L.A.: A Jazz Hotbed for 7 Decades : The Swing Era, in Effect, Was Born Here; Fusion Was Named Here

While jazz was first making its way to wax 70 years ago, Los Angeles, unbeknownst to its fewer than half a million residents, was already in the process of becoming a major center for a variety of Afro-American musical experiences.

Though it has lived all these seven decades in the shadow of New York and its Eastern elitist critical attitudes, this has not prevented the Southland from nurturing an abundance of innovative jazz talent and playing host to a variety of inventive musical movements.

With equal parts of pride and shame, Los Angeles may be credited with having supplied a place for racial barriers to be broken in the music world (the two segregated musicians’ unions merged 34 years ago), while at the same time it may be blamed for retaining Jim Crow attitudes. Ironically, the lure of lucrative film and TV studio work has brought to Hollywood many potentially great jazz artists while limiting them to occasional appearances in a musically stimulating local jazz scene.

Perhaps it is Los Angeles’ principal claim to fame as a catalyst for jazz that the Swing Era, in effect, was born here. Benny Goodman’s orchestra, after a somewhat unsuccessful tour across country, opened at the Palomar, at Second Street and Vermont, on Aug. 21, 1935. The band was a sensation. “After traveling 3,000 miles,” Goodman said, “we finally found people who were up on what we were trying to do. The first big roar from the crowd was one of the sweetest sounds I ever heard in my life.” The band broke all records, the four-week booking was doubled, and big-band jazz--swing--became America’s new sensation.

Today, more than half a century later, Los Angeles has a thriving jazz community, despite the temptations offered to resident musicians by commercial jobs. The Playboy, Queen Mary and other festivals are staged here annually. Major jazz concerts take place throughout the summer at the Hollywood Bowl. The Times’ list of clubs far outnumbers a comparable listing in the New Yorker.

Los Angeles today takes this music seriously. Musicians are less likely to feel that their talents will go unappreciated here. This area is called home by countless world-class artists. Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan and Carmen McRae, Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock, Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter, Freddie Hubbard and Woody Herman, Jimmy Witherspoon and Alice Coltrane all live in or around Los Angeles, and the city is visited from time to time by most of the major jazz stars.

Be-bop, Dixieland, Latin jazz and big-band swing can be found almost every night of the week; fusion earned its name here; Norman Granz’s Pablo, Lester Koenig’s Contemporary, Albert Marx’s Discovery and Bill Stillfield’s PAUSA labels each began here and not too far away are Carl Jefferson’s Concord and Orrin Keepnew’s Landmark labels, as well as such companies as Fantasy, Black-Hawk, Sea Breeze, Theresa and Bosco.

Gerald Wilson’s exceptional orchestra was formed in Los Angeles in 1944. Toshiko Akiyoshi and Lew Tabackin relocated here (from New York) in 1972 to start their award-winning big band; Ann Patterson’s Maiden Voyage was launched locally in 1980.

KKGO and KLON devote their air-time to jazz. KCSN, KUTE, KCRW and a variety of other radio stations play jazz much of the time. Steve Allen and Bobby Troup promoted jazz on television in shows produced here; numerous jazz journals have begun here, and almost every college and university in the Southland today offers some form of jazz education in its curriculum.

Studio City is home base for the Dick Grove School of Music, the Southland’s counterpart to Boston’s famous Berklee College.

Back when “jazz” and “education” were considered a contradiction in terms, in June, 1922, a sextet variously known as Spikes’ Pods of Pepper and Kid Ory’s Sunshine Orchestra recorded “Ory’s Creole Trombone” and “Society Blues” in Los Angeles; the two numbers appeared as a 78 on the Nordskog and Sunshine labels. At that time no other black combo had a phonograph record released anywhere.

By the mid-1920s, Washington Blvd. in Culver City was already a hotbed of activity in at least a dozen nightclubs, among them the Alabam and Frank Sebastian’s Cotton Club, where Louis Armstrong would make his local cabaret debut in 1930. There were also clubs in West Hollywood, then called Sherman and known for its gambling and prostitution.

During the 1930s, clubs in or near Culver City hosted the bands of Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway, and later Woody Herman and Harry James. Most of the other name bands of the Swing Era continued to find important outlets in Los Angeles and nearby; the Avalon Ballroom in Catalina was a favorite haunt for dancers who sought the big-band sound, as were the Palladium, the Trianon, the Aragon, the Heidi Ho and others. At one time Tommy Dorsey, leader of one of the most successful East Coast bands, bought the Casino Gardens and featured trumpeter Ziggy Elman.

Smaller venues suited to jazz combos began dominating the scene during the 1940s as costs soared and the interest in big bands began to wane. However, three important big bands did get their start in the Southland. Lionel Hampton, after leaving Benny Goodman, put his orchestra together here in 1940. Stan Kenton’s orchestra was launched early in 1941 at ballrooms in Huntington Beach and Balboa. Gerald Wilson’s band-leading career got under way three years later, but some of the most successful groups that used L.A. as home base were smaller combos such as the King Cole Trio, which made its first records for a small Los Angeles company.

The best known club for small bands was Billy Berg’s, where many of the mainstream combos played. At the suggestion of Norman Granz, then a film editor at MGM, Berg’s instituted a series of jam sessions open to patrons of all races (blacks were barred as customers at most Los Angeles clubs). The Granz sessions led to the jam session-concert at the Philharmonic Auditorium in 1944, which in turn gave birth to the regular touring units taken out by Granz, billed as “Jazz at the Philharmonic.”

In 1947, when Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie brought bebop from New York to Billy Berg’s, the tolerance that Vine Street patrons had shown for a racial mix did not extend to the music of these revolutionary players. The local press and media were intensely hostile. As Parker said, “They hated our kind of music on the West Coast. I can’t begin to tell you how I yearned for New York . . . when I left, they had a band at Billy Berg’s . . . one of those New Orleans style bands, that ancient jazz--and the people liked it! That was the kind of thing that helped to crack my wig.”

Far more creative sounds, as well as hospitable listeners, were to be found along Los Angeles’ Central Avenue. Bird enjoyed considerable success there, as did a host of other jazz greats Los Angeles has spawned, including bassists Red Callender and Charles Mingus, saxophonists Dexter Gordon and Harold Land, and a few white players such as saxophonist Art Pepper.

South-Central Los Angeles was not only open to the burgeoning Afro-American music, its locale offered the only homes-away-from-home for visiting black musicians. Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Ella Fitzgerald may have been hot commodities at the Biltmore or the Ambassador hotels, but black musicians were unwelcome guests in Hollywood and downtown hotels. The back doors faced south, and it was to Central Avenue’s Dunbar Hotel that much of the reigning jazz royalty was shuttled after the last set.

In the basement of the Dunbar, Nat King Cole held court at his own club and within easy distance were dozens of jazz spots, many of which hosted after-hours jam sessions with “uptown” working musicians.

nored, or at best insufficiently employed here).

Race, topography and musical bias all seem somewhat distant considerations--as jazz on record celebrates its 70th year.

Avant-gardists are making inroads here while at the same time revival and ghost bands are attracting the attention of audiences whose parents barely remember the Swing Era. Bebop lives, Dixie continues its infectious two-beat stomp. The great singers hold forth at the Vine St. Bar & Grill, the fusion, despite its musical confusion, keeps fusing at Concerts by the Sea and the Baked Potato, and the blues is still blue and brewing at Marla’s Memory Lane and the Alleycat Bistro. Mainstream sounds are still on tap at Donte’s, Alfonse’s, the Catalina and the Loa.

It’s a scene infinitely busier than anyone could have predicted when Kid Ory blew those first sounds into an acoustic horn in a primitive recording studio almost seven decades ago.