Vintage Jazz Talent Treats Vintage Fans
The thing about jazz is that while it keeps evolving, it never says goodby to the places it’s been.
There are jazz fans eager to locate the leading edge of experimentation, fascinating rhythms and tonal paths never trod before. Others see no need to move beyond the most primitive of blues, where it all began.
But then again, a large number of us grew up on the music that falls somewhere in between--north of late Dixieland but south of early Bop. Ours were the sounds of the jazz-flavored big bands (Ellington, Goodman, Shaw, Basie, Kenton) and of the innumerable, shifting, small groups that featured soloists of now-legendary status and that sometimes stayed intact for no longer than a recording session or two.
Some 500 worshipers from this generation (roughly defined as over 55) filled a ballroom at the San Diego Marriott over the weekend for Bill Muchnic’s second San Diego Jazz Party.
The musical celebrities, direct from the great days and still playing with remarkable energy, inventiveness and joy, included the bassists Milt Hinton, who is 78, and Bob Haggart, 75. The other seniors included drummer Gus Johnson (75), Marshall Royal (76) on alto and Flip Phillips (73) on tenor. At 60, the fine soprano sax and clarinet player Bob Wilber represents a later generation.
And since any brand of jazz must renew itself or die, it was reassuring and reaffirming to hear the outstanding younger players present. Notable among them were the horn men, Ed Pelcer on cornet and Warren Vache on trumpet. Scott Hamilton on tenor and drummer Butch Miles have built impressive reputations, as have guitarist Howard Alden and trombonist Dan Barrett, both West Coast men now working in New York.
Bassist John Clayton is also Los Angeles-born and studied with Ray Brown. Clayton did arrangements for and conducted the 18-man ad hoc big band that played with amazing power and precision, given its short rehearsal time.
Muchnic’s gathering is a reduced but unapologetic copy of Dick Gibson’s Rocky Mountain Jazz Party, now a quarter-century old. Muchnic, an engineer by training, retired to San Diego from Atkinson, Kan., after the family’s manufacturing firm was bought by Rockwell. He had discovered live jazz in Kansas City and played trumpet at the University of Kansas. He attended the Gibson parties from the beginning, until his doctor cautioned him away from the Colorado altitude.
He concluded that the only answer was a West Coast party of his own. The first one sold out six weeks ahead of time and broke even. He decided to do it again, hiring two dozen musicians, many of whom had played the first party. The $130 tickets this year bought some 14 hours of music: four hours on Friday and Saturday nights, a noon to 6 session Sunday afternoon.
Muchnic runs a tight ship: half-hour sets with minimal stage waits between, changing but thoughtfully composed groups, solo turns by each of the players before the weekend is over. Three pianists (Paul Smith, Ralph Sutton and Dick Hyman), three bassists (Haggart, Clayton and Hinton) and three drummers (Miles, Johnson and Jake Hanna) made for a variety of rhythm sections, all uncommonly propulsive.
“No rock ‘n’ roll, no progressive,” Muchnic says, knowing his own and his patrons’ tastes. He also provides a master list of suggested tunes, mostly to avoid repetitions from one set to another. “The guys aren’t limited,” Muchnic says, “but they tell me they find the list helpful.”
Like a film festival, a jazz party reduces to a relatively few indelible memories. From San Diego, one will be of a duet--Bob Wilber on curved soprano sax, Kenny Davern on clarinet--on the Jelly Roll Morton tune “Sweet Substitute.” The slow, soaring interplay of the two instruments, like a lyrical conversation of like minds, was astonishingly beautiful. You were reminded that among all its other possibilities, jazz can indeed be pretty.
At another extreme, a tune Davern introduced as “The Shriek of Agony”--the well-worn “Sheik of Araby”--became the foundation for a blazing series of choruses by Flip Phillips, George Masso on trombone and Bucky Pizzarelli on guitar. Standing ovations were frequent but the “Sheik” richly deserved the one it received. You were reminded that fine playing defies the years.
What gives improvisational jazz its undiminished appeal for those who love it is that when the right players come together a kind of musical magic happens, and the whole, constructed on the spot in a so-called head arrangement, is larger than the soaring parts. There is an admiration and a delight among the players themselves that the listeners can see as well as hear.
When the dazzling young guitarist Howard Alden was taking a long chorus, the other musicians watched him with grinning approval and mimed applause before they returned to their own chores.
There was, you had the feeling, at least as much pleasure in the playing as in the receiving.