CRAMMING ‘N’ JAMMING AT BOULDER CONFERENCE

All it takes to bring jazz into almost any setting is one dedicated enthusiast. This city has long had just such a propagandist in the person of Betty Weems, a committee member of the recent Conference on World Affairs here ever since the annual conclave began in 1948.

Weems, a lifelong jazz fan, was able to persuade her colleagues and conference founder Howard Higman that what this event needed was a first-class concert and, with the help of Henry (Spike) Robinson, a locally based and greatly underrated tenor saxophonist, she was able to bring it to fruition five years ago, and annually since then.

There was a second secret weapon: Jazz has long been a force at the University of Colorado, where the conference was staged. The biggest and most popular class on campus is one on jazz history, which currently attracts 440 students to its twice-weekly seminars, conducted by Wayne Scott.

“Jazz was never a stranger to this campus,” said Scott, who started a stage band (a euphemism for jazz band) at the university in the mid-1950s. In addition to the history class, Scott conducts a course in improvisation and lends his arranging skills to concerts featuring the works of everyone from Duke Ellington to Irving Berlin.

Scott’s students provided a good foundation for the audiences at several panel discussions during the week. Some of the sessions had deliberately provocative titles: “Who Owns the Word Jazz?” and “Whatever Happened to the Blues?” and “Jazz is Not Dead, But . . .” Participating in these panels were Johnny Mandel, the former trombonist who gave up the instrument to become an award-winning film and TV composer and songwriter; Bob Wilber, the saxophonist/composer/arranger whose superb adaptation of Ellington’s music for the film “Cotton Club” won him a Grammy; Ben Sidran, whose associations have ranged from London sessions with the Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton to U.S. albums with Phil Woods, Richie Cole and other jazz eminences; and this writer.

Wilber, an eloquent and provocative speaker, launched the “Jazz is Not Dead, But . . .” discussion (the title was his own idea) by advancing a theory often promulgated by adherents of the old school: The golden age of jazz ended in 1946, when GIs returning home found a strange, incomprehensible music called be-bop on New York’s 52nd Street that represented hostility and took the happiness out of the music.

As the other discussants were quick to point out, far from being hostile, Dizzy Gillespie and others in the new jazz movement of the day related well to their audiences; Gillespie was even accused of being too much the entertainer and showman. Moreover, the “unfathomable” be-bop not only was duly understood but, over the years, was absorbed into the jazz mainstream.

There have been many “golden ages” since 1946: the heady days of the first jazz festivals, from the mid-1950s; the numerous highlights in the career of Duke Ellington; the unforgettable era when Miles Davis was producing not only his series of albums with Gil Evans but also the combo dates with John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley and Bill Evans. For all we know, what is happening in our present tumultuous days may be looked on 20 years hence as another golden era.

Mandel, recently active in jazz again, has maintained close contact with its participants and proved to be an articulate spokesman, particularly on the panel concerning the word jazz .

“It’s a very broad term now,” he said, “like classical music. Stravinsky is quite unlike Mozart, yet both are categorized as classical. By the same token, fusion music and John Coltrane are lumped together as jazz. We are too hung up on terminology. Essentially there are two types of music: The kind you experience from the neck up, and the kind that moves you from the neck down.”

Sidran has been heavily involved in the cerebral and gut-level aspects of music. Holder of a doctorate in history and sociology from the University of Sussex in England, he wrote a book, “Black Talk,” that was hailed as one of the most penetrating examinations of black culture in the United States. But when Sidran sings his original songs at the piano (“Space Cowboy,” “The Doctor’s Blues” or a pseudo-history of jazz called “A Good Travel Agent”), he is a delightful entertainer in a mold somewhere between Dave Frishberg and Mose Allison.

During a panel discussing the value of criticism, explaining his career as a performer, Sidran said: “I was involved as a critic, and in historiography; then I decided to become the information instead of just commenting on it. I’ve found musicians feel very misunderstood by the writers.

“The late Pepper Adams, the saxophonist, once told me that a negative New York Times review of a concert he’d taken part in with Thelonious Monk caused a whole concert tour with Monk to be canceled. He never forgot that.”

Sidran himself has been back in the critical fold as host of National Public Radio’s “Sidran on Record.” But performing seems to provide his most rewarding outlet, as he revealed in a concert, held as part of the conference, at the Glenn Miller Memorial Center Ballroom. (Miller, a big photo of whom adjoins the bandstand, studied at the University of Colorado but dropped out in 1923.)

Sidran and Johnny Mandel alternated at the piano, the latter playing some of his established hits (“Emily,” “Close Enough for Love”) and premiering a brand-new ballad, “Lovers After All.” Bob Wilber, switching from saxophones to clarinet, offered a tribute to Benny Goodman in tandem with the concert organizer Spike Robinson.

Long a Boulder resident, Robinson provides a classic instance of the “it’s not how good you are, it’s where you are” theory. But there is much more than that to his unique story: Now 57, he became a full-time professional musician only 18 months ago after more than three decades as an engineer.

Born in Kenosha, Wis., Robinson studied clarinet and alto sax and led a band while in his teens, joined the Navy in 1948 and was shipped to Britain as clarinetist in a Navy band. During three years in England, he played with such British civilians as Victor Feldman and earned a local reputation. A post-Navy attempt to succeed as a musician in Chicago didn’t work out.

“Things were tough, so I studied engineering under the GI Bill at the University of Colorado, and that became my career.”

Though he continued playing off and on, Robinson never had the courage to give up on engineering and return to his first love until friends persuaded him that it was now or never. In November, 1985, after 19 years at Honeywell, he quit.

He has had his share of minor successes: a few visits to New York (Eddie Condon’s) and Los Angeles (Donte’s) and a return to Europe, where he is quite well known.

The audience attracted to Robinson’s concert consisted in large measure of university students, along with faculty members and conference participants. Many, it can be assumed, had seldom or never been exposed to the sound of mainstream jazz; yet the room was packed, many were turned away, and there were two standing ovations. The message would seem to be that music like that of Robinson, Wilber and the others could find a greater audience, especially among younger listeners, were they not shielded from it by the incessant outpouring of teen-appeal music via radio and TV.