Pair of Jazz Groups Strike Dissonant Chords Over Feeding the Hungry

Like a pair of New York cabdrivers hassling over a fare, rival jazz charity foundations are quarreling over which one gets to help feed and educate the poor first.

Since their creation six months ago, the Jazz to End Hunger Foundation and Jazz Aid International have been at odds with each other.

The Jazz to End Hunger Foundation is recording an all-star jazz single and album to raise money to feed the poor, much the way USA for Africa raised its money last year with “We Are the World.” Foundation president Michael McIntosh said he plans to donate all proceeds to Ken Kragen’s Hands Across America project.

Jazz Aid International, on the other hand, is following the example of Bob Geldof’s Live Aid concert. Founder Tani Jones is organizing an all-star seven-hour jazz concert at the Inglewood Forum for May 15, featuring an international telecast and a toll-free pledge line. Tickets to the event itself will be $35 and will go on sale about a month before the concert, she said. Proceeds will go to education and long-term relief projects in Africa, Asia and the United States, Jones said.

“I think it’s marvelous that he’s doing it,” Jones said of McIntosh’s efforts. “It’s all good work.”

But McIntosh said Jones has actively attempted to sabotage his project.

“There’s been a whole lot of problems and bad blood with Jazz Aid International that has, in turn, washed over onto this project,” he said.

When McIntosh contacted about four dozen jazz artists last week and asked them to record “Keep the Dream Alive” (a jazz answer to “We Are the World”), he said several of them told him that Jones had phoned to tell them not to go to the recording session.

“When you call up players and players are told that you are nonexistent and that your project is a fraud, it makes it six or eight times more difficult than it already is,” McIntosh said.

Both foundations are tax-exempt nonprofit corporations, according to the California Secretary of State’s office, but having that in common has apparently done little to cool the rivalry.

“Look, I’d love to see her concert come off. I would be glad to help her. But every time I have tried to contact her, she has refused to call me back and then I hear back secondhand that she’s running us down,” McIntosh said.

Jones denies any attempts at sabotage and contends that there is room enough for both foundations. She admitted that her project has had its problems, however. It was originally scheduled for February, but had to be postponed three months because several acts, including Manhattan Transfer and Sarah Vaughan, had dropped out.

The only artist whose name Jones said she could reveal as confirmed for the May 15 concert is musician Paul Horn. Horn will be touring Russia at the time, but will appear in a live satellite telecast from Moscow on the evening of the concert, she said.

“At this moment I would really rather not reveal the names of the other people because they have contracts with big labels and obviously there are a lot of ramifications with a project of this size,” she said.

She said she hopes to raise $9 million with the project.