POP MUSIC : Creach, Vinson Display Veteran Versatility

A pair of veteran musical fence-straddlers, Eddie (Cleanhead) Vinson and Papa John Creach, have teamed up for a three-week San Diego engagement that began Wednesday at Elario’s nightclub in La Jolla.

Vinson, who sings and plays alto saxophone, is “a marvelously potent combination of primitive bluesman and sophisticated jazzman,” according to the Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz.

He began his career playing big band music in the late 1930s and subsequently scored a pair of national hits with “Kidney Stew Blues” and “Juice Head Baby.”

After World War II, Vinson’s big band, like most other orchestras around the country, fell on hard times. So in 1947, he pared down his group from 16 to seven members and drifted away from swing, concentrating on a mix of old blues tunes and improvisational be-bop.

The former he had learned while growing up in Houston; the latter he was only then beginning to master through temporary liaisons with such future greats as Charlie Parker.

“To me, singing the blues and playing jazz are not that far apart,” Vinson told The Times last fall. “Jazz is an extension of the blues, and my saxophone playing is kind of an extension of my singing.”

Papa John, too, has never been content with sticking to just one musical idiom.

The classically trained violinist spent several years in the late 1930s playing with the Chicago Symphony before switching onto jazz, blues, and rhythm-and-blues in Chicago nightclubs.

In 1970, Creach’s musical career took yet another jarring turn. He joined seminal San Francisco acid-rock group the Jefferson Airplane, remaining on board for five albums--and a name change to Jefferson Starship.

Roll over Beethoven, indeed.

“Back when I was starting out, the more styles you knew, the more you worked,” Creach recalled. “Some of what I do is old, and some is new. But the way I see it, it’s all popular music.”