Playboy Festival Can’t Recover From Ella’s Loss

The 18th Playboy Jazz Festival opened Saturday a few hours after the death of jazz great Ella Fitzgerald. And the pall that her passing cast over the proceedings resulted in one of the most low-keyed, occasionally listless festival openings of recent memory.

The mood for the day was set by the sign on the marquee at the entrance to the Hollywood Bowl, which read, “Ella, We Will Miss You.”

The message was true in more ways than one.

In a general sense, it reflected the universal love and appreciation felt throughout the jazz community--and elsewhere--for the music’s first lady of singing. Playboy founder Hugh Hefner explained it appropriately when he noted, “Ella captured our dreams in the romance of song. When she performed before 18,000 people at the first Playboy Jazz Festival in Chicago in 1959, the place was quiet enough to hear a pin drop.”

But Fitzgerald also was missed, more specifically, as a performer. The announcement of her death simply underscored the fact that, on the opening day of the festival, at least, the program’s lineup revealed a striking lack of jazz hall of fame members.

“I’m going crazy trying to put shows together,” said festival producer George Wein. “Our festivals do good business, we usually sell out, and everybody has a wonderful time. But when you look for the kind of great jazz names that can fill a hall by themselves--it’s tough to find them anymore. The new names haven’t really emerged yet.”

Fitzgerald’s passing undoubtedly had its impact upon master of ceremonies Bill Cosby, the performers and the audience. The sudden immediacy and the sense of shock connected with her departure clearly made it impossible to convert the festival into a fitting tribute. Yet the show had to go on, so Cosby called for a moment of silence, and a few of the artists added Fitzgerald-associated numbers to their programs. But the failure to assemble some sort of quick, mini-musical homage (there were a number of performers present who were capable of doing so) or to provide some sort of eulogy dedicating the day to a celebration of Fitzgerald’s life and work left the program without a real sense of closure. It remained for Tony Bennett, at the very end of the show, to offer some much needed words of tribute.

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Which is not to say that the Saturday program was completely deficient in moments of excitement and creativity. Atypically, however, no conga lines erupted, not even during the appearance of the electric Eddie Palmieri band, and Cosby, usually the high voltage sparkplug for the festival, seemed uncharacteristically detached and sedate.

The day began with a solid performance by the Thelonious Monk Institute Jazz Ambassadors with appealing efforts from tenor saxophonist Tim Warfield and singer Lisa Henry.

But New York City’s Joe Lovano, a triple winner in Down Beat magazine’s 1995 jazz poll, followed with a hard-edged, aggressive set that was long on tenor saxophone pyrotechnics and short on attempts to communicate. Lovano is a marvelously versatile player who is fully capable of producing ballads and blues in abundance. And his decision to hit the early afternoon Playboy crowd with a performance better suited to the interior focus of a late night club was not an effective way to display his musical wares.

Palmieri’s octet, despite occasional problems with the audio, was one of the day’s highlights. Surging through one Latin jazz piece after another--accented by a heated rendering of “Caravan”--the band managed to trigger some spirited foot tapping and hand clapping. Trumpeter Tony Lujan, saxophonist Donald Harrison and trombonist Conrad Herwig added driving solos and merged for a series of powerful ensemble passages. The only thing missing from the set was more solo space for Palmieri’s keyboards.

Dianne Reeves’ impressive presentation was almost as heated as Palmieri’s. And her superb skill as a scat singer called up instant memories of Fitzgerald.

The two contemporary groups on the bill, the Yellowjackets and Fourplay, were predictably smooth and accessible. Fourplay’s use of Nathan East’s vocalized bass solos added a piquant touch to the group’s somewhat bland presentation. The Yellowjackets were most convincing in their straight-ahead jazz moments, especially when tenor saxophonist Bob Mintzer was soloing.

The Crenshaw High School Elite Choir’s reading of a musical version of Maya Angelou’s “On the Pulse of the Morning,” accompanied by the Yellowjackets and composer Russ Ferrante, added an unusual touch of gospel enthusiasm to the afternoon. And the combination of pianist McCoy Tyner and saxophonist Michael Brecker produced one of the day’s most solid jazz episodes.

Bennett’s closing set was essentially the program he’s been doing in most of his performances lately, liberally sprinkled with tunes from his Fred Astaire and “Here’s to the Ladies” albums. Not really a jazz singer, he nonetheless is a solid entertainer who, with the aid of the Ralph Sharon Trio, brought a warm, jazz-tinged quality to his interpretations.

Bennett’s performance was enlivened considerably when he was joined onstage by the veteran singer Joe Williams. A too-brief group of duets between the two--in which Williams scat sang with a bright enthusiasm that recalled his classic get-togethers with Fitzgerald--served as the fitting climax to an event that otherwise never quite seemed to find its heart.

The festival’s curiously skewed quality, in fact, may have best been symbolized on the cover of the program guide, in which a quintet of jazz musicians is depicted playing their instruments left-handed, with one player blowing on that most unlikely of instruments, a left-handed saxophone.