She Puts Her Love of Jazz in Writing

It’s ‘round midnight early on in the week. Most Valley residents are asleep or preparing for it because tomorrow is another long workday.

Myrna Daniels faces the same thing when the sun rises, but at the moment she’s nowhere near setting the alarm clock.

During this particular evening, the Sun Valley resident has been sitting in a dark booth at a popular Burbank restaurant and jazz club, interviewing a local musician, listening to the band and networking.

For Daniels, founder, publisher, editor and occasional writer of L.A. Jazz Scene, a free monthly newspaper and the only one of its kind dedicated to promoting jazz in the Los Angeles area, making that night scene is all in a day’s work.

“Jazz has become my life seven days a week,” said the 46-year-old Daniels, a grandmother of four. “Virtually every spare hour I have is spent on the paper.”

At least that’s how it’s been since the first 16-page issue hit the streets in September, 1987.

Now at 20 pages, the tabloid-size paper with its distinctive logo of varying type styles and sizes is delivered to L.A. and some Orange County nightclubs, hotels, restaurants and record/musical instrument stores the first week of each month.

“I started the paper because the jazz scene here is so fragmented, and this is an avenue to communicate the news and help promote local talent,” said Daniels, who produces the paper on a desktop computer from a spare room at home. “Jazz is sophisticated and thought-provoking music that offers so much to its listeners. It’s hip and always will be.”

A compilation of articles, photos, record reviews and events listings, L.A. Jazz Scene has a total staff of 12, but only production and distribution people are paid (Daniels is not).

Creative contributions are voluntary, attracting a loyal group of competent writers and photographers, made up of professionals, musicians and devoted fans. The result is a lively mix of words and pictures on mainstream and contemporary jazz.

Professing amazement at not skipping an issue, Daniels estimates a monthly circulation of 35,000 in 1989, triple what it was the first year. About 400 are delivered to subscribers at $20 per year. This month she printed 37,000, which is right in line with her goal of increasing circulation by 2,000 per month. By September, Daniels expects to expand to 24 pages.

“That first year was really tough,” said Daniels, who launched the paper on a $15,000 investment. Even though the paper is breaking even, she still solicits and sells ads herself.

“If a new club opens up I tell them what we can do to help promote the place, but even if I don’t get the ad I’ll promote them because it’s news, and readers need to know that things are happening,” she said.

Daniels said she doesn’t target the publication to a specific audience. She said readers are “all ages and economic backgrounds with one thing in common: They all love jazz.”

A graduate of USC with a degree in sociology, Daniels didn’t discover jazz until she was in her 30s. “I grew up in the Valley listening to pop and rock, but I’d been developing a taste for jazz about five years before I started the paper,” she said.

With no background in publishing, Daniels, who is divorced, launched a monthly newsletter that shortly evolved into what it is today. Like her staff, she has kept her full-time job--she’s the personnel manager of the San Fernando office of the Head Start program. Writing the first few issues herself, Daniels also learned to lay out the paper by watching the original designer.

Since then, cover story subjects have ranged from legends Woody Herman, Charlie Parker and Thelonius Monk to the present-day likes of Maynard Ferguson, John Heard and Ernie Andrews. The contemporary jazz arena is represented by Larry Carlton, Stanley Clarke, Brando Fields and Hiroshima, among others.

“We’re not meant to be a scholarly journal, just creative, informative and surprising,” Daniels said in reference to a past feature story on the longtime bartender at the now-defunct Donte’s, a jazz club in North Hollywood. “He’s seen so much jazz history being made, and therefore was an important person with an interesting perspective.”

Like many other small publications operating with severe financial limitations, L.A. Jazz Scene is not without flaws; most criticism, she said, focuses on its frequent typographical errors and misspellings.

“I realize the paper has gone out like this, and I cringe,” Daniels said, “but when we’re on deadline I can only oversee so much at once because we must get out on time. As we grow, the more professional we’ll be, but the quality of the paper is better than I ever expected in such a relatively short time.”

A look at jazz record sales and club and concert attendance in L.A. over the years shows that the genre has never enjoyed the mass acceptance of pop and rock music, even though music industry insiders consider this a national center for jazz.

Moreover, L.A.’s only 24-hour jazz station, KKGO, recently switched to a classical music format and most area fans cannot get its weak-signaled AM replacement, KKJZ. This has created a vacuum for a publication such as L.A. Jazz Scene, whose resilience, climbing readership and influence are turning heads.

Said Dennis Duke, former newspaper editor, now entertainment director of Chadney’s, a Toluca Lake jazz supper club: “I’m impressed with the paper’s sincere dedication to jazz while maintaining solid editorial standards. It’s not a house organ promoting only friends and advertisers, which special-interest publications often do.

“A general-interest publication can only devote so much space to jazz,” so L.A. Jazz Scene “keeps the interest and momentum going. And the distribution is well-monitored; we always have enough copies and our customers read it.”

While Daniels focuses her energy on Los Angeles, the wide region of Orange County awaits, according to those hooked into its jazz pulse. One of those people is the owner of Santa Ana-based Cexton Records, a small but growing mainstream jazz record label.

“Jazz comprises only 6% of the total music market in this country,” said Cexton’s John Anello Jr. “Like Myrna, I’ve invested all my money into this, and I’m not compromising. We hope she continues to expand because lots of people down here love the music too and want more information. A publication like that really helps us because we’re independent and can’t spend a lot on promoting our artists.”

Another hard fact of survival in the jazz world dictates that many talented local musicians are virtually unknown outside a small circle of colleagues and admirers.

“We don’t give everyone a great review, but we can help these people who need and deserve the exposure,” said L.A. Jazz Scene contributor Jonathan Widran, who also writes professionally for other music publications.

John Hammond, a local veteran musician, credits the paper with helping to bring in business to the newly opened Fitzgerald’s jazz club in the Warner Center Hilton in Woodland Hills.

“The Jazz Scene was our only source of promotion right off the bat,” said Hammond, who serves as the club’s house pianist and musical director. “We advertised there first and people began coming into the club with the paper under their arms. Only then came coverage by the larger papers.”

Despite the rising costs of paper and printing, Daniels reports that L.A. Jazz Scene is now paying for itself. But she intends to stick by her cautious motto: slow and steady growth.

“I’m always surprised that a city of this size has had no publication just devoted to jazz until the Jazz Scene came along,” said Marci Marks, entertainment advertising manager for the L.A. Reader, a free weekly general-interest publication. “I knew there was a big market out there for jazz, but I had to go out and build ours from the ground up like Myrna.”

Meanwhile, Daniels pushes on, acknowledging the need for patience in the face of daily stress, exhaustion and other demands in a tough, specialized field.

“You just can’t do everything at once, but eventually you get to it,” she said. “One of my advantages is that I’ve raised my children and don’t have a lot of personal responsibilities. I have tremendous freedom to explore and experiment, and the maturity to keep things in perspective.

“Someone in a big record store recently told me people were calling up to see if the paper was in. So we are filling a niche, and the niche is holding together and expanding. Nothing I’ve encountered in this enterprise has changed my mind or discouraged me. I’m very determined for this paper to be a success story.”