A Jewel of a Show Shines in a Mini-Slot on KIFM

During her first year as host of the Sunday night “San Diego Spotlight” on KIFM (98.1), Kelly Cole has developed the show into a weekly revelation of local talent.

Cole has only a half-hour spot, but she manages to produce more surprises than many full days of the station’s conservatively programmed light jazz. With her throaty purr of a voice, Cole dispenses more information than your average deejay about the musicians she features, most of them young artists as yet unsigned to record labels.

This Sunday night at 9:30, for example, Cole will interview versatile San Diego guitarist Bill Macpherson and play several cuts from a demo by Macpherson’s band, World Beat, which she considers to be one of the most engaging cross-cultural fusion bands anywhere.

“I was excited when Paul Simon’s ‘Graceland’ and Jean Luc Ponty’s ‘Tchokola’ came out,” Cole said, referring to albums that relied on African influences.

“Bill was raised in Zaire. He spent 10 years in Africa. His father was a surgical missionary who took all five of his children and his wife to Africa for 10 years, and Bill speaks two of the African languages. I think it will be a really good show. I’m going to DAT (digital audio tape) the interview and save it for some day down the road when he’s incredibly famous.”

When Cole took over the show from previous host Paul Lavoie last January, she immediately began digging for fresh material. She felt that some bands deserving of attention had been overlooked.

“A lot of people sent music in and it got ignored, so they kind of gave up. I went through the stuff and found some pretty choice pieces and started playing them.”

One was “Solana Rain,” by San Diego plasterer and light-jazz guitarist Michael Thompson. (More recently, at Cole’s suggestion, Thompson worked up a funky version of “Jingle Bells,” with Cole’s 11-year-old daughter, Nicole Genet, a fledgling flutist, playing the opening chorus.) Another of Cole’s finds is a pair of tunes by San Diego composer Peter Jorgensen, played by Del Mar guitarist Peter Sprague’s quartet with top San Diego vocalist Coral Thuet.

Cole has built a reputation for her sensitive treatment of musicians, and her mail often turns up unsolicited gems. Sprague, for example, sent her two Christmas songs recorded in his home studio, including a satirical “We Be Kings.”

Cole, 31, attended the Columbia School of Broadcasting in San Diego and landed her first on-air job in 1982 at KAMP-AM (1380), an oldies station in El Centro.

In 1983, she got a shot at KIFM after her counselor from Columbia, KIFM jock Bob Buck, helped her land a fill-in slot while staffers attended a station Christmas party. After she filled in once more, she got a job as a mixing board operator at KIFM in 1984, and became a regular on-air personality in 1985. Although Cole has three midnight-to-5:30 a.m. shifts, a Saturday afternoon slot and a high-profile position hosting the “Jazz Trax” show on Monday nights, she gets the most satisfaction out of her “Spotlight” duties.

“We seem to be these chatterboxes that they put behind the mike. I’m working with the music and the artists and it’s all my creative input that makes this show happen,” Cole said. “What it’s done for me most is given me back that creative input that’s so lacking in radio these days.”

Among the best of San Diego bands benefiting from the city’s rising interest in Latin jazz is Quarteto Agape, the group led by percussionist Gene Perry and rounded out by pianist Mel Goot, bassist Rob Thorsen and percussionist Allan Phillips.

The band began selling a self-produced cassette at its shows earlier this year, but a copy of “Spanglische” only found its way into “Jazz Spotlight’s” mailbox last week.

Listening to the group’s infectious Latin jazz tunes and creatively Latinized versions of such jazz standards as “Seven Steps to Heaven,” it’s easy to understand why the group has become a regular fixture at Croce’s in downtown San Diego.

With Goot supplying mincing, dicey chords and spare, linear improvisations over Perry’s and Phillips’ polyrhythmic wall of timbales, congas and assorted percussion toys, this music fairly soars.

Perry, who also fronts the 10-piece percussion ensemble known as Afro Rumba, has plans for both bands. By next summer, Quarteto Agape will record a second demo of all-original music, most of it written by Phillips. Meanwhile, Afro-Rumba’s first self-produced album is due out next month.

You can hear Quarteto Agape every Friday night at Croce’s in downtown San Diego from 8:30 to 12:30. Or catch them Jan. 9-12 at Elario’s, where they played their live dates after forming two years ago.

RIFFS: Ingrid Croce, owner of Croce’s downtown, is working with Humphrey’s Concerts by the Bay promoter Kenny Weissberg on plans to bring national jazz acts to Croce’s beginning in February. . . .

A New Year’s Eve big band bash featuring the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra at Golden Hall downtown--still being listed in some local media calendars--is off. Only eight tickets had sold when Los Angeles-based promoters Worldwide Events canceled it late last month. After disappointing attendance at a mid-November show in Los Angeles featuring the Glenn Miller Orchestra, the promoters felt they had even less of a chance of making such an event fly in San Diego. . . .

Seems like just about every musician on earth records Christmas music these days. KIFM jocks have been provided with a list of 100 recommended holiday season tunes. The lineup includes expected pop jazz names such as Tuck Andress, David Benoit and Larry Carlton, plus artists who don’t often turn up on KIFM: Ray Charles on “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” The Commodores with “Do You Hear What I Hear” and the Eurythmics doing “Winter Wonderland.”

CRITIC’S CHOICE: CHEATHAMS AT ELARIO’S

Jeannie and Jimmy Cheatham and their Sweet Baby Blues Band make their annual holiday visit to Elario’s this week. The Cheathams have been busy as ever.

They are fresh from performing on a cruise to the Virgin Islands in late October and early November, during which they jammed with Milt Hinton, Lou Donaldson, Jackie McLean, Jimmy Giuffre and Seldon Powell, who attended the New York Conservatory of Modern Music with Jimmy Cheatham. The Cheathams also have their sixth recording with the Sweet Baby Blues Band in the can, due for a March release. Titled “Basket Full of Blues,” the album features special guest Frank Wells on tenor sax and flute, and includes nine new original tunes and three reworked standards.

The Cheathams will wait until the new album is released before playing the material live, but they have plenty of other hot material to draw on for their shows Thursday through Sunday nights.