Every Tuesday Saxman Salutes Greats at Elario’s

Elario’s is becoming a melting pot for classic jazz.

First there was trumpeter Mitch Manker’s ESP, which pays tribute to Miles Davis every Thursday night.

And for the past two months, a splinter group from ESP fronted by saxophonist Bob Campbell has been presenting “Sonny, Wayne and Trane” on Tuesdays. It’s Campbell’s salute to Sonny Rollins, Wayne Shorter and, of course, John Coltrane.

Campbell, 39, is especially smitten with Shorter’s music, such songs as “House of Jade,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “Anna Maris” and “Witch Hunt” from mostly 1960s albums, including “Native Dancer.”

“What I like about his writing is he uses very thick chords, but he writes in a way that it sounds very open,” Campbell said. “What I really like about his playing is his phrasing, his motific development. There’s a very logical progression, but also very lyrical.

“I don’t know if he’s an innovator in the same way Coltrane was. It’s kind of a different bag. He doesn’t have that same kind of driven thing that Coltrane had, that if he didn’t get out that next 200 bars he was going to die. Wayne Shorter seems like a peaceful guy, and he has a very relaxed approach to what he does.”

Campbell and the group, which also includes drummer Will Parsons, bassist Rob Thorsen and pianist Lynn Willard, don’t go so far as to call their Elario’s dates “tributes.” They aren’t trying to play the original music verbatim, only capture the spirit of some exhilarating years in jazz.

Although they include several of Shorter’s songs and a few by Coltrane, their nod to Rollins is less direct.

“The Sonny influence is more in the approach than the tunes,” Campbell said. “He wasn’t as prolific a writer as Trane or Wayne. We might play a standard Sonny would have played, with a Sonny-like approach, which is very angular. He likes to work a phrase, taking it all kinds of directions, making a theme out of it, very rhythmically, with a lot of humor. That’s a big part of his music, injecting humor into the phrasing.”

Campbell grew up in Palm Springs and has lived in San Diego since 1975. He is primarily self-taught, though he studied during the 1980s with trombonist Hal Crook, who ran a music school in San Diego.

Jazz is a tough way to make a living in a local market not known for its support of the music, but Campbell’s diversity keeps him busy. He also appears at Elario’s every Thursday night with ESP, at assorted clubs around town with the Latin jazz band eSOeS and blues-rockers the Mighty Penguins, and is working on a new “Weather Report-ish” recording project.

“I hate to narrow it down and say one is my favorite because I like so many things, but the Wayne thing is really cool because it is kind of a feature thing, all music by sax players,” Campbell said.

* “Sonny, Wayne and Trane” starts at 8:30 every Tuesday night, except Nov. 3, which Campbell is taking off. Elario’s also hosts pianist Lynn Willard’s “Monk, Funk, Duke and Herbie,” a tribute to great pianists, every Wednesday night.

As a young bassist in need of a role model, two things struck Bert Turetzky about John Kirby.

“I was knocked out by his arrangements and the fact that he was a bass-playing band leader,” said Turetzky, who will recreate the sound of Kirby’s 1940s band Friday night at 8 o’clock in a $50-a-head fund-raiser for UC San Diego’s Department of Music at the Faculty Club on campus.

Turetzky, a member of the music faculty at UCSD, scouted high and low for Kirby’s original charts. The Kirby band’s repertoire included ingenious jazz arrangements, many of them by trumpeter Charlie Shavers, of classical compositions such as Schubert’s “Serenade” and Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony.

“I’ve tried to find the music,” Turetzky said. “I have the first folio he did of six pieces, and I have a friend in town who’s transcribed some other pieces.

“Leonard Feather (a Los Angeles Times jazz critic) was in town last spring, and I asked him who had the John Kirby book, and he said he thought Benny Carter. (San Diego pianist) Mike Wofford called Benny for me, and Benny said John left the music with him when he passed in 1952.

“He invited me to come up, and I went up with the school librarian (from UCSD). We were going to put the music in the library as part of our research archives. When I got there, Benny was very upset. He had looked for the music and it wasn’t there, and he remembered he had sent it to somebody in New York. I called the guy in New York, and he said there were just bits and pieces, that the whole collection did not exist anymore.”

Although Turetzky was disappointed, he was not surprised. Kirby’s band didn’t use charts, having memorized all the music, a phenomenal task considering its complexity.

Turetzky and his band mates this Friday won’t try to hide their music stands. But even if they don’t have it all down rote, these players are still top drawer: saxman Paul Sundfor, clarinet-saxophonist Pete DeLuke, pianist Marv Drucker, trumpeter Edwin Harkins and drummer Pat Piffner.

The show will be presented like a high-class radio broadcast, with band members fully tuxedoed and Cecil Lytle, provost of Third College at UCSD, providing solo piano during breaks in Kirby’s music.

UCSD’s music department will use proceeds from the benefit to pay for fellowships for students who want to study music performance at the university.

RIFFS: Thursdays are usually “locals” nights at the Horton Grand Hotel downtown, and this Thursday it’s guitarist Mundell Lowe with pianist Mike Wofford and bassist Bob Magnusson. Then on Friday night, Magnusson links up with guitarist Peter Sprague at Espresso Literati, the coffee house-bookstore in La Jolla (7660 Fay Ave.). . . .

On Friday and Saturday nights at the Horton Grand, trumpeter Sal Marquez leads a small group drawn from the “Tonight Show” band, including Kenny Kirkland and Jeff (Tain) Watts. . .

KSDS-FM (88.3) celebrates the late trumpeter Clifford Brown’s birthday by featuring three of his recordings at 8 a.m., 11 a.m and 3 p.m Friday. Brown will also be featured on KSDS’ “Portraits in Jazz” program at 1 p.m. Saturday.

CRITIC’S CHOICE

Dorsey Band at Mission Valley

Big band leader Tommy Dorsey died in 1956, but his music is still popular enough to keep the latest reincarnation of his band on the road 42 weeks a year.

Led by trombonist Buddy Morrow, the current Tommy Dorsey Orchestra plays the Scottish Rite Center in Mission Valley at 7:30 Thursday night.

Morrow, 73, was a member of Dorsey’s original band during the 1930s and also played with bands led by Jimmy Dorsey, Artie Shaw and Paul Whiteman, so he’s one of those rare direct links to the golden era of big bands. Morrow went on to lead his own bands, recording hits including “One Mint Julep” and “I Don’t Know,” and also played in several TV show bands.

Although Morrow insists that the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra faithfully recreate the early arrangements, he has also expanded the group’s repertoire to include modern jazz and rock.

Bring your dancing shoes. The Scottish Rite Center will be set up like a ballroom dancing hall, with tables on the sides and a big dance floor in the middle. Tickets are $15, $20 and $25. Call 295-3501 for information.