Geraldine “The Jazz Lady” de Haas, who was the driving force behind the creation of the annual Chicago Jazz Festival, died July 28 from natural causes.
She was 91 and had moved from her South Side home to New Jersey 13 years ago to be closer to family.
In 1974, following jazz great Duke Ellington’s death, Mrs. de Haas helped organize a tribute to Ellington in Grant Park that became an annual event and united the city’s jazz community. It evolved into the city’s first Chicago Jazz Festival in 1979.
Programming of the event was eventually assumed by the Jazz Institute of Chicago, leading Mrs. de Haas to focus on creating the South Shore Jazz Fest — which was held at the South Shore Cultural Center from 1981 to 2012.
“My mother’s legacy in Chicago is one of great fortitude and persistence in establishing America’s original art form, jazz, and making Chicago a hub of that original art form,” said her son, Darius de Haas.
Mrs. de Haas said in a 2012 interview on WTTW’s “Chicago Tonight” that the festival’s presence in Grant Park paved the way for other festivals along the downtown lakefront.
“Jazz Fest was the catalyst for all the festivals that finally came to the city of Chicago,” she said. “Everything came out of that first tribute to Duke Ellington because they saw how many people from every corner of this city gathered there to hear this wonderful music.”
Mrs. de Haas was born Jan. 16, 1935, in Newark, N.J. and grew up in a family of nine kids.
In her early 20s, she teamed with her brother Andy Bey and sister Salome Bey to form a trio — Andy and the Bey Sisters — that toured the United States and Europe and for a time had a regular gig at the Blue Note in Paris. The group performed jazz and pop tunes from the late ’50s to the mid ’60s.
Mrs. de Haas married jazz musician Edgar de Haas in 1962 and moved to Chicago in 1968 when Edgar got a house musician gig at the London House.
Mrs. de Haas joined the Free Street Theater as an actress and singer and raised her children in the South Shore neighborhood.
She was in the Chicago premiere of “Hair” and tried singing jazz in Chicago’s nightclub scene but was stymied by the trends of the time.
“Arrogant people wanted to control everything I did. Club owners would ask, ‘Do you know any Diana Ross songs?’ That would get me riled,” she told the Sun-Times in 1998.
Eventually, having decided she wasn’t destined to become “a big singing sensation,” she became involved in community projects. Having studied the methods of her onetime manager, George Wein, who headed the Newport Jazz Festival, she had a leg up in learning how to get sponsors and put shows together.
She helped ensure that the 1974 tribute to Ellington was held in Grant Park and not in Washington Park on the South Side, as originally planned, so people from all different backgrounds and parts of the city would attend.
“When I first moved here I thought the city was so divided in terms of Black people on one side and white people on the other, and it seemed like the two couldn’t get together,” Mrs. de Haas said in a 2013 interview with WBEZ.
She marveled at how she and others persuaded city officials on the merits of holding a jazz fest near the downtown lakefront.
“Maybe it was because I wasn’t from Chicago and didn’t know enough to get intimidated by Chicago politics,” she said. “They used to call me the pit bull. I grab hold of something and don’t let go until it happens.”
In addition to her son, Mrs. de Haas is survived by her daughter, Aisha de Haas.
A memorial service in Chicago is being planned.