Lively Musicfest at the Park

Manhattan doesn’t have a monopoly on concerts in Central Park. The local version features Ernie Hernandez and his band on Monday in Whittier’s own Central Park, a turn-of-the-century pastoral respite from urban Los Angeles.

Hernandez says he has a hard time deciding what to play. He figures he could fill 16 pages with titles, learned over the course of 30 years as a professional musician.

“I like to read the crowd to see what they want,” Hernandez said. “It’s kind of a spontaneous thing.”

He might go from oldies rock ‘n’ roll to jazz standards such as Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” to Kenny G.’s “Songbird.” He also likes Latin rock and might do “La Bamba” along with a favorite Glenn Miller tune, “In the Mood.”

“Unless it’s something off the wall,” Hernandez said, “like a Bach classical piece or some obscure country song off side B, we probably know it.”

Hernandez, 46, began playing music as a kid in East Los Angeles, where he and his dad would sit on the front porch and sing. His musical inspiration comes from his family, particularly his grandfather, who played violin in dance bands throughout Mexico.

One of his first guitars came from his grandfather, who moved from town to town, outrunning the jukebox, which eventually put him out of work, Hernandez said.

Hernandez’s father eschewed music and became a baker, encouraging his son to do the same. But Hernandez went the way of his grandfather. In the ‘70s, Hernandez played in Las Vegas, Lake Tahoe and Reno, eventually opening for Burt Bacharach’s road show. In the early ‘80s, with a wife and two children, Hernandez settled in Whittier, where he operates a talent agency for bands and musicians.

He still plays, though, and says that he and his grandfather have a lot in common. Just as the jukebox threatened his grandfather’s career, so has America’s love for deejays and canned music taken work from today’s stage musicians, he says.

But Hernandez thinks the deejay fad is on the decline. “I think it’s on the way out,” he said. “I’ve worked every week for 30 years. And I’m still doing it.”

On Monday night, another musically inclined Hernandez, 20-year-old Felice, will join her father in a duet of the swing standard “All of Me.”

The concert begins at 7 and continues until 8:30 p.m. in Central Park, at Bailey and Washington avenues in Whittier. Concert-goers are encouraged to bring beach chairs or blankets to sit on.

The Central Park series concludes Aug. 31, same place, same time, with the country-Western band the Horsefeathers Boys. For more information, call the Whittier Community Center, (310) 945-8205.