Aretha Franklin is back; her first appearance was in 1962.

While this weekend’s Newport Folk Festival widened its palette by bringing in a number of acts that wouldn’t be considered big names on the folk circuit, next weekend’s JVC Jazz Festival-Newport is pretty much sticking with the tried and true in traditional, straight-ahead jazz.

Festival co-founder George Wein happily points out that the bill for next weekend’s festival includes soul queen Aretha Franklin and pop-jazz trumpeter Chris Botti (whose Friday-night concert at the International Tennis Hall of Fame is “practically sold out,” Wein says), but other than that “it’s basically straight jazz.”

And he’s basically right. Other exceptions include the world-music twist of Ledisi and the jam-band influences of Lettuce, but jazz legends such as Sonny Rollins, Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock rule the weekend.

(And Franklin basically counts, Wein says. “Aretha has a tradition in Newport; we feel a kinship to her.” Her first Newport appearance was in 1962, and at her last Newport appearance, the 1998 edition of the now-defunct Rhythm and Blues Festival, she announced from the stage, “It all began here.”)

In 2004, Wein decided that the 50th-anniversary edition of the festival would be a straight-ahead jazz affair, and it turned out to be not only an artistic but a commercial success. Since then, the festival has continued mostly in that vein, but this year’s festival has a lot less of what Wein calls “memory things” — tributes to late jazz founders — than in previous years. “We brought back a lot of memory things [in 2004], like the Charles Mingus big band and the tribute to John Coltrane. And after a while you get tired of doing tributes.”

While things are going relatively well for the festival, Wein, 82, remembers the good old days.

“It’s difficult. You have to think that back in the ’50s and ’60s, on a Saturday night we could do 15,000 to 20,000 people. Now it’s very difficult to get 7,000 or 8,000. We fight to keep the Newport jazz festival alive, that’s what it amounts to.

“And that’s a drag, because we used to be able to do it without sponsorship. Now we can’t. So the world turns. But you still keep doing it, because I love jazz, and I’ll keep doing it as long as I can. I have these new people with me now, and that helps me.”

He’s referring to The Festival Network, the company formed last year with the purchase of Wein’s Festival Productions by impresario Chris Shields. Wein credits his co-producers with bringing in “some people I don’t even know, who I’ve never heard play. Which is good; that’s the way it should be.”

He makes it clear, as have his new partners in offhand conversations, that while the folk festival is showing some changes inspired by the new ownership, he’s still calling the shots when it comes to the jazz festival. “I’m not the boss anymore” when it comes to folk, he says, but “when it comes to Newport [jazz], I don’t let anybody take over.”

And after running the festival for this long, Wein says, there’s no point in stopping now.

“Hey, what else? You get to be 82, you take it day to day.”

Wein’s also looking forward to his first main-stage performance at his festival in years. He’ll be leading a band that includes veterans such as Howard Alden and young players such as the bassist Esperanza Spaulding. They’ve already done a week of shows in Bern, Switzerland, and Wein predicts, “We’re gonna have a ball.”

He says, “I was just in there practicing when you called. I’ve got to keep my hands in shape.”

The JVC Jazz Festival-Newport starts Friday night with a concert by Chris Botti and Ledisi at the International Tennis Hall of Fame and continues through next weekend at Fort Adams. Times and ticket prices vary; go to www.festivalnetwork .com for more information. Interviews with Rollins and Spaulding will appear in Thursday’s Lifebeat Weekend section.

rmassimo@projo.com