Reunion at Horton Grand With Berry, Lowe, Bennett

Former Duke Ellington trumpeter Bill Berry will get a chance to reunite with old musical pals and San Diegans Mundell Lowe and Betty Bennett this Friday and Saturday when they play the Horton Grand Hotel downtown.

“Bill’s got a wonderful sense of humor, much better than mine,” said Lowe, who performed with Berry in the “Merv Griffin Show” band in the 1960s and 1970s. “Sometimes he would tell me a joke, and it would go over my head until much later, and I would sit there and laugh by myself. Dry, I guess, is the word. He’s a fine musician too. He never got the attention he deserved.”

Berry, 61, recorded more than a dozen albums with Ellington during the 1960s, and eventually built his own reputation as a musician, band leader, arranger and composer. Berry leads a Big Band of his own these days in Los Angeles, his home port, and he finds time to record with other artists, most recently singer Johnny Mathis and pianist Jimmy Rowles.

Berry was inspired early by Miles Davis, who died in September.

“He was a big influence on my playing,” Berry said. “When you lose somebody that’s one of the most important people in music, it’s got to affect you.” Berry has several Davis tunes in his repertoire, including “Four” and “Veird Blues.”

Berry’s newest recording, a collaboration with Croatian vibraphonist Bosko Petrovic, is due early next year.

Bennett (who is married to Lowe, who introduced her to Berry in Los Angeles in the 1970s) made her first recordings during the late 1940s and 1950s with Big Bands and small groups led by Charlie Barnet, Charlie Ventura, Stan Kenton and others. A new release is due this month, produced by Lowe and titled “I Thought About You.”

At the Horton Grand, Berry, Lowe and Bennett will be joined by San Diegans Bob Magnusson on bass and Jim Plank on drums. Music begins at 8:30 both nights.

After 41 issues, Jude Hibler has pulled the plug on the Jazz Link, the monthly publication she started 3 1/2 years ago.

Hibler, who estimates she sank $120,000 of her money into the venture, cited lack of advertising revenues as the primary cause of Jazz Link’s demise.

After its debut eight-page issue in May, 1988, the publication grew to 48 pages with the final November issue. Along the way, the format evolved from tabloid to magazine, and Hibler enlisted such top jazz writers as Stanley and Helen Oakley Dance, Leonard Feather and Scott Yanow.

Jazz musicians and fans came to rely on the Jazz Link for its monthly features on top musicians, CD reviews and extensive listings of upcoming jazz attractions. Some of its 15,000 monthly issues went to subscribers across this country and in Europe.

Hibler, 48, came relatively late to her interest in jazz.

“I’ve always loved the music, but I never really started learning about it until I started studying guitar when I was 40,” she said. Hibler began her course of jazz instruction at the top, taking classes with Joe Pass, which led to a book collaboration. (Hibler doesn’t play much anymore.)

Despite all the blood, sweat and dollars she sank into the Jazz Link, Hibler remains upbeat about the experience.

She fondly recalls her interviews with legends like Dave Brubeck and Tony Bennett, and trips to cover major jazz festivals in the United States and Europe.

“I’m very optimistic about the whole field of jazz in terms of people supporting it,” Hibler said. “There is definitely an interest from people of all ages in learning, not only to play the instruments, but about the history of it.”

To help people learn about jazz, she is working with guitarist Joe Pass on a new guitar instruction book. She is also finding new uses for the many photos she took for her magazine, selling them to recording companies for use on album covers.

Last summer, Hibler co-produced a series of successful shows in Hollywood featuring the Big Bands of Ann Patterson, Bill Berry, Gerald Wilson and others, and said she may produce more concerts.

“I have absolutely no regrets. I’m delighted that I did this, and I will be involved with jazz in some way now and in the future.”

They can’t get no respect in their home town. Although San Diego light-jazz band Fattburger has a rising, national reputation, the group has only modest drawing power at home, where it regularly plays small local clubs such as the Catamaran. Yet, as a headliner, the group drew crowds of up to 1,500 during three mini-tours last month on both coasts.

Across the country, the band’s last album, “Come & Get It,” received solid airplay that helped boost the group’s popularity. The album hit No. 1 on Radio & Records “Contemporary Jazz” chart last February, after its late-1990 release.

Based on the recording industry’s conventional pattern of annual releases, a new Fattburger recording is due. But the group is between labels. Enigma, the band’s formal label, still owns the rights to four of five Fattburger albums, and may release a compilation. If that happens, don’t expect a new recording for several months.

Meanwhile, the group plays the Catamaran this Wednesday and next Wednesday nights. Sets will include new material, and Carl Evans, the band’s vocalist-keyboardist, invites you to come in and suggest names for some of these new, as-yet-untitled songs.

“We take suggestions,” Evans said. “Write them down on a $50 bill and send them up.”