Streisand / LIVE 

Barbra arrived at Festival Field for her sound check around 2:30 p.m. on July 30th with Elliott Gould and her dog, Sadie. They drove from New Haven, Connecticut in their brown Bentley to the Hotel Viking in Newport. 

George Wein—an American jazz promoter and producer who founded the Newport Jazz Festival—wrote about Streisand's 1966 appearance in his book, Myself Among Others. He recalled that “the comedian Alan King and a partner of his, Walter Hyman, had made arrangements with her management to present her in several cities [ ... ] Part of Streisand's show called for a scrim. A scrim is a sheer screen that, depending on the direction of the lighting, can be either opaque or translucent. I wasn't aware of this element of the production, but on the afternoon before the concert, Walter Hyman and I were conversing in the administration office on the field. Looking out through a window that overlooked the stage, I saw this workmanlike exercise underway. The festival production team and Streisand's guys were hanging this enormous scrim across the expanse of the stage. It was obvious that this was an expensive process; the festival had never done anything this elaborate.

“I said to Walter Hyman, ‘Wow, you're really doing a first-class production. This must be costing you a fortune.’

“Looking at me in surprise, he said, ‘I thought you were paying for it.’”

Streisand’s ticket prices at Festival Field sold for $5, $6, $8, and $10. Audience members were entertained from 7:30 p.m. to 8:15 p.m. by electric organist Johnny Dupont.

Streisand’s concert was scheduled to begin at 8:30 p.m., but was delayed a half hour due to late arrivals. Streisand took the stage in her Sarmi gown, “with a shoe and earring of each color and a tiny coronet of orange rosebuds,” wrote Variety.

The Newport Daily News reported that after the concert, the Goulds ate steamed clams with Dr. and Mrs. Harvey (Cis) Corman, then drove to Boston afterward. They were due in Philadelphia for Streisand’s August 3rd concert.

Variety reported the Newport show grossed $121,000, which broke Frank Sinatra’s record the previous year of $80,000. They described Barbra’s audience as “a composite of the opera and jazz festival groups in that ties and jackets were in evidence and the dirty, bearded beatniks were missing.”

* Streisand sang an electrifying version of “The Music That Makes Me Dance” that evening that incorporated a rarely-heard verse written by Styne/Merrill as the bridge of the song: