Average Age? About 70. But the Big-Band Sound? It’s Slick, Tight; Harmony Headliners Aren’t About Nostalgia : They’re Still Swinging, After All These Years

They might be old, but they can still swing.

The Harmony Headliners big band celebrates its 10th anniversary Thursday, which is no small accomplishment when you consider that the average age of the players is about 70, and that one of them once gave a banjo concert for Calvin Coolidge.

“Did I think we would last 10 years? Well, to tell you the truth, I never gave it a thought,” said 73-year-old Lew Bregen, Headliners emcee and one of the band’s two vocalists. “I had no idea where it would go. But it revived my career!”

Indeed, the Harmony Headliners revived the careers of many players who are veterans of the big-band era. Among the 20 members are: trombonist Lois Cronin Magee, who played with Alvino Rey, Luis Aracany, and the Ina Rae Hutton Band; trumpeter Bill “Smilin’ Jack” Foster, who played with orchestras and big bands for more than 50 years; trumpeter Ernie Ames, who played with Rudy Vallee and Benny Goodman; 82-year-old guitarist/composer/arranger Armand LaFrance, who played banjo in a combo that entertained Coolidge during the President’s weeklong stay at the Cloister Hotel in Atlanta, Ga., in 1928, and tenor saxophonist John Vecchio, who toured with Ray Anthony’s big band in the ‘40s.

But, the players insist, this is not simple nostalgia; not a group of musical elders living in the past. When they take the stage at noon Thursday at the Wilkinson Multipurpose Senior Center at 8956 Vanalden St. in Northridge, they will be playing new arrangements. (Councilman Hal Bernson will present them with a citation.)

“Yes, it’s true we play tunes from the ‘30s and ‘40s, mostly, but the arrangements are new--a lot of them are used today by the Harry James and Tommy Dorsey Bands. Some of them are quite intricate, and that’s what keeps it fresh for me,” said 73-year-old Vecchio, who will substitute at the concert for vacationing bandleader Ray Hart, a baritone sax player who has been the group’s guiding force.

It’s a cliche to say it, but the Headliners do not act--or sound--their age. Although they are in the codas of their lives, they play like they are in their prime. Bregen’s mighty tenor voice contains nary a wobble when he belts out such old favorites as “If You Were the Only Girl in the World,” “Love Me With All Your Heart,” “Might As Well Be Spring.” The band’s sound is tight, polished and slick.

Quoth 69-year-old tenor saxophonist Winnie Hana, a veteran of the Marilyn Merle All-Girl Orchestra of the ‘30s who is now the Headliners librarian:

“Oh golly, at our age, it’s just wonderful to be able to play music. I heard a saxophone when I was young, and it was like a minister’s calling. I never wanted to do anything else, and I’m happiest when I’m making music. I think that’s true for everyone in the band. It means a lot to us.”

Added LaFrance, the most senior Headliner: “Well, you lose a lot when you get older, but we try to do our best. Everybody plays with a lot of enthusiasm--and to be retired and able to play and do what I’ve done all my life and make people happy, well, it’s pretty good.”

It all started in 1980 at First Presbyterian Church of Granada Hills, when the church’s seniors entertainment director, the late Mary Droege, overheard guitarists Joe Crozier and Mel Anthony strumming away outside the recreation room. She encouraged others to join them, and in short order had a combo on her hands

“It was just a lark,” said Vecchio, a retired electronics technician. “It wasn’t much to talk about. But this beautiful woman, Mary Droege, said ‘the more, the merrier,’ so I joined up. Before you knew it, we had whole sections. Now we’ve got five saxes, four trumpets, four trombones, a tuba, a drummer, two guitarists, two pianists and two vocalists. I’m pretty proud of it now.”

Added Bregen, “As word got around, people started coming out of the walls, lookin’ to have a little fun.”

A little fun turned into a quasi-career. The band plays at the Wilkinson Center on the third Thursday of each month (with a faithful group of about 50 “groupies” who show up to dance), and has played the Time Life Expo at the Los Angeles Convention Center, and at a Hollywood Bowl chili cook-off. It was honored earlier this year by Mayor Tom Bradley and the Los Angeles Department of Aging, and its recording of La France’s composition, “Make Way for a Bright Tomorrow,” is the theme song for the “Senior Scene” radio show on KCSN-FM.

Every member, to be sure, has a tale to tell, but Bregen’s is one of the more dramatic. A natural singer with no training who first “performed” at 15 (“It was at a picnic, and I sang for a girl. She gave me a kiss--my big start!”), Bregen retired from singing way back in 1938, and spent most of his life selling drapery.

“I was told I had a great future in music, but there wasn’t much money in it, and I had a wife and family to raise, so the wife said ‘no, I want you at home,’ and I gave it up,” said Bregen, a Northridge resident of 42 years who came to the San Fernando Valley when it was “full of oranges, grapes, sunshine and blue skies.”

His late wife, Olga, kept the Bregen pipes all to herself for what would have been the singer’s prime--”and it was very frustrating,” Bregen said with a laugh. It was his wife who pushed him to get involved with the group at the Presbyterian church seniors center in 1981, something the just-retired Bregen was reluctant to do at first. “She dragged me down there, and made sure that Mel Anthony, the guitarist, talked to me, and that I tried out.” He was hired, and that break led him to revive a solo career, as well. In 1985, Bregen’s nearly operatic-caliber voice won the L.A. Citywide Senior Citizen Talent Contest with the first song he ever sang, “Play, Fiddle, Play.”

“It’s really amazing,” he said. “I didn’t sing with a big band until I got my tryout at the church! I’ve gotten a lot of wonderful satisfaction in being able to resume my music, and getting as far as I have. I sometimes wish I didn’t let all those years pass, because I thought I had a future. Anyway, you take it as it comes, and get the best out of it.

“And the future,” added Lew Bregen, Harmony Headliner, “is every day.”

Sounds like a song.