O.C. JAZZ REVIEW : Preservation Hall Band: Born in the U.S.A. : Roots of America are found in the music and style of the New Orleans-based group, which played before a sold-out crowd at Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts.

The traditional brand of New Orleans jazz championed by the Preservation Hall Jazz Band has to be the purest musical expression of the “melting pot” ideal.

As showcased Saturday in a sold-out show at the 1,400-seat Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, the music exemplifies everything that’s right about democracy and individual freedom.

Almost every tune gives each player a moment in the spotlight, and in ensemble passages and solos, the individual is free to express his own voice, in his own style. Yet because there’s a melody in each song to provide a foundation, those individual expressions don’t turn cacophonous, but complement one another in moving toward a common goal.

As distinguished from Dixieland, that loose and slippery thing the music became when it moved north to Chicago, New Orleans jazz requires an almost stately respect from the musicians. But at the same time, they also need to be able to have fun.

Saturday’s performance got both in the Wendell Brunious-led band, which is one of three touring versions. Trumpeter Brunious’ group--clarinetist Jacques Gouthe, trombonist Worthia Thomas, banjo player Neil Unterseher, pianist John Royen, bassist Frank Fields and drummer Bob French--has been the most frequent visitor in the Southland in recent years.

It’s also probably the most technically proficient of the touring Preservation Hall bands, due in no small part to the chops of Brunious and Gouthe.

Though Brunious largely sticks to the traditional style of soloing “inside” the melody, he poked his horn outside now and then, just long enough to make it clear the strides made by Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis haven’t been lost on him.

For Gouthe’s achingly lovely rendition of the haunting Sidney Bechet signature tune “Petite Fleur”, he switched to soprano sax and to the wide vibrato Bechet pioneered.

On clarinet, Gouthe leaned toward the slurred, glassy style favored by Pete Fountain. (To experience the choppy, constantly articulated, vibrato-heavy playing common early in the century, check out recent recordings by Michael White, the neo-traditionalist clarinetist, composer and bandleader who sometimes sits in with the Preservation Hall band.)

Raw technique, however, has never been the point of traditional New Orleans jazz. It is spirit that counts most.

That’s why the plain-is-beautiful soloing of 86-year-old trombonist Thomas was as appropriate as the saucy dance steps he showed off during “St. Louis Blues.” That tune, by the way, took a deliciously unexpected detour through the Cotton Club with a mid-song minor-key modulation that found the band throbbing away like Cab Calloway’s orchestra.

Moments such as Thomas’ stepping out, the band members’ quips between songs and the mini-parade they led through the house during the obligatory finale of “When the Saints Go Marching In” established the kind of rapport you expect in New Orleans’ tiny Preservation Hall, but you don’t always get in much larger tour stops, such as the Cerritos Center.

It’s also nice to know that Orange County residents only have to drive a mile over the county line to Cerritos to find a programming philosophy that honors variety and respects American roots music, two qualities missing from our own Performing Arts Center.

The multipurpose Cerritos hall was configured cabaret style for the first time, with several dozen tables surrounding the stage on the orchestra level. With the bonus of waiters who brought hard or soft drinks to patrons there, it gave the hall a fittingly casual, nightclub atmosphere. (Not, however, the atmosphere of Preservation Hall itself, where alcohol is strictly off limits.)

The Preservation Hall band’s mission is to keep alive the music that spawned Louis Armstrong and virtually all the branches of jazz that flowered in his wake.

To his credit, Brunious showed that tradition needn’t be a straitjacket.

He reached beyond the traditional repertory with a muted solo trumpet rendition of Cass Elliott’s “Dream a Little Dream of Me.” Later, he turned to the godfather of New Orleans’ R & B for a sprightly version of Professor Longhair’s “Goin’ to the Mardi Gras.”

In the group’s nonchalant moves from gospel to raunchy blues, from Tin Pan Alley to straight jazz, the Preservation Hall band defined that other characteristically American attribute: Where talent reigns, anything goes.

SONIC SCORECARD: From a table slightly behind the stage, the sound was excessively hard and edgy, possibly because the musicians were amplified more than should be necessary in a room as functionally intimate as this one. After intermission, from the vantage point of a side box one level up, the sound was markedly better. Let’s hope the acousticians can find a more aurally pleasing balance when the Preservation Hall band returns.