San Diego Jazz Scene Thrived During Eighties

While the live music scene experienced as many mood swings as a John Coltrane solo, jazz in the area generally enjoyed a steady crescendo during the ‘80s.

The decade closes on several sweet notes:

The 10th annual San Diego Thanksgiving Dixieland Jazz Festival drew 15,000 people to the Town & Country Hotel this year.

- San Diego was selected as the site of this year’s National Assn. of Jazz Educators convention, held at the Town & Country Hotel last January.

- Such local light-jazz acts as Fattburger, Checkfield, Spencer Nilsen and Hollis Gentry’s Neon have gained national attention.

- Jazz fan Bill Muchnic (who died last month) began his annual “Jazz Party” in 1988, and his widow, Beverly, will continue the tradition in 1990 at the downtown Marriott Hotel. The 1989 version brought 500 San Diegans out to hear a slate of top traditional jazz players engaged in three days of jam sessions.

- Internationally known jazz musicians Mundell Lowe, Barney Kessel and James Moody moved to San Diego.

- In 1988, jazz buff Jude Hibler began publishing The Jazz Link, the only local publication devoted entirely to jazz. The 20-page, 15,000-circulation monthly has featured occasional guest articles by such prominent jazz critics as Stanley Dance and Leonard Feather.

- KIFM (98.1) and light jazz guru Art Good built a sizable audience for “Lites Out Jazz.” Purists denounce it as “Jacuzzi jazz,” the stuff of quiche eaters, but at least it’s an entry point to the broader world of the genre. Bowing to pressure from local fans of straight-ahead sounds, KIFM added the “Mainly Mainstream” show Sunday nights.

- Elario’s continued to book nationally known jazz acts, and many of them were featured on KPBS-TV’s “Club Date” series.

Yet despite all the good signs, the decade ends with bluesy undercurrents.

After peaking in 1984, when it presented 25 jazz concerts throughout the year, the San Diego Jazz Festival has tapered activities as founder Rob Hagey has made the transition from idealistic, young jazz maverick to middle-aged family man, with a parallel shift in priorities.

Without Hagey as one-man promoter, public-relations machine and all-around jazz Pied Piper, San Diego played host to fewer and fewer shows by such mainstream and cutting-edge artists as Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Hendricks, Jack DeJohnette, Ronald Shannon Jackson, Ornette Coleman, Oliver Lake, Charles Lloyd, James Newton and Henry Threadgill, all of whom appeared here under the festival’s aegis.

This year, the festival was responsible for presenting drummers Tony Williams, Art Blakey and Max Roach, but their shows proved that San Diegans still have a limited appetite for serious jazz. Each drew about 250 people.

To Hagey’s chagrin, the rival San Diego Jazz Society, with a name confusingly similar to Hagey’s group, received $12,000 in city arts money this year, while the festival applied late and, as a consequence, received zilch.

On the club scene, Elario’s, atop and subsidized by the Summer House Inn in La Jolla, thrived in the ‘80s. The club presented such legends as Cedar Walton, Dizzy Gillespie, Barney Kessel, Tal Farlow, Joe Pass, Clifford Jordan, Jimmy Witherspoon and many others.

Other clubs had a tough time.

The Crossroads downtown, Our Place in Hillcrest, the Blue Parrot in La Jolla, the Bella Via in Cardiff and the Swan Song in Pacific Beach were among those that didn’t survive the decade.

Just last week, owners of Diego’s Loft in Pacific Beach, which has presented several excellent local and national acts, decided to close, at least temporarily, after losing bundles of money. Some observers believe the club’s jazz days are over.

On a brighter note, Croce’s in downtown San Diego, owned by singer Jim Croce’s widow, Ingrid, has become the single most active source of live local jazz, presenting shows several times a day seven days a week.

“That’s been a highlight,” acknowledged San Diego sax man Joe Marillo. “They’ve kept going with acoustic jazz, and it’s working out.”

Perhaps the biggest jazz success story, at least commercially, came in radio, with the emergence of KIFM and its light-jazz format.

Pioneered by disc jockey Good, who left for a brief stint with the short-lived “Wave” station before signing a new deal with KIFM earlier this year, the music has won over large numbers of fans since its debut in 1982. This is evidenced by the huge local turnout for musicians who anchor KIFM’s play list.

The station’s New Year’s Eve shows typically sell out. Promoter Kenny Weissberg’s Humphrey’s by the Bay outdoor concerts last summer attracted 6,000 fans for light jazz saxophonist Kenny G over three nights, 4,864 for Hiroshima, 4,000 for guitarist/singer George Benson and 2,900 for Spyro Gyra.

For years, KIFM’s management didn’t feel a need to educate listeners about the earlier history of jazz, even though many light jazz players readily acknowledge jazz artists of the ‘30s, ‘40s and ‘50s as important role models. Last May, the station added “Mainly Mainstream,” two-and-a-half hours of straight ahead jazz on Sunday nights.

Some people believe KIFM’s success with light jazz will lure new listeners to older forms of the music, but purists like Hagey aren’t so sure.

“I’m very happy they’re there, but I don’t think their emergence has helped jazz as much as they might feel it has,” he said. Hagey remembers when he went to Bruce Walton, KIFM’s general manager, in 1983, with a proposal for the station to get involved with Hagey’s festival of mainstream and avant garde jazz.

“His response was, ‘Great, Rob, but we’ve got Chuck Mangione on Labor Day weekend. In all honesty, that’s probably more important to our audience.’ As much as I hated the comment, it was probably very true of the time. And I don’t think that has changed,” Hagey said.

Walton agreed that it can be hard to get light jazz listeners to cross over to traditional jazz. It could be even harder to draw traditional purists to KIFM, but Walton thinks it can be done.

While KIFM made inroads with the David Benoits and Kenny Gs of the music world, KSDS-FM (88.3) at San Diego City College continued its dedication to traditional jazz in the ‘80s.

The “Jazz Live” series presented top local players in live performances broadcast over the air. The station has built a stable of wonderful jazz programs, including “Instrumental Women,” “Percussive Profiles,” “Le Jazz Club” and a Friday night countdown of top jazz albums.

While its audience is limited by its low power, many San Diegans still don’t realize they can receive the signal via local cable television systems.