COMMENTARY : It’s Time to Jazz Up Playboy’s Festival : Too-safe booking, awkward scheduling have stifled the Hollywood Bowl event

The Playboy Jazz Festival at the Hollywood Bowl was an idea that was long overdue. Until its arrival in the summer of 1979, Los Angeles boasted no annual, multi-day celebration featuring a variety of jazz artists and styles--and the 17,000-seat venue seemed the natural site. The Bowl offered a setting that could make such an ambitious affair financially feasible.

Looking back on the festival’s 12 years, it’s clear that producer George Wein--who continues to be in charge of the event, which will be held Saturday and next Sunday--has played his hand conservatively.

For every historically or artistically valid act, Wein has presented an artist with a pop-oriented stance to help guarantee strong box-office appeal. This practice goes all the way back to the first festival, which starred both 70-year-old Benny Goodman and folk-pop singer Joni Mitchell, who performed songs from her jazz-accented “Mingus” album.

Other evidences of pop influence in the Playboy festivals included the time in 1980 that keyboardist Herbie Hancock brought enough hardware onstage to start a guerrilla war (and played as if one were just beginning) and the presence on the bill the same year of pop-leaning singer Angela Bofill, whose inclusion in a jazz salute was as logical as having Grandma Moses in an exhibition of Impressionist art.

Still, the memorable moments in the festival outweigh the expendables. There was even a good side to Hancock’s 1980 appearance: the introduction of a 19-year-old trumpeter named Wynton Marsalis. And who can ever forget Joe Williams bringing the ailing singing great Helen Humes onstage in 1981 for her final performance?

Through the years one also remembers the manic reaction to Weather Report’s wild version of “Birdland,” Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra, Wild Bill Davison’s Dixie cornet and the big-band sounds of Doc Severinsen’s “Tonight Show” Orchestra and of Ann Patterson’s Maiden Voyage.

Yet we should expect highlights over 12 years.

Today, let’s look at ways the festival could be strengthened. These aren’t costly, pie-in-the-sky proposals; in fact, they don’t involve any fiscal risk. They could, however, do much to make jazz’s most celebrated annual weekend even more rewarding. Specifically:

* Split the program the same way Billboard divides its jazz charts, devoting one day to more traditional artists found on the magazine’s “Top Jazz Album” sales list, and the other to artists more typically found on its “Top Contemporary Jazz Album” ranking. So the audience that comes this year to hear, say, singer Dianne Reeves, drummer Elvin Jones and the Duke Ellington Orchestra conducted by Mercer Ellington would not be obliged to sit through Spyro Gyra, Tower of Power and the Neville Brothers. And vice versa.

* Instead of running eight continuous hours--or more--without a break, plan at least a half-hour intermission, possibly about 6:30 p.m. (The festival begins in the early afternoon.) This could help reduce the noise from conversation and restless shuffling around that inhibits concentration during the late afternoon.

* Rather than restricting the lineup to “name” singers, the festival could give valuable exposure each year to other excellent singers who may not have the same marquee value. Possibilities: Madeline Eastman, Sandy Graham, Sue Raney.

* Use more imagination in putting together unexpected musical teams. The ad-hoc vocal quintet of Tim Hauser, Jon Hendricks, Janis Siegel, Dianne Reeves and Bobby McFerrin in 1985 was an instant hit--as was the piano pairing of Japan’s Makoto Ozone and France’s Michel Petrucciani the same year.

* Emcee Bill Cosby has a substantial knowledge of jazz, yet he limits himself each year to simply calling out the artists’ names, which anyone can do. A brief explanation of the upcoming act’s place in the jazz scene could be valuable to the less initiated listener.

* Stop using artists who parade around the Bowl . . . or play the guitar behind their backs . . . or encourage conga lines. This cheapens the entire festival, equating schlocky entertainment with music.

* Instead of making commercial concessions to ensure that the festival will be sold out a month or two in advance, why not elevate the creative level by booking less commercially visible, yet still viable performers. The result is that you may only sell out two or three weeks ahead, but a sellout is still a sellout, right?

By making these changes, Playboy would do even greater service to jazz and its audience in Southern California.