Jazz Reviews : Blue Note Tribute Ends on a High Note

The three-concert tribute to the Blue Note record label presented by KLON-FM at the John Anson Ford Theater ended Sunday on as high a note as any horn player could hope to reach. It was the best attended, the best organized, and brought to Los Angeles the most exciting small band in jazz today: the latest edition of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers.

The implacable drummer, who will turn 70 in October, now heads a septet, most of whose members were not alive when the first Messengers recorded. They are so much alive now that every minute of their hour on stage bristled with creative energy.

Frank Lacey, Blakey’s musical director, played incessantly (and mostly alone) during his 15-minute spot, earning what no other soloist on his instrument may ever have earned: a standing ovation for a performance of wild virtuosity on the trombone.

Glissing and gliding, jumping between alternate octaves as if he were a trombonist and a bass trombonist, tossing in off-the-wall quotes, Lacey kept the crowd spellbound. The core was an actual tune, J. J. Johnson’s “Lament,” but improvisation was the keynote.

The other messengers--Don Harrison on alto and Javon Jackson on tenor, Brian Lynch on trumpet, Benny Green on piano and Essiet Essiet on bass--were all superb, backing up each other’s solos with vigorous riffs. For an encore, Blakey brought out pianist Horace Silver to sit in on “Mayreh,” one of his early tunes from the days when Blakey and Silver co-founded the Messengers circa 1954. Silver had just played a typically personal set with his own group.

The rest of the show, with one exception, went swimmingly. Freddie Hubbard and Bobby Hutcherson lit up an all-star group; Stanley Turrentine was in casually elegant form in his set on tenor sax. For starters there was a quintet from Tokyo led by one Koji Fujika (“the Benny Goodman of Japan,” we were told, though he sounded more like the Pete Fountain of Japan). This incongruous interlude was good for a chuckle when Fujika brought on his tall, willowy singer, Chaka. As if “I Wanna Be Loved by You, Boop-Oop-E-Do” was not enough, she followed with “Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen.” If anyone can break the listener’s Hebraic heart with this song, Chaka can.