The Late-Night Music of the City

What are all these suburbanites doing in Leimert Park?

People from Pasadena and Redondo Beach and Palmdale have trekked to the throbbing cultural heart of black Los Angeles to spend an evening with others who have only one thing in common: a passion for jazz.

In a six-hour, citywide party on wheels that’s been going on four times a year since 1992, the 17th KLON-FM (88.1) radio Jazz Caravan will carry them into neighborhoods and clubs they seldom visit, where they’ll swear an undying love for Charlie Parker in front of people they’ve barely met. Perfect strangers will share musical opinions, talk about their children, maybe even exchange phone numbers.

It happened Thursday. For $15 ($10 for KLON subscribers), participants got entry into 19 of the city’s far-flung jazz clubs as well as rides between them aboard charter buses and shuttles.

This night, more than 2,000 people are tossed together to explore a wild and exotic town--their own.

In front of Leimert Park’s World Stage Performance Space, 200 jazz fans swarm anxiously along the tree-lined sidewalk. Two large buses, the kind so often seen huffing and puffing around the city with loads of tourists, idle across the avenue. Though the 8 p.m. departure is still 30 minutes off, people surge toward the buses as soon as their doors open.

The same scene is being repeated all over town this starless night, as buses load up in front of designated venues scattered from West L.A. to Glendale, from Crenshaw to Los Feliz, north to Burbank and back to Hollywood.

While music is the caravan’s focus, the nightlong get-acquainted session on the bus rides is equally an attraction. While some fans have been known to spend the entire Caravan night in a single nightclub, so entranced with the music they never budge, others relish the rolling rap session with like-minded souls on a night when people do more than just get along, but get downright chummy.

So why not turn the tables, I think, and just stay on the buses?

Swept forward with the Leimert Park throng and into the first bus, which lists such destinations as Gainesville, Fais Do-Do and Joseph’s on the Plaza, I settle into a seat behind two well-groomed women and listen in.

“Last time on the caravan, we weren’t paying attention,” says Delores. “Some of us got stuck up in Hollywood at 2 a.m. I swore I’d never do it again. Can you imagine? I took a cab that was full of strangers back to my car!”

Her friend Reena, on her first Jazz Caravan, doesn’t want to hear it. “No negative thoughts,” she commands. “You promised me this would be fun.”

It will be. But sometime between 1 and 2 a.m., these carriages turn back into pumpkins, and the jazz Cinderellas still enjoying the ball can find themselves stranded. Veterans carefully design their evenings, sometimes with military precision.

But even the best-laid plans can go astray when they involve relaxed club schedules and dealing with city traffic. When the bus arrives at Gainesville, where owner Roy Gaines is scheduled to churn it up on his keyboard, it’s reported that the music is yet to begin. We head off north to Adams Boulevard.

Delores and Reena both have music backgrounds. They’ve known each other since they were second-graders in Indianapolis. Delores teaches piano and Reena sang with trumpeter Clora Bryant when she first came to town. Neither gets out to the clubs much now.

“This is a wonderful opportunity to be out under safe circumstances,” Reena says, a theme often repeated by others during the night. “Safe, as in ‘safety in numbers.’ ”

Volunteers with red-tipped flashlights bring our charter in like an airliner to a parking space on a lonely stretch of West Adams in front of Fais Do-Do. Delores and Reena disappear to the side entry.

I wait for the shuttle to the Cat and Fiddle on Sunset Boulevard, gateway to the Hollywood and Valley clubs. Jack, a caravan volunteer of several years from Newport Beach, wears a beige jacket and tweed cap against the evening air, and reminisces about the late saxophonist Bob Cooper. We’re interrupted by Eric, who does radio spots and has a short bit on the Disney Channel, who is disappointed to find out that the Fais Do-Do headliner, Hadda Brooks, is ailing.

“The secret,” Eric tells us, “is to spend minimum time on the bus, and therefore maximum time in the clubs.”

“Away we go,” announces 80-year-old William as the shuttle finally departs for Hollywood. He offers peppermints all around, lists Joe Williams, Count Basie and Hank Crawford as his favorite musicians, then jokes about his marriages, his various tours in the service and his years as a postman.

Laughs come from the back of the bus.

William, like almost everyone I speak to, is a die-hard jazz fan and claims to have boxes of LPs and 78s stacked away at home. He’s on his way to the Club Brasserie.

“They call me the Candyman at church because I’ve always got a handful of the things,” he explains. “Want another?”

*

Swirling knots of people greet the bus at the Cat and Fiddle. Told the Route 1 bus won’t leave for another five minutes, I peek inside where saxophonist Wilbur Brown has just gone on break.

Standing off to one side of the patio are Steve and Alan, both 19, who drove up from Irvine with their buddy Pete, 22, for the event. In jeans and T-shirts, they don’t look like your usual jazz fans.

Broke from coughing up the caravan admission, they’ve brought their own refreshments, conveniently hidden behind them. They claim to like jazz, especially the Estrada Brothers, whom they just saw over at the Derby. But they want me to know about their favorite band, a folk-rock outfit that, “Dare I say it,” says Pete, “sounds like Bob Dylan, only with more drums.”

A semi-familiar face swirls past.

“Hey isn’t that that guy from ‘RoboCop’?” Steve asks as a group makes for the bus. Alan follows them around a corner, then returns triumphantly. “Yeah, that was him. He’s the guy that gets melted at the end of the movie. I talked to him.”

Out front, Clay, a Ralphs employee from Redondo Beach, waits for the bus to Burbank, where he hopes to see bassist and KTLA airborne reporter Jennifer York.

On the way to Miceli’s, just off Hollywood Boulevard, I sit behind Frankie, a school psychologist; Karen, who’s in sales; and Beverly, a civil engineer. They’ve been friends since their days back at John Muir High School in Pasadena. They’re on their second try to see the Yellowjackets at Catalina Bar & Grill on Cahuenga Boulevard. The club was packed on their first attempt.

“Our whole high school loved jazz,” says Karen, class of ’68. “We even had Rick Holmes, the jazz radio deejay, come to our graduation.”

All three love Chaka Khan and look forward to seeing her at the Playboy Jazz Festival.

“Do you see her as a jazz singer?” I ask.

“You ought to hear her sing ‘My Funny Valentine,’ ” comes the answer.

And so the night goes. I bump into vocalist Kathy Griggs and Becky Musa, mother of young saxophone sensation Zane Musa, traveling together. George gets on in North Hollywood. A maintenance engineer at Cal State Long Beach, he was out to see bassist York’s band at J.P’s Lounge in Burbank, where he befriended a trio of teens up from Anaheim.

“They said they were in the jazz band there. They were so young they couldn’t even get into the Derby.”

At one point, I’m left alone with the driver, Armando, and his supervisor, Wayne. Neither likes jazz. We stop along Sunset for a takeout coffee and chat about hauls to Las Vegas and passengers who get motion sickness.

Sometime ‘round midnight, I begin to see Los Angeles as a city bound together by music, a city that’s been moving to the syncopations of jazz since before Elvis Presley was born. Judging by tonight, it’s one thing that people of all ages, races and backgrounds seem to love, and want to share. Differences be damned as long as life swings.

*

There is only one flash of trouble during the long night. Sometime around 1 a.m., I’m headed back toward Crenshaw and am pleasantly surprised to find William and Lucille on the packed bus. The radio is tuned to an easy-listening station and the sounds of contemporary saxophone music reverberate through the bus. No one seems to mind this mediocre jazz-fusion, and I revel in the harmonious idea that the night has instilled in us a patient, mellow, tolerant spirit.

But then James Taylor starts singing some pop ditty through the speakers and William’s had enough.

“Hey, what’s that?” he hollers at the driver from five seats back. “Let’s hear some jazz.”

Several grumbles of agreement convince the driver to give them their way or face mutiny. Suddenly, Taylor is replaced by an alto saxophone bopping its way through Miles Davis’ “Half Nelson.”

A cheer goes up. William offers peppermints all around.