JAZZ : It’s Not the ‘tude, It’s the Tunes : What’s going down in Monterey? A jazz fest where (surprise) music matters. But don’t worry. A party atmosphere is still part of the mix.

How hot has the Monterey Jazz Festival been in the past?

Consider this: At the close of the event’s first installment, 1958, a bra and panties were found among the seats. Nothing special now, perhaps, in the post-Woodstock rock ‘n’ grunge ‘90s, but pretty radical for the conservative, crew-cut Eisenhower decade.

Not for the Monterey Festival, though, which always has been as much about atmosphere and attitude as it has been about music. This is, after all, an event that is so ingrained in the community that box seats have been known to figure in divorce settlements, and the intensity of the partying sometimes equals the energy of the music.

This is also an event that proudly lists that well-known jazz aficionado Clint Eastwood as a member of its board of directors.

But the real news about this year’s festival, which runs Friday through next Sunday, is not about bras or divorces, or partying or movie stars--at least not yet. The real news is that Monterey, after years of relative musical decline, is showing powerful signs of once again becoming an important jazz destination.

Although the MJF has been a perennial commercial success, with its audience loyalty extending across generations, the festival’s impact as a leading international stage for the display of state-of-the-art jazz diminished considerably in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Rock, blues and peripheral acts crept into the programming, and general manager Jimmy Lyons’ firm devotion to mainstream jazz tended to limit the appearances of younger, more contemporary players. The ironic result, for the last decade and a half, has been a festival that--to many jazz observers--has been musically unimportant.

No such characterization could ever have been applied to the festival in its early years, when--in addition to its free and easy social atmosphere--it was a model for the presentation of first-rate, innovative music in an open, airy and pleasant setting.

Dizzy Gillespie, a festival perennial, once said that he felt “back at home again” whenever he played the MJF.

A lot of people feel the same way. Located on the Monterey Fairgrounds, caressed by crystal-clear breezes from the peninsula and within easy distance of Cannery Row and the quaint streets of Carmel, the festival is blessed with an ambience comparable to atmospheric European festivals in Montreux, Nice and Umbria, and an abundance of devoted fans.

Darlene Chan, once a production assistant at the MJF and now producer of the Playboy Jazz Festival, sees at least one striking difference between the two programs. To her, the longtime listeners who come to Monterey are “real jazz lovers.” The Playboy festival attendees, she believes, “are just music fans.”

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Three Monterey festival performing venues--the large Main Arena, the Garden Stage and the Night Club--are surrounded by acres of food and merchandise booths, photo and art exhibitions and various clinics and workshops. Less obvious, but equally important, the musical programs--unlike many other contemporary jazz festivals--have generally been presented with excellent sound, a legacy of decades of dealing with the audio reproductive needs that are unique to jazz ensembles.

Monterey was a major-league jazz happening from the first notes of its kickoff production in 1958. Virtually everything that came to characterize the festival in later years was present from the beginning: a sterling lineup of acts (including Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Gerry Mulligan, the Modern Jazz Quartet, Dave Brubeck and Billie Holiday), a dedication to the commissioning of new works and, above all, a loose and easy, party-time atmosphere.

The San Francisco Chronicle’s venerable Herb Caen, in his column of Oct. 7, 1958, described that seminal weekend perfectly: “The first annual Monterey Jazz Festival staggered to a finish in a cloud of puffed lips, sore fingers and monumental hangovers--to say nothing of flattened fifths hanging in clusters from the ancient pines and cypresses.”

The first festival was also the start of a series of dramatic images that continued over the years: Gillespie playing “The Star-Spangled Banner” at 1958’s opening session; Harry James and Miles Davis bringing Gillespie his trumpet on a pillow; a frail-looking Billie Holiday in one of her last performances; Lambert, Hendricks & Ross singing vocalized introductions for each of the acts on their bill; John Lewis playing “ ‘Round Midnight” for Thelonious Monk; an angry Charles Mingus leading his band offstage to the strains of “When the Saints Go Marching In” as quickly as he had led them on.

This year’s Monterey Jazz Festival, the 37th annual installment, continues a hopeful return to past artistic glories. In 1992, with the transfer of the festival’s general managership from Lyons, a former disc jockey who (with jazz critic Ralph Gleason) created the event, to musician-producer Tim Jackson, the festival began its journey back into the global jazz picture.

“Monterey may have been resting on its laurels a little bit,” Jackson says. “I know it’s not fair, but a lot of people only look at the last 10 or 15 years, and they say, ‘No, man, it wasn’t happening. It was too conservative.’ Even though if you look at the early years of the festival, there was some incredibly creative stuff happening.

“The problem was that there was a perception on the part of a lot of the old-timers on the board of directors that sort of went, ‘Well, we’re the Monterey Jazz Festival. We’re the best thing since canned beer.’ And I said, ‘Well, folks, I hate to pop the bubble, but it’s a new day out there. If we don’t do the necessary things to remain competitive and make this a better place to come, we’re going to start losing out.’ ”

At 40, Jackson is already a 20-year veteran of the Central California/Monterey Bay jazz scene. A jazz flutist who continues to lead his own groups, he was one of the founders, in 1975, of a highly successful, nonprofit performance center in Santa Cruz called the Kuumbwa (Swahili for act of creation ) Jazz Center.

By the time Jackson took over the Monterey festival, it was no longer the sole major player in the central California jazz scene. The ‘80s and ‘90s had seen the emergence of five other significant events in the Bay Area alone: the San Francisco Jazz Festival, the San Jose Jazz Festival, the Russian River Jazz Festival and two festivals in Concord.

Jackson was very much aware of the competition when he began programming for the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1991, the year before he replaced Lyons as general manager.

“Things had gotten kind of predictable from around 1975,” he explains. “You can’t fault some of the acts that were included, but there’s no doubt that the programming got too predictable. And, even though the attendance never went down, there was grumbling from some of the patrons that they wanted to hear some new things.

“I think Jimmy wanted to avoid the more contemporary-type acts. There was one year in which the board asked him, maybe even insisted, that he book some contemporary-type jazz, and he booked Spyro Gyra. But he apparently gave them a somewhat less than inspiring introduction, which didn’t exactly thrill the band.”

Jackson came on board with the inherent advantages of an outsider.

“Although I grew up in this area, and had been involved with jazz all my life,” he says, “I had never actually come to the festival before, and never had any real contact with it.”

“But I knew the festival organization had become a bit inbred, in that there had been very few changes, staff-wise, in many, many years, and the board of directors had stayed pretty stable. So, because I didn’t know anything about the organization, I could question everything, legitimately. And I did.”

Jackson believes he was further aided in the modifications he has made by the fact that the board, from the festival’s inception, has never played a role in any of the creative decision-making.

“You can’t make creative decisions about a music festival by committee,” he says, “even though some festivals try to do it that way.”

Jackson’s more eclectic tastes--a direct departure from Lyons’ musical beliefs--reflect his continuing parallel persona as a professional musician.

“I take the point of view of not going for the label so much as for the music itself,” he explains. “To me, for example, Joe Zawinul is just as vital a musician as Oscar Peterson. He just happens to enjoy electronics, while Oscar enjoys a Bosendorfer grand piano. But both artists are the sort I want to see at this festival.”

Pressed for examples of acts that might not fit into his perception of the new Monterey Jazz Festival picture, Jackson replies, reluctantly.

“Well, like, say, the Rippingtons, or the Kilauea-type acts,” he says. “They’re really not what this festival is about, although I don’t mean to disparage what they do, which is fine for what it is. But it maybe defines things better to say that, in the contemporary arena, acts like David Sanborn or the Yellowjackets or Grover Washington are what the festival is about.”

This year’s MCI-sponsored fes tival, with its sparkling main events and far-ranging ancillary entertainments, is a clear expression of the fresh ideas and forward-looking programming notions that Jackson has brought to the festival. In the 7,000-seat Main Arena, the principal performance area, evening concerts will include Sonny Rollins, Joe Henderson, Ornette Coleman, Max Roach, Milt Jackson, J. J. Johnson, Shirley Horn, Marcus Miller and Ray Brown, as well as the Contemporary Piano Ensemble, John Santos and the West Coast debuts of Roach’s 12-piece percussion ensemble, M’Boom, and the Bob Mintzer big band. Grover Washington and Etta James will headline afternoon programs.

A multiplicity of events on the Garden Stage, which are open to anyone with a grounds pass, will feature, among others, singer Carmen Bradford, the quirky Boston-based Either/Orchestra and the Dottie Dodgion Trio.

(Inveterate stargazers will also have the opportunity during Sunday afternoon’s Garden Stage program to see if Carmel’s most famous political figure, the father of bassist Kyle Eastwood, will show up to hear his son’s quartet.)

“We’ve also got some cutting-edge things,” Jackson says. “The hip-hop and acid jazz of the Charlie Hunter Trio and Josh Jones and Human Flavor, and avant-garde in saxophonist John Tchcai and Eddie Gale, who played with Cecil Taylor and Sun Ra.”

The Night Club, often a tryout venue for acts with Main Arena potential, has a lineup that not only is ready to step up, but is quite capable of being competitive with the Main Arena performers. A Columbia recording session will spotlight the much-praised Black/Note Quintet, David Sanchez and Terence Blanchard. Singer Nnenna Freelon, pianist Jessica Williams and her trio and the Dolphins (featuring Dan Brubeck, yet another offspring of a celebrity parent) will also appear.

One of Jackson’s fascinating new additions has been the Sunday afternoon conversations with “jazz legends.” Successfully initiated last year with guitarist-banjoist Danny Barker and bassist Milt Hinton, the Night Club presentation offers, according to Jackson, “a unique chance to hear stories from some masters of music.” This year’s “jazz legends” will be represented by drummer Max Roach and a panel discussion on the life of Lyons, who died in April at the age of 78.

A few things at the Monterey festival, however, have not changed. A “Statement of Principles” in the 1959 program noted that the festival’s goal was to serve as a “true festival . . . where new works by prominent composers” would be commissioned and performed. Around the same time, the festival’s commitment to jazz education was established and further concretized by the creation 10 years ago of the Monterey Jazz Education Fund.

Both concepts continue to play significant roles in the festival proceedings. Next Sunday night’s program will premiere a recently commissioned composition for orchestra by L.A.-based pianist Billy Childs--an extension of a tradition that reaches back to include works by Jimmy Giuffre, John Lewis and Gunther Schuller in 1959, Jon Hendricks’ “Evolution of the Blues” and Duke Ellington’s “Suite Thursday” in 1960, Lalo Schifrin’s “Gillespiana Suite” in 1961 and Dave Brubeck’s “The Real Ambassadors” in 1962.

On Saturday evening, Mintzer and pianist James Williams will conduct instrumental clinics. And on Sunday afternoon, the recipients of the nonprofit festival’s revenues--student musicians--will strut their stuff in the Main Arena. It’s a long weekend of colorful action, one which will extend a jazz legacy of music and entertainment that is now reaching into its fourth decade.

“There’s no question about it, “ Jackson says, “Monterey is a magnet. It’s a place people want to go. And we intend to honor that desire.”