JAZZ REVIEW : Count Basie Ballroom Opens With Bill Berry Band

You lose one, you win one. Less than 24 hours after the Loa Club in Santa Monica closed its doors for the last time, the Count Basie Ballroom opened Sunday in Compton.

Actually part of the soon-to-be-opened Lazban Hotel (which will include another venue, the Indigo Jazz Club), the ballroom, easily accessible off the Redondo Beach (91) Freeway, opened with the strongly Ellington-oriented orchestra of Bill Berry. In deference to the room’s name, however, Berry included in his first set the Ernie Wilkins arrangement of a Basie chestnut, “Moten Swing.”

Though Berry encouraged the audience to dance, and a few customers took him up on it, this is basically music for sensitive ears rather than fancy footwork. Such tunes as “Isfahan” and “Warm Valley,” both with Jackie Kelso on alto sax, are carefully translated treatments of works born in the Duke Ellington library.

Pianist Art Hillery, normally associated more with the bop idiom, attuned himself admirably to the Ellingtonian requirements of the occasion. With Frank De La Rosa on bass and Frank Capp on drums, the rhythm section furnished an inspiring undercurrent for such up-tempo romps as Lanny Morgan’s alto excursion on “Cherokee.”

Sandy Graham, poised and attractive, is a valuable addition to the band. She too devoted herself mainly to Ducal works, blending wordlessly with Slide Hyde’s trombone on “Mood Indigo” and lending her jazz-honed vibrato to “Just Squeeze Me” and “Solitude.”

The brass section, as is always the case with Berry, topped off the sounds with a flourish. Frank Szabo reached for the stratosphere on “Rockin’ in Rhythm,” Conte Candoli was in a lyrical mood on “I Got It Bad,” and the leader himself was heard, though all too infrequently, on cornet. Buster Cooper, like Berry a former Ellington sideman, added his perennial touch of ebullient humor on trombone.

The Basie Ballroom will continue to present jazz ensembles every Tuesday and Sunday.