it among the many other treasures that eventually would make up his Archive. He went back to work at the Carter Barron Amphitheater that night and continued his road warrior lifestyle, apparently never mentioning Lorton on his tapes or in any other interviews from this period. But as is made abundantly clear by the coverage above, he made quite an impact on the inmates at Lorton, allowing them to forget their troubles for a short time–just as he did with every audience lucky enough to ever see him live.