A Historical Composition : Buddy Collette and Luther Hughes Team Up for a Talk on Jazz’s Past

It was an hour of theme and variation as saxophonist Buddy Collette and bassist Luther Hughes teamed to speak on the history of jazz Wednesday at Golden West College. Working much like a musical duo, Hughes supplied the riffs and Collette the improvisations in front of an audience of 100 as part of the college’s weeklong “Salute to Jazz.”

Collette, a high-school chum of Charles Mingus when both were growing up in Los Angeles, is one of the most respected California-based musicians. He was a member of drummer Chico Hamilton’s groundbreaking chamber-jazz quintet in the ‘50s and has taught such giants as James Newton on flute.

He was the first black musician to crack Hollywood’s restrictive studio scene and continues to champion jazz, especially Los Angeles jazz. He recently completed two volumes of his remembrances as part of UCLA’s Central Avenue Sounds Oral History Project.

Hughes has also championed jazz here in Orange County, booking music at different times into a variety of venues, and he has served as a disc jockey on jazz radio station KLON-FM.

As a longtime member of keyboardist Gene Harris’ quartet (now appearing through Monday at Catalina Bar and Grill in Hollywood), Hughes has played many of the country’s major clubs and festivals as well as issuing a series of contemporary albums under his own name.

Together the two men offered up a lively, sometimes humorous discussion. Hughes queried Collette on a number of personalities and issues. When asked about East and West Coast jazz styles, Collette responded with tales of the many musicians, including Dolphy, Mingus and saxophonists Dexter Gordon, Ornette Coleman and Charles Lloyd, who spent their formative years on this coast before establishing careers back east. Collette analyzed what came to be known as the West Coast Sound, saying that it was more formal than the be-bop movement with an emphasis on composition rather than improvisation, and giving credit to its innovators, including Shorty Rogers and Jimmy Giuffre.

He pointed out the misconception that the East Coast was the home of hot jazz whereas the California sounds were laid back.

“Let’s not forget that people like (saxophonists) Teddy Edwards and Harold Land were playing a very hot style on Central Avenue . . . when be-bop was being played back in New York,” he said. And he outlined the West Coast’s importance in the formation of be-bop, pointing to Charlie Parker’s late-’40s stint at Billy Berg’s club in Hollywood as a turning point.

Collette was also revealing as he talked about how innovation sometimes comes by accident. Typical was his explanation of how the Hamilton quintet came to include a cellist.

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Pianist Fred Katz (now an Orange County resident) would play cello to keep the audience entertained between the Hamilton group’s sets at the small Long Beach club where they were appearing.

“Chico would see him playing and say it was time to get back up there,” Collette said. “But the stage was so small that we had to practically climb over him while he was playing . . . and when we got up there, there was no room for him to squeeze back to the piano. So he just kept playing the cello with the band. . . . People really reacted to it, so we started writing music for cello.”

His best stories were about Mingus. It was Collette who urged Mingus to pick up the bass when the two were in their early teens. It was Mingus, he explained, who came up with the idea of playing on the Los Angeles streetcar line as the two would commute to rehearsal.

“ ‘Let’s jam on the streetcar,’ Mingus said, and he unzips his bass and began to play. I thought if he can do it so could I, so I did. There we were, two young kids playing on the streetcar. People began to request us.”

Equally informative were the two numbers played by Hughes and Collette. For the first, joined by Golden West professor of music Gerry Schroeder on piano and music instructor Frank Fakinos on drums, Collette called for Duke Ellington’s “In a Mellotone”--in the key of A-flat--and the quartet, without rehearsal, conversed in the universal language of jazz.

Switching to flute, Collette called next for Kenny Dorham’s hard-bop theme “Blue Bossa,” and responded with a light and lively delivery that turned the tune’s melody inside out.

Golden West’s “Salute to Jazz” concludes today with a student-faculty jam session in the school’s Student Center at noon, and a 3 p.m. screening in the school’s Forum II Theatre of Bertrand Tavernier’s 1985 film, “Round Midnight,” which stars Dexter Gordon as an American jazz expatriate (see review on F31).