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Dave Stuckey and his Hot House Gang are stuck on old-school jazz

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Band leader Dave Stuckey’s avocation as a practitioner of hot 1920s jazz has peculiarly unlikely roots.

The Kansas City native arrived in Los Angeles in 1981, immediately fell in with the Cramps (for a studio-only association and close sustained friendship) and it was DJ Bonebrake, drummer for L.A. punk rock legends X, who nefariously enabled Stuckey’s current jazz addiction.

Stuckey, whose Hot House Gang appears Monday at Burbank’s Joe’s Great American Bar, has enjoyed a wild musical safari from teenage punk-rock fandom to contemporary participation in half a dozen genre-jumping bands.

“Well, that’s the great thing about a musical melting pot like L.A., isn’t it?” Stuckey said. “Whatever musical itch you want to scratch, it’s here for the picking. These days, I can indulge myself in pre-war Hawaiian music with the Hukilau Hotshots, Western swing with the Lucky Stars, rockabilly harmony with Dave & Deke Combo, even doo wop, and ’20s pop music, but this, playing pre-big band 1920s swing with the Hot House Gang, is my baby.

“I was in high school when I first discovered ’20s jazz and was so taken by the mysterious, primitive, vigorous music,” he said. “It was permanently tattooed on my musical brain, along with all the other stuff to come, like punk and rockabilly. That’s what grabbed me about the Cramps — obviously they got that it was all about what goes into the stew, from Don Redman to the Sonics to Mad magazine. In their realm, they were a living testament to the great Louis Armstrong’s great quote about jazz — ‘If you have to ask, you’ll never know!’”

Stuckey and his Hot House Gang are the antithesis of the brawny swingcore bands which first reintroduced old-school jazz to local rock club audiences.

They play with a decidedly light touch, yet it’s a boundlessly swinging sound fraught with atmosphere, involvement, heat and spontaneity.

“The Hot House Gang came together when [bassist] Wally Hersom and I were playing in the Bonebrake Syncopators with DJ Bonebrake. We realized we wanted to play more gigs, and how fun it would be to play in a [pre-big band] swing band,” Stuckey said. “About that time, Lorenzo Rossi, who puts on the Monday dance shows at Joe’s, asked if I’d be interested in putting together a band to play a dance he was doing for a club at USC.

“I’d been seeing all these cats at the trad jazz festivals that could really play like Eddie Lang or Pee Wee Russell, only I didn’t know any of them. But Wally did, so I called ‘em up, and they’re working musicians, so, sure, they took the gig. It was a solid ball from the get-go.

“For me, song selection is the whole key to making it interesting. And there is an endless supply of great jazz tunes from about 1925 to 1938, the sweet spot for me. It’s almost literally limitless. Why not dig a little deeper? As a singer, it makes it fun and challenging. There are a ton of similar bands out there and I like to think it’s one of the things that differentiates us from the pack.”

As captured on their current CD, “How’m I Doin’?” the Hot House gang clearly operates at its own distinctive creative altitude. And it’s not merely a collection of retreads of 75-year-old material.

“Getting originals done was very important,” Stuckey said. “The record is half originals and half covers and I’m very happy with the way they turned out, and what the fellas did with them. I’ve never been somebody who’s happy with leaving a song just how I wrote it. The fun thing is to write, then throw it out and see what the band’s take is on it.

“But just as importantly — or maybe even more important — is, since this music was originally played for dancing, that’s what it needs to be. Any musician will tell you, if you’re playing live in a vacuum, it’s no fun. So when you play a dance, the feedback is instantaneous. You know right away if it’s working or not. On a good Monday night at Joe’s, you can tell your energy is feeding the dancers — and that energy loops right back to the band. That’s probably my favorite part thing about playing in this band. It’s an amazing phenomenon.”

Who: Dave Stuckey & the Hot House Gang

Where: Joe’s Great American Bar & Grill, 4311 W. Magnolia Blvd., Burbank

When: Monday, Oct. 26, 9 p.m.

Cost: Free

More info: (818) 729-0805, joesgreatbar.com

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JONNY WHITESIDE is a veteran music journalist based in Burbank and author of “Ramblin’ Rose: the Life & Career of Rose Maddox” and “Cry: the Johnnie Ray Story.”

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