Feature Interview with Hugh Hefner

Feature Interview with Hugh Hefner

Date Posted: September 02 2009

Written By: chicago jazz

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in his own words... Hugh Hefner


This past August marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Playboy Jazz Festival––Chicago’s first major jazz festival––held over a three-day period at the Chicago Stadium. Playboy’s founder and the magazine’s publisher, Hugh Hefner, discusses that first Playboy Jazz Festival, and the important role jazz has played in the history of the company, Playboy Enterprises.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: Weren’t the very first Playboy music polls, which started in the fifties, called the “Playboy Jazz Polls”?

Hefner: Yes, they were. Jazz, and the pop music connected with jazz, was the music of my youth and the music of my dreams.

I was born in 1926, and I identified very much with early jazz––with Bix Beiderbecke, and then with big band jazz. I was a fan of the music. And when I started the magazine, which in my mind wasn’t a sex magazine but a lifestyle magazine, the music was a part of that. Like others of my generation, I had some reservations about rock and roll, although I came, in time, to a place where I felt, as Duke Ellington expressed, “It doesn’t matter what you call it, there’s good music and there’s bad music.”

In the fifties, the pop culture, which was driven by mass media and television and was a “white bread” kind of phenomenon, and very repressive and very conservative. Jazz, for me, represented a more sophisticated way of living; it also represented integration, which had a lot of meaning to me when I was a kid. The jazz clubs were really the only clubs in Chicago––and Chicago back when I was growing up in that time was a very segregated city, the only place you’d ever see a mixed audience were the black and tan clubs—the jazz clubs on the South Side. So jazz was the music of the magazine. We did a piece on the Dorsey brothers in the very first issue. There were jazz pieces throughout the 1950s––I think we did one on Louis Armstrong, we did one on Bird––Charlie Parker––and then we started a music poll, a jazz poll, and it eventually, in the later sixties, morphed into a more widespread music poll.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: How did the idea for the first Playboy Jazz Festival come about?

Hefner: Well, I was looking for a way to celebrate the magazine. I started the magazine in 1953, with no money. And it was successful from the beginning, and by the fifth anniversary it had become hugely successful. Circulation had passed a million copies a month––we’d passed Esquire, which was the paramount men’s magazine at the time––and I was looking for some kind of way to celebrate it––and the notion of doing a jazz festival to celebrate the fifth anniversary just seemed like a natural. We were able to get together, for that weekend, something that really became historic.

There is a classic photograph that appeared in Esquire, around that same time, I think the previous summer. The photo was referred to as “A Great Day in Harlem,” or something like that. And I found that very funny because it had about half the number of the jazz greats sitting on a front porch––we had double the number actually playing on stage at the Chicago Stadium. Nowhere were that many major jazz stars brought together in a single place for a single event.

And Leonard Feather, a preeminent jazz critic at the time, referred to it as the single greatest weekend in the sixty years of jazz history. We had five different performances, including afternoon performances on Saturday and Sunday, and the performers for each show were different.

We had Dizzy Gillespie and his group, and Miles Davis and Dave Brubeck with Desmond, and Sarah, and Ella, and Louis Armstrong and his group. We also had the Duke Ellington Orchestra and the Count Basie Orchestra and the Stan Kenton Orchestra. And for me, these were all my idols when I was in high school. So it was a very special, very personal, weekend for me.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: Were any attendance figures ever released?

Hefner: Well, we filled the Stadium all three nights, and I think the Stadium held about eighteen thousand, so the total was something like seventy to seventy-five thousand. The numbers of course don’t compare to the major rock shows. But within the context of jazz and the performers there was really nothing like it.

I had it in Chicago, because I was very defensive in terms of Chicago. When I started the magazine I started it in Chicago, because I was born and raised there. I resented the fact that talent was drawn away to both of the coasts by television and other entertainment venues. Magazines that had started in Chicago, like Esquire, were taken away to New York, and great television that began in Chicago, like programs from the Chicago School of Television, were taken away to New York and L.A. as soon as they became popular.

So I was Chicago-born and bred, and felt defensive about that. So knowing how historically important Chicago was to jazz, to be able to celebrate my magazine and its fifth anniversary with a really special jazz festival in Chicago, was very meaningful to me.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: How did you go about booking all of those great artists?

Hefner: Well, the magazine was so popular with the hip crowd that I think we were able to make deals others couldn’t make. Ella had just appeared in front of Prince Ranier and Grace Kelly in Monaco, and flew back here for the festival.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: What are some of your favorite memories associated with the fest?

Hefner: I shared it with my younger brother, who came in from New York especially for it. I think every moment. I was at all five of the events. It’s hard to pick a single favorite, because these were really all my stars. I think probably the final show with Ella and Louis Armstrong––that was probably the high point for me. We actually recorded it all, and at various times there was talk about getting the music clearances and releasing it. I think a couple of the numbers have been released on record.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: Are there any plans to release the music?

Hefner: There’s been talk about it––no current conversation about it. But there was a point when the winners of the jazz poll were put together in record compilations. We did that for about three years in the late fifties and early sixties, and I think the last compilation, which was a two-disc set, included a couple tracks from the festival.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: On your Playboy’s Penthouse TV show you played a recording for Ella of a track she had recorded at the fest.

Hefner: As a matter of fact, at the festival she did her rendition of “How High The Moon.” But in terms of Playboy’s Penthouse, the festival was in August of fifty-nine. It was only about three months later, in October of fifty-nine, that we started recording Playboy’s Penthouse, which was a syndicated show. We started airing them in January of 1960.

But that show itself and the concept of the show were my own, and really quite unique. One looks back at them now at just how really unique they were. Because the whole notion was not to simply do a variety show on-stage, but to create this atmosphere and ambience that it was a personal party in my apartment.

And to use that conceit with the subjective camera coming up the elevator and through the doors and being greeted by the guests and by me, created a very unique kind of show that people talked about––that and the sequel that we did out here on the West Coast, Playboy After Dark––people still talk about that show as a real innovation, and they remember it with great fondness.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: Is it true that certain stations in the South wouldn’t carry that show because it featured black jazz performers?

Hefner: Oh, no question about that, we had no distribution in the South at all. And we knew that before the fact.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: What was the specific nature of their objection?

Hefner: Well, I think it’s, of course, the mixing of the races––and the mixing of races in a social setting. It would be one thing having a black performer on the stage––although quite frankly on the show itself, in conversation, we talked about the fact that acts that were racially mixed had never worked in network television––they were not allowed on network television. On the first show, Nat King Cole commented about the fact that his show had not lasted––he had a short-lived network show in the middle fifties.

He said that they couldn’t get advertisers. He said, “Madison Avenue is afraid of the dark.” All of that was interconnected with my own personal feelings and the way I was raised. And in the same time frame, another element that affected them was the Playboy Clubs. Dick Gregory was the first black stand-up comic to work in a club that was not an all-black club. And that broke the color line.

The curious thing was that black singers were acceptable, black musicians were acceptable, but black comics, in something other than a black club, were not accepted. It broke the color line and it became big news. Time magazine did a story about Dick Gregory and his appearance in the club a week later. Within the space of two or three months we had Slappy White, Nipsey Russell and all of the other black stand-up comics that were popular in the black community were playing the Playboy Club.

And very quickly the Playboy Clubs, as they expanded, became like the old-time Vaudeville circuit––we were able to sign up acts for an entire year, and they’d go from one club to another. It was wonderful.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: Dick Gregory hasn’t been shy about touting the fact that you made all the difference in the world for his career. You must be proud of the social changes you were able to effect with your company, Playboy Enterprises. You were on the vanguard of equal opportunity hiring and so on.

Hefner: Yes, I take a lot of pride in it. There’s a new documentary coming out that will be released. I think it will make its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival in September. It’s made by Brigitte Berman, an Academy Award-winning Canadian lady.

As a matter of fact, she won the Oscar for a documentary on Artie Shaw, and that’s how I first met her. And when I learned that she had actually done a documentary on Bix Beiderbecke, who was one of my idols––it was a documentary that had never been released—I actually arranged to pay for the music clearances on it and release it on DVD, and we became friends. And she had done this documentary on the other part of my life. It’s called Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: Bill Cosby had played the Playboy Clubs, and he’s been the emcee of your Playboy Jazz Festivals since 1979.

Hefner: Yes, he missed a couple. And at one point about four or five years ago he was going to retire––he wasn’t going to do any more. He skipped one year, and he missed it too much. Actually, he put together a group called “Cos” of Good Music, and performs each year.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: When putting together large events, especially for the first time, there are typically behind-the-scene snags. What were some of the panic moments that occurred during that first Chicago Jazz Festival?

Hefner: I don’t think there were any. Well… no! There was a major hitch, but it was before the fact. We were supposed to play as part of the Pan American Games that summer, with the support of the Chicago Administration. And we were going to be playing at one end of Soldier Field.

And then the Archdiocese objected to Playboy’s connection, and said so to Mayor Daley––not the Daley today, but his father. And the church had a lot of influence in those days, so they pulled the rug out from under us.

And it actually caused a big stir in the press, but made us a lot of friends. So at the last minute we were able to move it to the stadium, and it turned out to be a very lucky break, because the stadium was an indoor operation and it rained that day. And my comment was, “Well, we know which side God is on.” [laughs]

Chicago Jazz Magazine:As another example of how jazz has made a mark on your magazine, Miles Davis was actually the first “Playboy Interview.” Did you decide from the outset to have the interview as a monthly feature?

Hefner: It was done by Alex Haley, and it was originally done for a short-lived show business magazine, called Show Business Illustrated, that I published. It didn’t catch on. It was at the same time when the Playboy Clubs were booming and was taking up a great deal of money.

So after losing a couple million on Show Business Illustrated I folded it. I had been thinking about the importance of doing a Playboy interview. The real notion, quite frankly, was that in the fifties the magazine was really essentially a lifestyle magazine with satire and humor, and it was in the beginning of the sixties, as the magazine became increasingly popular, that I felt I could introduce the other more serious part of what I was all about.

And it was in 1962 that I started doing the “Playboy Philosophy,” and it was in the same time frame that we started doing the interviews and “Playboy Advisor” and other things that in the sixties made the magazine so hugely popular. By 1960, the magazine was selling over a million copies a month; by 1971, ‘72, we had reached seven million.

Chicago Jazz Magazine:This past year you launched another jazz event, the Playboy Jazz Cruise. Will we be seeing more of those?

Hefner: We hope so. It obviously depends on the economy. I think it’s a nice extension, so it just depends on the economics.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: Do you think that the jazz music market is too small in this day and age to support an ongoing jazz review column in the magazine?

Hefner: Yes, I think the audience is too fragmented. And I think that’s a problem. When I was growing up, musical tastes were much simpler, and focused. They are splintered and spread all over the world now.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: Here in Chicago, there’s a jazz artist you know well, Frank D’Rone…

Hefner: [laughs] Oh yes, Frank D’Rone is a close friend from the 1950s. He was one of my closest buddies. He was just out here––we saw him perform and he was here at the mansion about three of four weeks ago.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: Frank credits you with giving him one of his biggest breaks. There was a small ad in Playboy for Dante’s Inferno, a club run by Johnny Dante––another good friend of yours––that Frank says helped put his career on the map.

Hefner: I think that’s true.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: There was also, at that time, a two-page article on a recording session that he did. He likes to claim he was the first male to have a spread in Playboy magazine.

Hefner: Exactly so. [laughs] And I was actually in that photo essay. There were a couple photos of me at the session with a girlfriend, Joyce Nizzari, who was a girlfriend at the time, and is still one of my secretaries here. She works here at the mansion; she’s in the very next office. It’s a small world.

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