JAZZ REVIEW : Young, Old Mix It Up at Gibson’s Party

Jazz is the art of renovation. At the 27th annual Dick Gibson Jazz Party, held here Saturday through Monday in a ballroom at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, there was rewarding evidence of the degree to which musicians mature with age, while the younger ones, listening and learning, pick up on their ideas and expand them.

As always, Gibson hired the 60 musicians individually, dispersing them into dozens of combinations that changed every 45 minutes. At one symbolic point Sunday evening, a round-robin on “Lady Be Good” led directly from clarinetist Ken Peplowski, at 30 the youngest musician here, to a chorus by the trumpeter Doc Cheatham, 54 years his senior.

While the sounds have broadened, tradition still plays a great role. Pianist Ralph Sutton has attended every party but one; Milt Hinton, the bass virtuoso, has been here every year since the third party. Josh Gibson, who this year helped his father organize the event, was present at the first party in a sense: His mother, Maddie Gibson, gave birth to him two days later.

Performance, not repertoire, is the essence of the jazz party’s success. Common-denominator songs are inevitable for an ad-hoc group, but some jazzmen do get weary wearing the shame shabby songs. Phil Woods escaped from the stricture by passing out parts to a bassist and pianist for his own “Goodby Mr. Evans,” a poignant elegy to the late pianist Bill Evans. Flip Phillips and Scott Hamilton had the 554 fans in an uproar as they played preset routines from an album they had recorded.

Other escapes from the commonplace were the occasional waltzes, such as “Answer Me My Love,” a perfect vehicle for the lyrical trumpet of Joe Wilder, and “Charmaine,” an elegant Dave McKenna piano feature. Howard Alden, the young guitarist, even reached back into corn country to find ways of sublimating “Tico Tico.”

Always, too, there is the blues, in every mood and tempo, whether for a funky piano duet by Jay McShann and Ralph Sutton or a riff for a 10-piece band.

Southern California was well represented. Paul Smith and Ross Tompkins were among the seven pianists. Bill Watrous played the trombone with incredible clarinet-like facility. Ray Brown, John Clayton and Jim DeJulio were the L.A. bassist contingent. Curtis Peagler from San Diego, not a party regular, showed style but had trouble with a squeaky reed.

Innovations don’t always work here. The drummer Panama Francis drew eight men from the pool, rehearsed briefly, then offered a set of music by the Savoy Sultans, a relief band often heard at Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom in the 1930s and ‘40s. The charts sounded dated and the soloists, ironically, were too modern: The be-bop alto saxes of Red Holloway and Dick Johnson had all the relevance of a jet engine on a railroad train.

Clarinetists proliferated: Peanuts Hucko, Bob Wilber, Kenny Davern, Dick Johnson and Ken Peplowski--all capable, even admirable, but more representative of Gibson’s personal taste than of any resurgence in the instrument’s popularity.

Good humor always abounds. At one point, five horn players, not known for their singing, erupted into a unison bop vocal chorus on “Perdido.” No party would be complete without Milt Hinton’s vocal on “Old Man Time.” George Chisholm, the trombonist who flies to the party annually from London, preceded his solo numbers with bits of antic anecdotes.

Gibson himself saved his own vocal, as always, for the final hours on Monday, singing “I Ain’t Got Nobody” in his stentorian baritone and earning an encore.

Standing ovations, not uncommon here, reached a peak with the wild reaction to Lew Tabackin on tenor sax and Phil Woods on alto as they interwove their way through “Love for Sale.”

At the Monday evening session, even such exquisite ballad performances as “We’ll Be Together Again” by Bob Cooper on tenor sax and violinist John Frigo’s “Estrellita” were rapturously received.

The final set Monday was mysteriously billed by Gibson as “The Great American Youth Movement Jazzband.” It turned out to consist of Doc Cheatham, 84, with Benny Carter, 82; Milt Hinton, 79; Marshall Royal, 76; Flip Phillips, 75; Jay McShann, George Chisholm and Sweets Edison, 74; John Frigo, 71; Panama Francis, who will turn 71 in December, and the baby of the band, trumpeter Snooky Young, who won’t turn 71 until February. Nowhere else in the arts do the participants have the longevity and perdurable talent that jazz displays.

Since Gibson put on the first jazz party at Aspen, Colo., in 1963, he has given rise to 57 other such affairs. Musicians everywhere should be lastingly grateful for the immense volume of work for which he has been directly or indirectly responsible.