For the third, and unfortunately last, time I attended the Arizona Classic Jazz Festival at the Crowne Plaza Resort in Chandler on October 31-November 3. The festival had previously announced that it would be discontinued after its 35th year. It was started in 1990 in Scottsdale and had several locations around Phoenix before moving to the present site in 2004. Interestingly, TST writer Lew Shaw, the last surviving founder, attended on Saturday this year with a group from his retirement community. Lew, who will turn 99 around the time you read this (or even if you don’t read it), is still mentally very acute though he uses a walker now. I was glad for a chance to speak with him.
The reasons for ACJF’s demise are the usual ones that cause festivals to fold: declining attendance, an aging cadre of volunteers to run it and lack of replacements, and sometimes increasing costs for venues and travel for the musicians. I remember a year or two ago asking, separately, the ACJF heads, Helen and Bill Daley, if they had a succession plan for keeping the festival going. Their answers were the same: no.
The performer roster this year was pretty much the same as in my previous visits. One band was dropped for financial reasons, perhaps foretelling the festival’s fate. Those that did appear were: Cheryl’s Vintage Jazz, Groovus, the Holland-Coots Jazz Quintet, the St. Louis Stompers, Sent
