SAX CONCERT IS LIKE AULD TIMES

Auld acquaintance was not forgotten Friday evening when the bandstand at Donte’s was occupied, for the first time in 15 years, by one of the best-remembered tenor sax eminences of the swing era, Georgie Auld.

For many years Auld has lived in Palm Springs, retired except for occasional jobs overseas (and his brief emergence in 1976 for an acting and playing role in the film “New York, New York”).

Given this long stretch of inactivity, it was to be expected that the Auld horn might be more than a little rusty.

The expectation was wrong.

On the very first chorus of “Perdido” he came tearing in, all batteries charged, the sound still strong and bold, the phrasing and sensitivity undiminished.

Auld’s reputation as a veteran of the Coleman Hawkins/Ben Webster school was established in his classic recordings with Benny Goodman’s Sextet, alongside Charlie Christian and Count Basie.

That is the kind of company you keep once in a lifetime. Still, his Donte’s colleagues offered propulsive enough support, with two old associates, Dick Berk on drums and Marty Harris at the piano, and a bassist new to him but not to local ears, the supple and dependable Chuck Berghofer.

The occasion was doubly reassuring because Auld’s driving beat was as buoyant as ever on “Jumpin’ at the Woodside” and the like, but his ballads, in which the hard-edged tone is tempered by a rare warmth and sense of melody, offered a needed reminder of the basic beauty inherent in this often debased horn. There were no freak notes, no gimmicks, no fashionable 99-notes-a-second flurries.

Auld should return permanently to our world; voices like his are needed.