JAZZ REVIEW : Tuning In to the Music of Central Avenue

The fourth and last installment in KLON’s “Jazz West Coast” series presented Sunday at the John Anson Ford Theater was subtitled “Central Avenue Revisited.” Producer Ken Poston came up with several reasonable facsimiles of the tail end of those days.

Marshal Royal’s alto sax and Snooky Young’s trumpet reached heights that were hard to top. Though their pianist and drummer, Tom Ranier and Greg Field, were born long after Central Avenue faded, they and the bassist Richard Reid were strongly supported in this most professional set.

Professionalism was in short supply when the so-called Central Avenue All-Stars were on stage. With 11 musicians and no charts, five tenor sax men vying for attention, mediocre vocals and endless blues-blowing, the band gave the lie to a claim by its nominal leader, trumpeter Clora Bryant, that there had been a rehearsal.

After a bland but adequate offering by clarinetist Jack McVea’s Quartet, on came the original squealer of the sax, Big Jay McNeely, a sort of prehistoric Kenny G, with overtones of Al Jolson--yes, he did get down on his knees and sing, after which his applause-milking tour of the theater, with a mike tucked in his tenor, drew the predictable noisy ovation.

More deserved was the show-stopping reaction to Ernie Andrews, who has better audience control than ever. His impressions of other blues singers were dead to rights, and his backing, by the superb trio of Gerald Wiggins, Larry Gales and Paul Humphrey (who had just played a flawless set on their own) left nothing to chance.

The Stars of Swing, led by Buddy Collette, fielded some spry solo work by Oscar Brashear on trumpet and Britt Woodman on trombone. Collette’s “April Skies,” a bop variation of “I’ll Remember April,” had an almost quaint feeling, but was true to its period, the mid-1940s.

Art Farmer brought on his trumpet, his fluegelhorn and his co-leader, the incomparable alto saxophonist Frank Morgan, aptly recalling the past with two originals by the late pianist Sonny Clark. Because the show by now had run close to seven hours, too few listeners were on hand to realize that Poston had saved the best for last.