JAZZ : A Real Jazz Community : The Crenshaw District’s reputation is growing as a nucleus for clubs that are nurturing musicians and drawing some of the biggest artists in the business.

On a recent holiday weekend, there was a palpable buzz around the World Stage, one of the most modestly scaled but huge-hearted places in Los Angeles.

For one thing, it was the fifth anniversary of the grass-roots jazz headquarters in the Crenshaw District, a validation of both the survival instinct and the community need for the workshop-performance space.

For another thing, the boss was in the house, putting forth the kind of charismatic rhythmic force on drums that could only mean that Billy Higgins was at work.

Often called the most recorded drummer in jazz history, the understated Higgins issues his friendly pulse, his warm flowing sense of swing, and solos of raw beauty and easy wit, solos that surprise and delight. A full house of listeners squirmed on their folding chairs and hooted out support, riff by riff, tapping into the electricity in the air.

On this night, Higgins had recently returned from a long road trip with one of his regular employers, pianist Cedar Walton.

Higgins made a few well-placed phone calls to get a few friends--some of the finest jazz players around--to make the gig, including tenor saxophonist Harold Land, trumpeter Oscar Brashear and trombonist George Bohannon. They chased down some loose versions of “ ‘Round Midnight” and “Rhythm-a-Ning,” with extra-fiery solos implying that there was a cause at hand.

But the hero of the night was, undoubtedly, Higgins, the lanky, beaming jazz icon who co-founded the World Stage with poet-activist Kamau Daa-ood. Higgins continues to drum up support to continue its evolution.

After a hot set, Higgins told the crowd, “We have a unique situation going on here. There’s no place like this in the United States that I know of. A lot of people in strange countries know about this place. It’s gettin’ famous.”

As drummers go, Higgins’ vision is not about flailing limbs or aggressive tactics on his instrument, but taste and subtlety. The same could be said of his approach to community activism, one not of militancy but a desire to nurture.

Also playing on that anniversary weekend were local veterans and young bloods alike: pianist Horace Tapscott, a stalwart figure in jazz life in inner-city Los Angeles, who was there at the very beginning of the World Stage, and Black/Note, the young quintet that has made a steady ascent from its origins at the World Stage to its recent debut on Columbia Records.

Black/Note’s Columbia coup serves as testament to the validity of the World Stage experiment.

“They did great,” Higgins said. “That was our aim: to get young artists out and let them know about the business and be exposed to other things. They really are serious young guys, as are the guys in B Sharp Quartet,” Higgins said, referring to another World Stage-nurtured group that recently released its first CD.

“People like that,” Higgins said, commenting on the seriousness to which the two groups approach their music. “They come along great and they’re going to be all right.”

Not surprisingly, the admiration is mutual. Black/Note bassist Mark Shelby said: “We all really look up to Billy Higgins for inspiration. He’s open, he’s encouraging. Even though he is who he is, he’s still down-to-earth and humble. He’s someone who really puts his money where his mouth is.”

Higgins’ cachet in the jazz world has helped lure stellar guests such as Elvin Jones, Max Roach, Pharaoh Sanders, Roy Hargrove, Ron Carter and Geri Allen to the World Stage for impromptu workshops. During the week, the storefront hosts instrumental and vocal workshops, a popular poetry workshop on Wednesdays and the all-important jam session every Thursday night.

“It’s like a storefront church,” said D. J. Riley, a supporter of the World Stage who has watched its growth. “If you didn’t know it, you wouldn’t know how important the World Stage is.”

And the World Stage is not alone in its mission to spread the jazz gospel.

From all appearances, you might think that this small area adjacent to Leimert Park was the cradle of a bona fide scene, a rare case of concentrated cultural energy in a city given to sprawl and diffusion.

Just around the corner from the World Stage is the coffeehouse known as 5th St. Dick’s on 43rd Street, started by Richard Fulton two years ago.

Some of Fulton’s first customers were National Guardsmen brought in to quell the unrest in the wake of verdicts in the first Rodney G. King beating trial.

Now, the World Stage and 5th St. Dick’s keep the block awash in the sound of jazz. And 5th St. Dick’s presents jazz every night of the week, as well as after-hours jam sessions.

“It’s getting more exposure, little by little,” Willie Jones III, drummer for the group Black/Note, said of the Leimert Park scene, “but, for the most part, it’s been pretty underground. It doesn’t get the same type of exposure in the paper as Catalina’s or the Bel Age or Chadney’s--mainstream clubs. But all the guys who are serious, young and old, know about it. It’s a serious vibe happening.”

Likewise, a serious vibe surrounds Black/Note, which has essentially evolved in public and set an example for young straight-ahead jazz in the city.

This band--composed of twentysomething players--found a home and spawning grounds at the World Stage. Shelby founded the group after meeting original trumpeter Richard Grant at a World Stage jam in 1990. Jones, pianist Ark Sano and alto saxophonist James Mahone came on board, and Black/Note was born.

“The World Stage was definitely our place where we were able to hide and work on our stuff,” Shelby said in a late morning interview at a Hollywood coffeehouse.

“Who knows? If that place wasn’t there, we probably wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you. The whole group pretty much formed there and that’s where we rehearsed. A lot of good things came out of that place. That’s where we woodshedded for months, before we started gigging.”

The group took a big leap forward in 1991 when they released a CD, “43rd and Degnan,” on the World Stage label. But along the way, they lost Grant, who moved back east to go school at Rutgers. Mexico-born, Fresno-raised trumpeter Gilbert Castellanos was enlisted, adding to the multicultural mix of the band.

More and better local gigs surfaced in various parts of the city. But the band still gravitates toward the spaces of old.

Black/Note’s saga is one of many with a link to the Marsalis brood. Branford Marsalis and other members of “The Tonight Show” band have been known to jam in the Leimert Park scene, and it was trombonist Delfeayo Marsalis who passed a copy of their demo tape to Dr. George Butler, Columbia’s jazz head.

Butler, suitably impressed, signed them, and the band recorded last November, occasionally supplemented with tenor saxophonist Phil Vieux (another World Stage/5th St. Dick’s regular).

The hard-bop-minded music of the group crosses generational lines in terms of its appeal. In the end, Black/Note’s arrival is less a fluke than a signpost of ongoing jazz evolution in inner-city Los Angeles. All it took was a venue or two to reignite the scene. And some energy.

The initial energy for the transformation came from Daa-ood, a tall man with a goatee and large warm eyes. In an office above his Final Vinyl Records--a repository of old, classic jazz and soul records nestled between the World Stage and 5th St. Dick’s--Daa-ood talked about the neighborhood.

“Live music was really the hook for this area,” Daa-ood said. “It was a catalyst to speed up the whole process of making this a vital area. Then, when Richard Fulton came on board with 5th St. Dick’s, that just made it all more powerful. It was actually a place where musicians could jam and young musicians could meet older musicians. There was actually a place like that, in this community.

“On a given Saturday night here at 3 o’clock in the morning, you will find people from all over Los Angeles. Some people drive from the Valley to get here . . . . It’s a cross-cultural mix. People are hungry to feel alive. The music does that. It allows us to feel.”

Daa-ood got the notion for the World Stage after another similar space in the neighborhood, Artworks Four, folded.

Drummer Carl Burnett had operated that space, but frequent road trips with the likes of Freddie Hubbard and Horace Silver forced him to close.

“I saw music and poetry in that empty space,” Daa-ood recalled. He culled $3,000 from a small collective of people, including Higgins, to pay for first and last month’s rent. In a case of literal continuance, Daa-ood salvaged the chairs and stage from Burnett’s operation.

Daa-ood recalls, “The first concert I remember was with Billy Higgins and Horace Tapscott. They were just warming up the space. It was just an improv, but it set the tone for things to come.”

By his account, Daa-ood has been involved in local grass-roots efforts in Los Angeles for the past 25 years, in such organizations as the Watts Writer’s Workshop and Horace Tapscott’s Pan-Afrikan Orchestra, as the “word musician.”

“I know the transformative power of the arts,” he says, “because I’ve seen that in my own life. I know how important it is for there to be a space within the community where artists can gather, and also a space within the community where the artist meets the community and shares its wares. Basically, that was the concept involved. It’s never been a profit-making venture. It’s basically been a labor of love and, also, I guess I should say, a labor of necessity. It’s working.”

Citing comparisons with New York loft/performance rooms run by Ornette Coleman, Sam Rivers, Barry Harris and others, Daa-ood commented, “The concept of taking a small space and turning it into a performance area and workshop space is not new. It’s a viable concept that has not been explored in the way that it could be, because of the need.

“There’s really a need for people to have alternative spaces to experience different aspects of their lives and culture and art. The culture and art are so rich and so deep, and it puts us in touch with some very important things that are inside ourselves that our everyday routines don’t seem to fulfill.”

Higgins amplified this theme in a later conversation recalling his experiences in New York. “ . . . They had a few places in the Village, coffeehouses where you go play all the time. They had a place called the White Wheel, and a lot of people used to come and play in there, but there was no place where it was this wide a situation. This whole block is great. I feel good about being here. Everybody in the block are friends and they’re tight.”

Did they intentionally avoid creating a typical nightclub scene?

“A nightclub is all right, you know,” Higgins said. “But you don’t really get to serve the community as well. I figure there will always be clubs around. Right around the corner, there is 5th St. Dick’s nightclub, so we’re like the hothouse, you know. This is a place where people can come and get their scene together. Then on Friday and Saturday nights, people come and play and then play around the corner.”

Another avenue of expression is through distributing recordings. Dennis Sullivan, an independent producer, got involved in forming the World Stage label, which enjoyed respectable success with its first release, Black/Note’s “43rd and Degnan.” Now, the World Stage label is run by Shelby and Willie Jones III. This spring the label put out its second project, “Judgment,” by Robert Stewart, a Bay Area-based tenor saxophonist. On that session Stewart was backed up by pianist Eric Reed, bassist Mark Shelby and, inevitably, Higgins.

And it is not only in the recording studio that Higgins provides support. He is the one who provides the financial safety net when the space can’t make ends meet at the end of a given month.

Sullivan commented that “part of the problem is that so much of the responsibility falls on Billy. In spite of it being a great idea, too much is falling on a few individuals. The government or the city needs to supplement these types of groups or organizations.”

There is a feeling afoot that the World Stage is ready to take a step forward in its support system, to seek outside help from grants.

Don Muhammad, the World Stage manager, noted that “one thing we’re kicking around now is how we can do whatever it takes to organize to the point where we can go nonprofit and see if we can’t go to the city for grants. It’s sort of a Catch-22. We don’t have the funds to put that kind of operation into place, and grant money would do that for us. On the other hand, you have to have that (operation) organized in order to get a grant.”

One implicit mission at the World Stage is to keep jazz alive in the area, an area which has produced a number of jazz greats--Charles Mingus and Higgins, among them--but has had trouble maintaining a live jazz scene. Higgins is one musician who has opted to live in his hometown and lend a hand to its cultural development.

Born in Los Angeles on Oct. 11, 1936, Higgins worked in the area until circumstances propelled him, almost inevitably, eastward.

In the late ‘50s, Higgins joined Ornette Coleman’s groundbreaking quartet, along with bassist Charlie Haden and trumpeter Don Cherry. Theirs was a music which blended the naturalistic fiber of folk music and the complexity of a new kind of jazz vocabulary. It was a revolutionary sound that, while created in Los Angeles, went nowhere fast in the conservative musical atmosphere here.

But Nesuhi Ertegun, of Atlantic Records, saw the light, flew out to hear the group and took them to New York, where they were instantly hailed as the vanguard of a new jazz.

Higgins remembers the Coleman group’s L.A. days: “We were together for a long time, before we even started working. It was always just about the music, because it wasn’t popular to play like that then. That’s what’s so beautiful about New York: New York is ready to accept things that other places don’t want to accept and don’t really have an open mind about. It was wonderful, a good experience.”

The original members of the Coleman group went separate ways, reuniting occasionally. The last time the core group played together, and the first time back in their original stamping grounds in 30 years, was a concert in downtown Los Angeles as part of the L.A. festival in 1990.

Although Cherry couldn’t show up because of illness, a power trio of Haden, Higgins and Coleman delivered a memorable homecoming to a sold-out house--hardly the situation in the late ‘50s.

Higgins exclaimed, “Every time we play, it seems like it’s always right there, like we never stopped playing. It’s like second nature.”

Higgins lived in New York from 1959 through 1977, when he felt an urge to look homeward. “Everybody’s back here--my mother, my grandchildren. It’s time for me to be back here. I lived in New York so long. I’m traveling so much, I found that it doesn’t make any difference where I’m at. So I might as well be here. My mother’s 91 years old. I’ve got a lot of kids. I’ve got a brand new baby, 4 years old. It was a natural movement.”

Part of coming home meant getting involved in a hands-on way in the community where he grew up and where now his own offspring are growing up. Hence, the World Stage.

“I would just like to see the young people have a chance to be aware of this music. There are a lot of good young musicians, but if they don’t have a place to play and get together, they’re not going to do anything. If you don’t get out there, you just get lost.

“You can listen to it from afar, but if you’re not exposed to it on a ground level, it’s hard to understand what it is. That’s really the main concept here. It was to keep the music going on. That’s the whole thing, because when the music stops, it’s all over.”