Improvising With Mort Sahl

Mort Sahl and jazz.

It’s been a happy combination since the 1950s. Sahl with his quick-witted monologues, flitting from topic to topic, ideas bursting out in a stream of seemingly random free associations. Jazz musicians with the sudden inventiveness that is at the core of improvisation, musical riffs bouncing off one another, whipping through the flow of chord changes.

And the pairing is back again for the summer, as Sahl--still the social commentator, still working with material from the day’s news--kicks off an unusual two-month run at the Jazz Bakery. Tonight and Friday, he’s working on a bill with jazz pianist Marian McPartland, followed by solo performances on Saturday and Sunday. In coming weeks, he’ll do more one-man shows, as well as make joint appearances with trumpeter Harry “Sweets” Edison, Latin jazz artists Justo Almario and Marcos Ariel and others in programs that run nightly from Wednesday through Saturday.

Why is Sahl, 71, doing it? Why is he taking on such an extended booking over a summer busy with entertainment?

Sahl ponders the answer for a moment--which is as long as he ever hesitates before launching into one of his free-floating responses, filled with circuitous pathways, parenthetical sidebars and quick gags.

“Because it seemed natural to have a place to keep the chops going,” he says. “We’re going to try to go to London and New York, too, and do the same thing in small theaters. . . . I didn’t want to do one of the comedy places. . . . When I used to do the Crescendo Club, it was with Ellington, Basie, Peggy Lee, Joe Williams. . . . I just thought that a jazz room was more in keeping with what I do, you know, and the audiences are good, too. . . . You gotta work. . . . Keep going in kind of a home base to hone the act. . . . ‘Cause you don’t know what you think unless you say it.”

What Sahl has to say relates to jazz not simply via his improvisational style. Like Lennie Bruce and Lord Buckley (the too-little-known comedian who favored hipster-style language), he also has been fascinated by the dry wit and ironic humor that crops up so frequently in the conversation of jazz musicians. He often speaks fondly of late alto saxophonist Paul Desmond, a close friend whose own wry sensibility clearly impacted Sahl.

“He once said to me,” recalls Sahl, “ ‘I’m condemned to do everything you try to do, but I have to do it through a reed.’ ”

And he has a receptive ear for the absurdities that frequently course just beneath the surface of the jazz life.

“I went to play the Ohio State Fair once with Dave Brubeck,” he says. “And Dave asks the promoter, ‘Can I check the piano before tonight?’ And the guy says, ‘We don’t have a piano.’ So Dave says, ‘What do you have?’ And the guy says ‘Well, we have an organ.’ Dave reacts with, ‘An organ?’ And the guy says, ‘Yeah. Count Basie played an organ when he was here!’ Man, the things musicians have to do to survive.”

Sahl’s own career has seen its ups and downs. When he arrived on the scene in the ‘50s, he turned away from the comedic pattern of the time. His humor seemed modeled more upon Mark Twain and Will Rogers, passing up one-liner streams of gags in favor of a looser, less structured style that was filled with topical commentary, not hesitating to take on targets of every political persuasion.

“Is there any group I haven’t offended?” he sometimes said. And, even today, he is likely to follow up a Kenneth Starr gag with one skewering President Clinton.

It is a style that clearly had its impact upon Bruce, Woody Allen and dozens of other comedians.

His highly vocal advocacy of a conspiracy theory in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy cost Sahl some of his audience in the ‘60s. But he returned to prominence with the anti-establishment attitudes surrounding the Vietnam War protests--although here, as elsewhere, his refusal to follow anyone’s party line tended to make him an outsider, a role that doesn’t seem to bother him at all.

Ironically, in the post-Vietnam years, the no-target-is-sacred attitude he helped create became commonplace among young comedians, even though it rarely surfaced with Sahl’s subtlety and intelligence.

“The current index,” he says, “seems to be how much you can torture people. You listen to a comedian and somebody asks you, ‘What’d you think of that?’ And you say, ‘Well, I didn’t like it very much.’ And they say, ‘Right, he was getting to you, wasn’t he? You don’t like the truth, do you?’ It’s the whole idea of entertainment as discomfort.”

But don’t expect any entertainment as discomfort at Sahl’s Jazz Bakery appearances.

“One of the things I remember about working at the Crescendo . . . was that you never wanted to leave between sets. You always wanted to hear what was coming next. That’s what we’ll be going for at the Bakery.”

Sahl’s booking at the Jazz Bakery is paralleled, for two weeks, by an similarly atypical event at Catalina Bar & Grill, Los Angeles’ other major jazz club. On Tuesday the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical “Ain’t Misbehavin’ ” opens a two-week run (through July 26) at the club in a production that features Vivian Jett, Judi Edwards, Latrice Verrett, Ron Lucas, Inger Burton and A. Curtis Farrow.

The seemingly unusual booking, in fact, makes perfect sense according to director and choreographer Farrow, who points out that “Ain’t Misbehavin’ ” “started as cabaret entertainment in New York before transferring to a big Broadway theater in 1978.”

And, in any case, it is closely associated with jazz, since it includes 30 songs either written or recorded by the great jazz stride pianist (and entertainer) Fats Waller.

Sahl’s Jazz Bakery run and the “Ain’t Misbehavin’ ” appearance at Catalina underscore the difficulties jazz venues can have during the two summer months, when they must deal with significant competition from other venues, with programs at the Skirball Center and MOCA on Thursdays, and at LACMA and the UCLA at the Armand Hammer on Fridays. Although high-priced national talent doesn’t usually appear at the free programs, the quality level of the L.A. jazz community is so elevated that many listeners take advantage of summer to give their entertainment budgets a break.

Catalina Bar & Grill will continue its standard policy of world-class jazz bookings at the conclusion of the “Ain’t Misbehavin’ ” performances. The Jazz Bakery reverts to its usual full week of jazz programming in September, and also produces its first outside event at the Ford Amphitheatre on July 26 with “Bebop Heaven,” featuring singers Joe Williams, Annie Ross and an all-star, bop-oriented jazz ensemble.

BE THERE

Mort Sahl and Marian McPartland at the Jazz Bakery, tonight and Friday at 8 and 10 p.m. $35 admission. Sahl solo performances, Saturday, 8:30 and 10 p.m., $25 admission, and Sunday, 2 and 7 p.m., $20 admission. Sahl solo performances Tuesday and Wednesday, 8 p.m., $25 admission, and July 19, 2 and 7 p.m., $20. Sahl and Harry “Sweets” Edison, July 17 and 18, 8 and 10 p.m., $25 admission. 3233 Helms Ave., Culver City. (310) 271-9039.

“Ain’t Misbehavin’,” Tuesday through July 26, at Catalina Bar & Grill, 1640 N. Cahuenga Blvd., (213) 466-2210. $15 Sundays-Thursdays, $18 Fridays-Saturdays. With two-drink minimum. Shows at 8:30 and 10:30 p.m.