JAZZ REVIEW : DIXIELAND SHOW SCORES IN CAPITAL

Pardon the paraphrase, but I have seen the past, and it works.

The statistics for the 13th annual Memorial Day Dixieland Jubilee were startling. As its sponsors, the nonprofit Sacramento Traditional Jazz Society, proudly point out, it is now the world’s largest jazz festival, involving 40 locations indoors and out, close to 800 musicians, 100,000 patrons and bands from 14 countries. Typically, at noon on Saturday there was a choice of 28 places to visit and groups to check out.

The longstanding assumption that Dixieland is happy music was borne out during these four fun-directed days. As one observer said, “Even the cops are smiling.” Seldom have so many derived so much pleasure from a very simple, old-fashioned musical genre, played with widely varying degrees of technique, artistry and showmanship.

According to Bill Gunter, who has led a hard life handling publicity for the festival and playing washboard drums in the Black Diamond Jazz Band, 90% of the participants play jazz only avocationally. The pros, he says, are icing on the cake. After 24 hours here, it became very clear how badly this icing was needed, in view of an often indisputably crumby cake.

The most serious problem by far was the almost total exclusion of black musicians, a policy unaltered since the jubilee began. Since this is a music of Afro-American origin and nearly all of its greatest creative artists have been black, it was shocking almost beyond belief that only about 1% of the players were black. In fact, the only black band was Joe Liggins’ out of place, out of tune rhythm and blues group. Maxine Sullivan was heard briefly with one band and the Voices of Faith, a black choir, sang spirituals in a moving Sunday morning service.

The argument that black instrumentalists don’t care to play early jazz just doesn’t wash. Instead of spending thousands to fly over the English band that sang “Lambeth Walk,” or the feeble groups from Australia, Israel and Scotland, the promoters could have improved the festival musically by hiring the black Dirty Dozen Brass Band from New Orleans, Jimmy & Geannie Cheatham’s band from San Diego and the Los Angeles Legends of Jazz (soon to be seen at the Playboy Festival). They could also have dropped the dainty “Ace in the Hole” ladies in favor of such show-stopping black blues giants as Carrie Smith, Linda Hopkins or Koko Taylor.

Obviously, it was impossible to pass judgment on all the 102 bands, but a few examples should suffice.

After the 80-year-old cornetist Wild Bill Davison had been crowned this year’s festival emperor in ceremonies held Friday amid much pomp, speech-making, ethnic costuming, parading and clowning, the following groups took part (I later heard most of them again in individual sets):

An Australian band played “Waltzing Matilda,” but not, God forbid, as a waltz. The Louisiana Jazz Band (hailing from Denmark) wore T-shirts reading “Danish Dynamite” and sang “Ace in the Hole” with a Danish accent. A band from Guatemala, Paco Gatsby, mixed Latin and even rock rhythms with the Dixie essence.

The New Orleans Jazz Band of Hawaii, whose appearance was preceded by a six-pack of hula dancers, strummed its way through “Hawaiian War Chant.” A trumpet-less band from Jerusalem fielded the weirdest rhythm section of the weekend: banjo, electric bass, drums and no piano, except when the trombonist put down his horn. They did not play “Bei Mir Bist du Schoen,” an assignment that was left, oddly, to Sandro Benko’s band from Budapest.

The Jazz Band All Orchestra from Krakow, Poland, long a popular Sacramento feature, had a few exotic, offbeat moments but indulged in group comedy vocals and wore feathered red caps. Visual values are rarely overlooked here: the Scottish Society Syncopators from Edinburgh was heralded by flags, bagpipes and dancers in a Highland Fling. The sidemen wore kilts.

Whether the groups played themes indigenous to their countries, an inevitable similarity pervaded the performances. Some aficionados of old-time jazz make much out of minor distinctions: This group has two trumpets rather than one, that combo has a sax instead of a clarinet, a banjo or tuba instead of a guitar or bass. But “Sweet Georgia Brown” or “South Rampart Street Parade” played by one band is likely to be largely indistinguishable from the same tune served up by another. The differences were mainly those of competence, and of the extent to which a few groups deviated from the classic improvised sounds.

Wild Bill Davison, the emperor, with his wife, Anne as empress, at his side, blew enough horn to show those pesky 50-and 60-year-old kids how it’s done. Peanuts Hucko, the Benny Goodman-style clarinetist, offered the most sophisticated music of all, aided by the incredibly virtuosic pianist Dick Hyman, a vibraphonist from Canada named Peter Appleyard, the bassist Bob Haggart and Gene Estes on drums.

One set fell apart when the singer, Louise Tobin, after a pleasant ballad, duetted with Hucko on the seemingly mandatory “Bill Bailey.” Hyman reappeared in a series of immaculate solo sets spread over the weekend, devoted to Fats Waller and others.

Maturity was the name of the game again in the Jack Teagarden Memorial Band, another collection of union musicians and seasoned pros, led by the trombonist’s sister, Norma, at the piano. Except for an excellent Teagarden-style trombonist, Rex Allen, all the members had worked with Teagarden. Their sets leavened the staler material with swing tunes and ballads. Don Goldie, a commanding trumpeter, was the casual vocalist on “Lazy River.” George Van Eps, in his guitar solos, showed the same dexterity he revealed on records made 50 years ago.

An unlikely source of jazz was the Lawrence Welk alumni group, led by the eloquent trumpeter Dick Cathcart, with Henry Cuesta on clarinet and the exceptional trombonist Bob Havens, who soloed at length on “Lover,” a song with descending chord changes that owe nothing to the New Orleans legacy.

I didn’t get to hear any of the eight bands that claimed to play country or western jazz, one of them allegedly “in the tradition of Bob Wills.” Nor did I hear Custer’s Last Band. But I did hear The Sons of Bix, with the fine second-generation cornetist Tom Pletcher amiably reliving the 1928 Beiderbecke repertoire.

Chris Norris, incongruously flanked by the banjo and bass sax of the Golden Eagle Jazz Band, brought a pure, on-target sound to a classic Ma Rainey blues. The banjoist Bob Ringwald and his Great Pacific Jazz Band from North Hollywood did not feature Ringwald’s ex-vocalist daughter, Molly, who is now 18, a movie star and this week’s Time magazine cover girl.

Of the two big bands present, the one I heard, led by Stan Mark, seemed irrelevant and spent much of its time backing the singer Helen Forrest.

The audience for the Dixieland Festivals is a breed apart: primarily a white, middle-aged, middle-class, middle-American crowd, addressed for the most part by senior performers. True, there was several youth bands, but the idiom does not come naturally to them; some of the most painful sounds were produced by a group of teen-agers limping through “Hello Dolly” and “Muskrat Ramble.”

It is just as pointless to blame it on their youth as to state that some adult musician played well for a doctor or a lawyer or a fireman, or sounded fine for a non-union cat. (There were, however, some excellent young ragtime and stride soloists at the “Pianorama” hosted Sunday by Dick Hyman.)

To sum up: a wonderful ambiance, ideal weather, admirable organization with the help of 3,000 volunteer workers (quite a few of whom, ironically, were black), endless visual antics. The investment was in the high six figures, and the projected gross more than $1.4 million. All that’s needed is more racial diversity and quality in the music.

When I left Monday having had my Dixieland Fix for the year, I felt sure I could get along for another 12 months without hearing “Royal Garden Blues.”