Soviet Jazzmen and Dixie Melodies

The Leningrad Dixieland Band first toured the United States two years ago, playing a glad-notes variation on glasnost in the form of such ancient folk melodies as “Maple Leaf Rag” and “The Memphis Blues.”

The nine-man group is back again for a six-week tour that began in British Columbia and centers on appearances at the annual monster rally of traditional music, the Dixieland Jazz Jubilee in Sacramento over Memorial Day weekend. The tour will end in Washington on June 17.

Tuesday night, in town for a Wednesday taping of the Johnny Carson show (they appeared on the program with great success in 1987), the band played a rousing set at At My Place in Santa Monica.

The gig was organized by Allen Rosenthal, a banjo-strumming real estate lawyer who feels music is the key to world harmony and who dreams of a kind of Dixieland satellite teleconference, with the saints marching in simultaneously all around the globe.

From the opening strains of “The Jazz Me Blues” Tuesday night, it was obvious that the Leningrad players had studied and absorbed the American strain but had gone beyond imitation to find their own ebullient voices.

David Goloshokin, who doubles on fluegelhorn and amplified violin, plays the fiddle with a raucous, driving bite that sounds like a Stephane Grappelli interpretation of bluegrass.

The band’s leader and arranger, Oleg Kuvaitsev, plays alto in an elegant style that owes more to Ellington’s New York than to New Orleans. Some of his charts venture well away from the traditional book, to the likes of “Tico Tico,” a best-selling record as an Ethel Smith organ solo years ago. The band takes it fast, in the light, crisp style of West Coast jazz. Traditional jazz is at very least a lighthearted, high-energy musical vaudeville, enjoyed for the familiarity of the tunes and even, occasionally, for famous solos repeated note for note.

At its enduring best, traditional jazz is a term embracing everything from straight-ahead Dixieland to the upriver Chicago, New York and California evolutions. It is an apparently endlessly renewable resource, a showcase for great instrumentalists spinning magical improvisations and for collaborative efforts as well--experiments in voicings, interwoven free-form melodies, call-and-response chases, intricate rhythms behind the soloists.

The excitement of watching and listening is, not least, in seeing the musicians respond to each other with surprise and delight. A Leningrad Dixieland Band is an exotic import, but there was only an occasional accent to suggest the players had not wandered in from Kansas City for the night.

The Leningraders are nothing if not showmen. Drummer Alexander Skrypnik, who plays with the unmussed urbanity of the American Buzzy Drootin, also does an amazing imitation of Louis Armstrong on “You’re a Woman, I’m a Man.” Banjoist Boris Ershov is a virtuoso performer and also a fine clown, a sort of hyperactive mime.

For the night the band stayed largely with uptempo material; it remained to be heard how they handle slow blues.

The original group first took form, as amateurs meeting for fun, in 1958. It became a professional group in 1962. The originating inspirations, the band members have said, were tours of the Soviet Union by Sidney Bechet and Louis Armstrong, the radio broadcasts of American jazz on Armed Forces Radio and, especially, Willis Conover’s jazz shows on the Voice of America.

“Before 1970 it was not easy to get records of American music,” leader Oleg Kuvaitsev says. “Now you can. Count Basie, Charlie Parker, almost everybody.” In addition, many more U.S. jazzmen have toured the Soviet Union, including Benny Goodman in the ‘60s. “Tommy Newsome, Zoot Sims, Joe Newman, Mel Lewis,” Kuvaitsev recites, like a litany.

Kuvaitsev joined the band in 1980, having previously played in a big band. “Big bands are not popular any more in the Soviet Union, like here, too,” he says sadly.

Not all the members started out to be musicians. Trumpet player Vladimir Voronin trained as an engineer, as did Kuvaitsev himself. Trombonist Anatoli Chimiris, who has played in be-bop groups as well, is also an independent film maker whose work has won prizes.

Bassist Yuri Miroshnichenko, one of the surviving members of the original 1958 group, studied architecture. Clarinetist Alexander Usyskin, who is blind, founded The Seven Dixieland Boys, one of the first traditional groups in the Soviet Union, in 1959. He plays in a cool style reminiscent of Buddy de Franco.

The band has been touring and recording for years: six months a year on the road, usually; five albums on Melodiya. Since Jan. 1 it has also had its own nightclub in Leningrad, the Dixie Swing Club.

These days, Kuvaitsev says, there are probably a half-dozen organized traditional jazz groups in Leningrad. There are also a couple of local jazz festivals in Leningrad and others throughout Eastern Europe. The recent Dresden festival, an annual event, drew 80,000 fans.

“Still many people don’t know what jazz is,” Kuvaitsev says. “But when they hear it they like it.”

“There’s a universal fraternity of the music,” says Allen Rosenthal. “It has nothing to do with politicians. What we need is a Dixieland sit-in, to get the politicians working together.”