JAZZ REVIEW : Playboy Festival: For Men Only

The Playboy Jazz Festival is a kind of Rite of Late Spring--an opportunity to welcome the sun, hang out with pals, and hear some good sounds. Saturday’s opening-day program at the Hollywood Bowl put the emphasis on sun and friendship. The sounds often seemed secondary in an event that had a number of peculiarities.

The first was the fact that the most significant featured acts--Joe Williams, Michael Franks and B. B. King--were all singers. (The list was further expanded by the unscheduled appearance of Bill Henderson.) A further, equally strange peculiarity (especially for a Playboy-sponsored event) was the complete absence of female performers on the bill.

But the real problem was the curious failure of the festival to schedule a major name headliner--the sort of world-class jazz presence who might have raised the program to the level of a special event.

The closest it came was Williams. To his credit, the seventysomething blues singer, fighting a raw throat, finally put the proceedings into a solid, swinging mood, four hours after the concert began.

The magic moment came, appropriately, with a blues--”Jimmy’s Blues” (for Jimmy Witherspoon), to be precise. Accompanied by the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra, Williams hit the ground grooving and never stopped. He was every bit as fine with the dated, if still pointedly topical, “Georgia Rose” and a lovely reading of “Summertime.” Despite his justified reputation as a blues shouter, Williams is clearly a master of the subtle intricacies of ballad singing as well.

Franks did what Franks does. His hip, laid-back love songs are as wispy and insubstantial as an afternoon aperitif, but on this program, at least, they didn’t sound bad at all. Numbers like “Alone at Night,” “Down in Old Brasil” and “Lady Wants to Know” owed their vitality to Franks’ brisk, jazz-based phrasing as much as to his clever way with a lyric.

King, too, was no less pleasurable for his predictability. Backed by a seven-piece (with three horns) band, the reigning monarch of blues guitar dispensed a surprising amount of space to his musical associates. When he dug into “Let the Good Times Roll,” “Movin’ On” and (best of all) “The Thrill Is Gone,” however, there was no doubt about who commanded the stage.

Among the non-vocal acts, Michel Petrucciani and the Clayton-Hamilton ensemble were the most impressive straight-ahead jazz performers. Sadly, both suffered from brutally inadequate audio engineering. Petrucciani can, and did, produce an astounding degree of rhythmic drive. Ranging from classics like “So What” and “Billy’s Bounce” to a lushly impressionistic rendering of “In a Sentimental Mood,” his playing was a definition of contemporary jazz improvisation. Unfortunately, the apparent inability of the sound system to reproduce anything other than aural mud from his accompanists (while distorting the sound of his piano) seriously undermined Petrucciani’s performance.

The Clayton-Hamilton Band didn’t fare much better. Their splendid, Basie-inspired ensemble work and unusual choice of material (including a sensual John Clayton arrangement of “Heart and Soul” and a hard-swinging “Little Old Lady”) were essentially lost in the mix. Much of the time, drums and guitar overwhelmed the band’s entire brass section. A pity.

Two contemporary units--Billy Cobham and the Yellowjackets--had no difficulties with the sound system, even though each performed below its usual level of inventiveness. Typically, Cobham’s set relied less on collectivity than on sheer, high-voltage individual energy. Featured soloist Ernie Watts switched on his avant-garde buttons in a screamingly passionate solo on “Stratus,” while Cobham’s nonstop percussion dominated a series of instrumental pieces that scatter-shot in random directions.

The Yellowjackets, on the other hand, were all ensemble--sometimes too much so. One piece blended into another with nary a shift of feeling or emphasis. Ironically, saxophonist Bob Mintzer, the band’s principal claim to jazz authenticity, did his finest playing while the group was backing Franks.

The prize for the day’s most chaotic group surely goes to the Playboy All-Stars (Kenny Burrell, Red Holloway, Jimmy Smith, Grady Tate and Clark Terry). Despite superb fluegelhorn playing from Terry and power tenor saxophone from the too rarely heard Holloway, the All-Stars’ set was uneven to the point of distraction.

Opening act Manteca, a Canadian group, played an enthusiastic set of Latin-style arrangements with occasionally effective soloing. Following them on the bill, the frenetic, fusion-based T-Square, allegedly Japan’s most popular jazz unit, confirmed the Japanese genius for cloning anything that can be quantified.

Attendance at the sold-out event was 17,979.