Jazz Is a Family Affair at Lisbon’s Hot Clube : Music: The Moreiras have almost single-handedly turned city into the New Orleans of Portugal. It all started in the ‘50s.

In the early 1950s when trans-Atlantic flights from New York to Paris still had to stop over here, Bernardo Moreira and his friend, Luis Villas Boas, got an idea.

They were crazy about be-bop, the new jazz music broadcast over the U.S. Armed Forces radio network in post-World War II Europe. But be-bop was unknown in Portugal, where there were no records to practice to and no one to teach them how to play it.

So, Moreira and Villas Boas formed the Hot Clube do Portugal and brought the music--and the musicians--home.

“Luis worked at the airport and had access to the passenger lists, which he checked religiously for names of any jazz musicians who might be on their way to Paris,” Moreira said. “When he found one, we would go out and meet the flight. The musicians were usually delighted to have some place to go during the stopover.”

When they missed the name of Dexter Gordon, another jazz fan at the airport steered the legendary tenor saxophonist in the right direction.

Forty years later, the Hot Clube still swings at 38 Praca da Alegria (Happiness Square), down a rickety flight of stairs to a low-ceilinged room that would make fire marshals wince.

It has some 400 dues-paying members and is home to Portugal’s first and only jazz school.

Moreira, an amateur bass player turned successful architectural engineer, is the father of four sons, all of them jazz musicians, although 26-year-old Miguel has put aside the piano for a career in astrophysics.

Jazz critic Raul Vaz Bernardo says the Moreiras are sort of Portugal’s answer to the Marsalis jazz family of New Orleans.

Guided by their pianist father, Ellis, the Marsalis sons--trumpeter Wynton, saxophonist Branford, trombonist Delfeayo and 15-year-old drummer Jason--have been instrumental in imbuing the jazz scene with both chic and seriousness.

“One of the most rewarding experiences in Portuguese jazz has been the Moreira family,” Vaz Bernardo said. “They’ve literally taken jazz throughout the country.”

During a recent weekend festival in Lisbon that featured the three Moreira brothers and pianist-cousin Bernardo Sassetti, as well as the Hot Clube’s new big band, Bernardo Moreira and Villas Boas, both in their 60s, were in the front row of the tiny, packed club until dawn.

Although at first glance, Lisbon and New Orleans don’t appear to have much in common, both are ports, both are funky and both are steeped in their own musical culture.

“Jazz in the beginning was like our fado music. It was quite simple, but it has grown very complex,” said Pedro Moreira, 23, tenor saxophone and leader of the Moreiras Quartet or Quintet, depending on who’s playing. He is also finishing a university degree in mathematics.

Fado is the haunting, lyrical music brought to Lisbon from North Africa by Arab invaders in the 9th Century. The city now also swings to music from Cape Verde, Angola and Mozambique, former Portuguese colonies in Africa.

Jazz is not exactly big business in Portugal, although in 1971 Villas Boas was able to attract 50,000 people to the 1st International Jazz Festival at Cascais, a seaside town north of Lisbon.

That was when bassist Charlie Haden dedicated the concert to the freedom fighters of Angola and Mozambique who were taking on the Portuguese colonial army. All hell broke loose when police rushed in to control the enthusiasm.

“During the years of the dictatorship and repression, jazz was a rallying point, an outlet,” Vaz Bernardo said. “Since the revolution, all kinds of music, mainly rock, has flowed in, and jazz has become something for intellectuals.”

A leftist military coup in 1974 brought an end to a 48-year dictatorship in Portugal. Angola and Mozambique won their independence, and the Moreira boys were invited last year to play and teach in both countries.

Like his brothers, 27-year-old bass player Bernardo Moreira studied classical music and was not allowed to listen to anything but jazz, Beethoven and Brahms when his father was at home.

“It wasn’t as though he forced it down our throats,” he said. “We really liked it, and we didn’t really care that much for rock, except maybe the Ramones.”

Although the younger Bernardo knows the odds are great, he has given up his university studies in economics to try to make a living playing jazz.

Most of the musicians in the Hot Clube big band make ends meet playing in local symphony and theater orchestras. The club is their jazz rendezvous.

All the Moreiras learned jazz by playing along to their father’s record collection. Joao, 22, plays the trumpet and studies physics.

Trumpeter Clark Terry told Vaz Bernardo they had received an excellent “word-of-mouth” education.

The Hot Clube’s school offers a three-year course in music theory, composition and jazz playing.

American musicians such as trumpeter Eddie Henderson and drummer Greg Bandy, who have become friends of the family, give the occasional lecture when they’re in town.

Last September, Henderson got tenor player Benny Golson and trombonist Curtis Fuller to join him, Bandy, the Moreiras and Sassetti at the club in a homage to the late drummer Art Blakey, whose Jazz Messengers served as an incubator of jazz talent for several decades.

A recording of the homage is scheduled for release this month by Polygram. It will be the Moreiras’ first.