Double Bill Is Hirt-Less in Cerritos

What would the Al Hirt band be without its namesake?

Listeners heard the answer to that question Friday at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts when trumpeter Hirt, recovering from a kidney infection, had to let his combo go on without him during a scheduled double bill with clarinetist Pete Fountain.

Hirt had spent Thursday, the opener of the two-evening “Legends of New Orleans” run, at La Palma Intercommunity Hospital, according to his wife, Beverly Hirt. The trumpeter was released on Friday, and eager to play, she said, but confined to bed on doctor’s orders.

Hirt’s capable backing quintet, despite a rousing, if not inventive, performance, just could not overcome the loss of its leader’s big, brassy personality, though saxophonist Rene Netto introduced the material and talked about Hirt with a chummy, easygoing New Orleans inflection. He even told Hirt’s jokes.

Playing all the numbers expected of them--”St. Louis Blues,” “Sweet Georgia Brown,” “When the Saints Go Marching In”--the group well-represented their boss’ approach to New Orleans music. The only thing its pop-influenced, Dixieland hybrid lacked was a sizable trumpeter to give it some character.

Clarinetist Fountain’s New Orleans music is also hybrid. It reflects a variety of jazz and trad-dance influences and features carefully arranged horn accompaniment rather than the traditional, improvised call and response. The horns often gave soloists, including Fountain, calculated backing during their improvisations. The music had a certain, glossy polish.

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That’s not to say it was cold or methodical. Fountain and his band played with spirit and kept the proceedings from being stiff. Fountain was the center of the action, playing his clarinet with bounce, brains and mischievous playfulness, leading the band with small gestures, facial tweaks or signals from his horn.

Medley arrangements, including one of “Amazing Grace” and “Just a Closer Walk With Thee,” jumped back and forth between themes with surprising ease. The band was particularly animated on Jack Sperling’s arrangement of “Shout Away Your Blues.” Pianist Ronny DuPont tickled the tunes by injecting ragtime touches into even the most swinging sections.

Fountain set the mood when he entered sporting a gray ponytail hanging from his cap, then removed the cap to reveal his perfectly shaved pate. From there, all the teasing, exaggerations and jokes were in the music. Fountain took long slides, often comically, into notes, then danced up the scale. At one point, he got the band to work up an unusual Latin feel as he quoted from “The Lady in Red.”