Jazz : Spotlight : Sounds That (Should Have) Made L.A. Famous

It’s taken way too long, but Central Avenue is finally beginning to receive some of the attention it deserves as a vital location in the history of jazz and, for that matter, in the history of African American popular music.

“Central Avenue Sounds: Jazz in Los Angeles (1921-1956)” (****, Rhino, due Tuesday), a giant step toward the much-needed acknowledgment of the scene’s importance, is a four-CD boxed set designed to serve as an audio companion to the remarkable University of California oral history book of the same name. And it does so superbly on two important counts: as a sequential, audio history of the music that coursed up and down the avenue, and, beyond that, as sheer entertainment--a compilation of consistently rewarding music filled with fascinating obscure moments as well as an astounding number of familiar hit songs.

Central Avenue’s position, even before the ‘20s, as the main stem of the then-segregated African American area of Central Los Angeles, made it a hub for every kind of entertainment. As the decades unfolded, the avenue was filled with bars, restaurants, nightclubs, hotels, dance halls, burlesque houses and after-hours joints (especially during Prohibition). But, unlike Manhattan’s 52nd Street, it was not an isolated entertainment area but surrounded by residential areas.

“It was a community. That’s the best way to put it,” notes tenor saxophonist Teddy Edwards, whose role as a Southland bebop pioneer is well chronicled in the set via recordings with his own quartet and the Howard McGhee Sextet. “But it was a community that had music right in the middle of it, going on from, say, 9 in the evening until 6 o’clock in the morning, from 118th all the way to 1st Street.”

And because young players could easily make personal contact with their musical idols--from Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington to Art Tatum and Dexter Gordon--there was a constant flow of creativity pouring into the music scene. Late-night jam sessions and ample opportunities to sit in with the many nationally touring groups that poured into the area further enhanced the high level of musical interchange.

The quality of the emerging scene is present from the first track in the collection, “Ory’s Creole Trombone,” by trombonist Kid Ory’s Sunshine Orchestra. Recorded in 1921 in a relatively primitive Santa Monica recording studio, it is presented here for the first time at its correct pitch--a sterling example of the presence of high-level New Orleans jazz in Los Angeles at a very early time.

The arrival of pianist-composer Jelly Roll Morton in Los Angeles in the late teens and early ‘20s--the first major jazz artist to reside in the Southland--had a significant influence upon the jazz of the period. He is represented in the collection with, among others, a 1923 selection, “Someday Sweetheart”; one of several versions of his classic solo piece “The Pearls”; and a rendering (recorded in 1938) of his “Mamanita,” a work whose habanera rhythm reflected his belief in the importance of a “Spanish tinge.”

By the ‘30s and early ‘40s, Central Avenue was bustling with jazz, as Armstrong, Ellington, Tatum, Lionel Hampton and others made frequent appearances. And the collection includes such classics as Armstrong’s “When It’s Sleepy Time Down South,” Tatum’s rendering of “Tiger Rag,” Hampton’s “Central Avenue Breakdown” and a rare version (from a radio air-check) of Ellington on piano accompanying singers Herb Jeffries, Ivie Anderson and Joe Turner in songs from his Los Angeles musical “Jump for Joy.”

The riches continue to flow in the ‘40s, with a pair of instrumental tracks from the Nat King Cole Trio as well as his familiar original “Straighten Up and Fly Right.” And the arrival of bebop is signaled by the presence of Charlie Parker and Miles Davis with “Ornithology” and “A Night in Tunisia.”

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Even more intriguing, however, are tracks by the Howard McGhee Sextet, clearly indicating a high level of bebop sophistication around Central Avenue well before the appearance of the East Coast bop titans. And, equally significant, the ‘40s witnessed a prolific R&B; and urban blues emergence (initially via the work of T-Bone Walker, Cecil Gant, Joe Liggins, Johnny Otis, Slim Gaillard, Roy Milton and others, all represented here)--one that established the Southland as a seminal source of the music that eventually spawned rock ‘n’ roll.

Some sterling jazz performances from the late ‘40s and early ‘50s are included--among them a few tracks from Gerald Wilson’s brilliant mid-’40s band; several fine outings featuring Buddy Collette and Charles Mingus; some exceptional tenor saxophone work from Wardell Gray and Dexter Gordon (including their high-speed romp “The Chase”); and a pair of forward-looking mid-’50s recordings by alto saxophonist Frank Morgan and perennial Los Angeles pianist Gerald Wiggins.

But, as the jazz activities around Central Avenue began to diminish, eventually to be replaced in the wider public knowledge by the more nationally known but far paler “West Coast jazz” of the ‘50s, blues music--of every form--began to dominate. And a good portion of the fourth CD in the collection is given over to artists such as Otis, Liggins, Percy Mayfield, Charles Brown and inimitable tenor saxophonist Big Jay McNeely.

The compilation is packaged with a 92-page booklet that includes complete track information as well as a series of informative background essays covering the history of Central Avenue, Jelly Roll Morton, bebop and the blues. All in all, it’s a must-have collection, not just for its jazz qualities, but also for its invaluable illumination of a vibrant era in the cultural life of Los Angeles.