Jazz : Mixing It Up at Marla’s

The club with two names (Marla’s Jazz Supper Club, Marla’s Memory Lane) and two policies (jazz, comedy) blended its dual identity successfully over the weekend with the veteran trombonist Benny Powell supplying the music and a surprisingly transformed Reynaldo Rey furnishing the jokes.

Powell, a Basie alumnus and later a Southland resident in the ‘70s, grew up in the shadow of J. J. Johnson, whose fluency and strong melodic sense he reflects. Paired with Herman Riley’s bold tenor sax, he alternated on Friday between original works and his arrangements of such standards as “I’ll Remember April” and Ellington’s “I Got It Bad.” Near the end of the latter, his remarkable range found him virtually in the tuba register.

An excellent four-man backup team included Lanny Hartley at the piano and Richard Reed on bass and a percussion team of Paul Humphrey on drums and Ray Armando on congas that wound up Horace Silver’s “Fingerpoppin’ ” with a lively duet.

Criticized in the past for his use of racial epithets and four-letter words, Reynaldo Rey has cleaned up his act. Though hardly able to live up to an introduction that called him “the funniest man in the world,” he did manage, once past a Pee-wee Herman joke and an overlong rap on drugs, to deliver a series of entertaining stories delivered in his casual manner. The audience reaction left no doubt that his revised routine is paying off.