JAZZ REVIEW : Stephanie Haynes: Ready for the Majors

It’s no secret that Los Angeles has a large number of first-rate jazz performers who have difficulty finding work, much less landing a recording contract. Music business professionals offer various explanations: a surplus of talent, the complexities of developing new artists, and so on.

In the case of singer Stephanie Haynes, however, the only logical rationale for her mystifying absence from the roster of a major jazz record label has to be a kind of mass executive auditory myopia. Appearing Sunday afternoon on a Hermosa Beach “Jazz at the Beach” program, Haynes confirmed--as she does virtually every time she performs--that she is one of the finest jazz singers in the world.

Working with the piano accompaniment of frequent musical partner Dave MacKay, Haynes was brilliant. Her voice is a sumptuous contralto that moves easily from resonant chest tones into a rich, focused soprano. But Haynes, unlike Sarah Vaughan, who is clearly an influence, never allowed her exquisite sound to dominate an interpretation. On ballads such as “If You Could See Me Now,” for example, the warmth of her tone and her elegant musical revisions of phrase were placed at the service of a poignant rendering of the lyrics.

On faster pieces--”Let’s Get Lost,” “Get Out of Town” and Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “Useless Landscape”--her firm sense of timing came to the fore. Reverting to scat syllables only once or twice, she demonstrated that true jazz singing has far more to do with the lift and momentum that is generated by precisely swinging rhythmic phrasing than it does with rapid-fire successions of mindless shoo-be-doos.

MacKay was a perfect accompanist. Like Haynes, he maintained a relentless drive via rhythmic implication and inference. Working on an electric Fender-Rhodes instrument, he adapted his playing accordingly, replacing his subtle acoustic piano touch with hard- grooving bass lines and ringing tonal clusters.

Were there any open-eared record company honchos in the highly responsive crowd? Unlikely. If there were, Stephanie Haynes would be signing a contract today.

* Jazz at the Beach continues Sunday on lower Pier Avenue in Hermosa Beach with an appearance by the Southbay Big Swing and Jazz Orchestra. Performances from noon to 4. Admission free. Information: (310) 376-0951.