JAZZ REVIEW : L.A. Classic Jazz Festival Finds Itself at a Crossroads

Attendance was off sharply for the first two days of the 12th annual Labor Day weekend Los Angeles Classic Jazz Festival. A partial explanation may well be the existence of competing weekend jazz festivals in Orange County and Santa Barbara. Faced with budget problems, the classic has for a second year cut the number of visiting artists.

Still it was a crowded calendar, with some 230-plus events scheduled in nine venues at two airport-area hotels between midday Friday and sunset today. Seeking out the prizes was, as always, like a syncopated Easter egg hunt.

At that, the stars of the weekend were 93 and 87 years old, respectively. That’s if you believed the program notes. Close your eyes and alto man Benny Waters and violinist Claude Williams could have been in their 30s. Waters, not well known in this country because he spent 40 years in Europe, played hard-charging, idea-rich choruses at an age when it would seem a triumph just to lift the instrument.

Williams, out of Oklahoma by way of Kansas City, played guitar in an early Count Basie band. On violin (his nickname is Fiddler) he is one of the small select company who gave the instrument a secure place in jazz. His wizard fingering, rousing double-stops and lyrical inventions helped bring standing ovations to the Statesmen of Jazz, a nonprofit group (entry age 65) that also includes pianist Jane Jarvis, 80, bassist Milt Hinton, 85, drummer Panama Francis, 77, and trombonist Buster Cooper, 66. (Bill Berry, not quite 65, substituted on cornet for the ailing Don Goldie). It is the history of jazz, on the hoof, alive and timelessly fresh. I mean, Waters played with King Oliver.

The traditional groups that increasingly dominate the festival are a mixed lot, although the musicianship in the South Frisco and Fulton Street bands, for example, is of a high order. The sleek Sorta Dixie from Vegas is really sorta, taking the “Saints” further than they’ve ever marched.

The 15-member Pacific Coast Ragtime Band (including five violins, two flutes, a cellist) from San Francisco plays pre-Dixie, indeed antebellum music, at its elegant best, refreshing after the noise.

The permutating groups of all-stars (Tommy Saunders, Ross Tompkins, Tommy Newsom, Dan Barrett, Wendell Brunious among them) drew large, enthusiastic audiences. A Saunders-Tompkins set, with vocalist Polly Podewell doing the seldom-heard “Never Never Land,” from “Peter Pan,” approached the magical.

The popularity of mainstream instrumentalists (huge crowds for three hourlong solo appearances by pianist Dick Hyman) suggests that the festival does not live by trad alone. Belatedly, the management is polling the customers on their preferences. It seems clear to the festival’s admirers that a rethink may be in order to meet the rising Labor Day competition.