Elaine Lorillard

Elaine Guthrie Lorillard

Duke Ellington and Elaine Lorillard
Born Elaine Guthrie
(1914-10-11)October 11, 1914
Tremont, Maine
Died November 26, 2007(2007-11-26) (aged 93)
Newport, Rhode Island
Cause of death Infection
Known for Newport Jazz Festival
Spouse(s) Louis Lorillard
Parent(s) Walter Guthrie
Eliza Pray

Elaine Guthrie Lorillard (October 11, 1914 – November 26, 2007) was an American socialite who, with her husband Louis Lorillard, founded the Newport Jazz Festival.[1]

Early years

Elaine Guthrie was born in Tremont, Maine to Walter Edward Guthrie and Eliza Pray Guthrie. After Phillips Exeter Academy, Harvard and serving in World War I, her father founded the family printing company in Boston, MA; her mother, called Lida, was a classical singer. Elaine attended the New England Conservatory of Music, and in 1943 she joined the Red Cross, where she taught piano and painting to orphans in Naples, Italy. It is in Naples where she met United States Army Lieutenant Louis Livingston Lorillard (1919–1986) and they married in 1946. Louis was a descendant of Pierre Lorillard, the founder of the P. Lorillard Company in 1760. While serving in Naples, Elaine and Louis Lorillard shared an interest in listening to jazz, which, separately, they had first experienced when living in New York City before going overseas.

Newport Jazz Festival

During a visit to Storyville Nightclub in Boston, Massachusetts with her brother Thomas T. Guthrie and his friend Professor Borne from Boston University in 1953, Elaine and Louis Lorillard met George Wein, who worked at the nightclub, and they discussed the possibility of bringing an outdoor jazz concert to Newport, Rhode Island, where they lived. With the guidance of John Hammond and George Avakian (record producers and executives at Columbia Records) they came up with a smashing list of performers. With a $20,000 grant from the Lorillards the first jazz festival in July 1954, attracted--a surprising number of--11,000 fans. The Lorillards continued to support the festival until 1961.[2][3] The Lorillards maintained even after their divorce in the seventies that the Newport Jazz Festival was founded by Elaine and Louis Lorillard as a nonprofit organization, proceeds of which would have gone to local music education.

The 1956 movie High Society, with a storyline by family friend Cleveland Amory, documented the Lorillard's love story and marriage. Grace Kelly was chosen for her resemblance to Elaine Lorillard. Filmed in Newport, RI, there are scenes from the Lorillards' life, from a convertible passing their house, "Quatrel," on Bellevue Avenue, to their daughter sitting at their piano with Louis Armstrong.

Death

She died in the Heatherwood Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Newport, Rhode Island where she had been treated for pneumonia/MRSA at the age of 93.[1][4][5]

References

  1. 1 2 Hevesi, Dennis (2007-11-28). "Elaine Lorillard, 93, a Founder of the Newport Jazz Festival, Is Dead.". New York Times. Retrieved 2007-12-12. Elaine Lorillard, a socialite who with her husband, Louis, lured jazz greats to their hometown in Rhode Island for a two-day concert series in the summer of 1954, starting the Newport Jazz Festival and creating the model for what became a worldwide circuit of outdoor jazz festivals, died on Monday near her home in Newport. She was 93.
  2. ↑ "Our Man in Jazz.". The Nation. Retrieved 2007-12-12. It all began in 1954, with the first American jazz festival at Newport. Elaine Lorillard, one of the cultured women who appear again and again throughout jazz history, showed up at Storyville, with the idea of bringing jazz to the seaside-cottage elite.
  3. ↑ "Elaine Lorillard co-founded the Newport Jazz Festival with her husband Louis Lorillard". The Boston Globe. 2007-12-03. Retrieved 2007-12-10. Mrs. Lorillard and her husband, Louis, hired George Wein, then an employee of Storyville. On Saturday and Sunday, July 17 and 18, 1954, at the hallowed Newport Casino on Bellevue Avenue amid the manicured courts of the Tennis Hall of Fame, the sounds of Dizzy Gillespie, Oscar Peterson, Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Gene Krupa, and Billie Holiday filled the night and day. A tradition was born.
  4. ↑ Associated Press (2007-11-29). "Elaine Lorillard, jazz festival pioneer, dies". Newsday. Retrieved 2007-12-10. Elaine Lorillard, the socialite who encouraged a club worker to start the Newport Jazz Festival, has died of an infection, nursing home officials said. She was 93.
  5. ↑ "Jazz festival founder Elaine Lorillard dies.". Newport Daily News. Elaine Lorillard, whose dream of a small local jazz festival mushroomed into one of America's legendary ...


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