A Tale of Two Festivals: Playboy and Bootstrap

Jazz festival weekend in Los Angeles is going to be bigger than originally anticipated. The highlight event, of course, will be the 21st annual Playboy Jazz Festival. With a lineup that ranges from Joshua Redman, Chucho Valdes and Chick Corea to Grover Washington Jr., Ray Charles and Gerald Wilson, the festival--Playboy’s final major jazz event of the 20th century--is a kind of summing-up of the event’s long and eclectic musical history.

“We didn’t approach the festival with the idea of making it ‘bigger and better’ as our last show of the millennium,” says Dick Rosenzweig, president of the Playboy Jazz Festival. “Because that’s what we strive for every year--the best and most representative mix of jazz legends and up-and-coming stars, and of genres from traditional, straight-ahead jazz to big band, blues, fusion and hot styles such as Latin jazz and the current swing revival.”

But Rosenzweig adds that, from Playboy’s perspective, “This year’s festival ably represents the close of the first century of jazz and the beginning of its new era.”

There’s no doubt that the Playboy event’s stellar lineup represents the weekend’s most high-visibility jazz program. There is, however, a long tradition of alternate jazz festivals, reaching back to the “rebel” Newport Jazz Festival fomented by Charles Mingus in 1960 and, more recently, the alternative events sponsored in New York City by the Knitting Factory. And this year, Los Angeles has one of its own in the Bootstrap Creative Emergence Music Festival, set for tonight, Saturday and Sunday at the Electric Lodge in Venice.

The three-day program, strongly oriented toward a wide range of eclectic jazz interfaces--from world music to avant-garde--includes such artists as violinist L. Subramaniam, percussionist Adam Rudolph, woodwind players Bennie Maupin, Vinny Golia and Ralph Jones, composer David Cherry, pianist Larry Karush and others.

“We knew we were scheduling it on the weekend of the Playboy festival,” says Rudolph, who has been instrumental in creating the program. “But we don’t see it happening in reaction to, or as an alternative to Playboy, because we come from a completely perspective.

“And the title kind of explains it: ‘Bootstrap’ for, you know, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. And ‘Creative Emergence’ because we’re doing this completely self-produced, without any capital or corporate backing. It’s an expansion of the creative idea of playing an instrument and composing music and then creating an environment in which to present it. An intimate, cigarette- and alcohol-free environment where everybody can see and hear the music. That’s what we’re trying to create.”

* The Playboy Jazz Festival at the Hollywood Bowl. 2301 N. Highland Ave. Saturday, 2:30 p.m. to 11 p.m.; Sunday, 2 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. Some single and obstructed-view seats are still available on both days. (310) 449-4070.

* The Bootstrap Creative Emergence Music Festival at the Electric Lodge, 1416 Electric Ave. Venice. Tonight at 8, Saturday and Sunday at 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. $15 per show; $10 for students with valid ID. Limited seating; tickets sold one hour before show time. (323) 692-8080.

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Passings: It’s been a tough couple of weeks for jazz, with some significant departures. Mel Torme’s death on Saturday at the age of 73 came nearly three years after he had a stroke. Sadly and ironically, he had been producing some of the finest singing of his career in the weeks just before his illness. But Torme was so good for so long, so vital to the jazz world in general and to Southland jazz in particular, that his career was filled with musical highlights, dating back as far as his cool-sounding, seminal vocal group of the ‘40s and ‘50s, the Mel-Tones. And it is his musicality that will be missed the most, his capacity to bring a sense of meaningfulness to everything he touched, whether it was the commercial ballads he sang in the ‘60s or the soaring, improvisational and compelling music of his final two decades.

Saxophonist Ernie Wilkins was one of the spark plugs of the Count Basie revival of the mid-’50s. His arrangements--notably the classic Joe Williams’ thriller “Every Day (I Have the Blues)”--helped establish a sound that sustained interest in big jazz bands well into the rock music era. Wilkins, who died of a stroke in Copenhagen last week at 79, had been sidelined since 1991. Not always fully appreciated for his smooth, bop-tinged tenor saxophone playing, he will surely be remembered for his crisp, hard-swinging big-band writing.

Andy Simpkins, who died last week at 67 after a cancer operation, was far less known to the general public. But musicians knew him well and valued his intelligent bass playing. He was with the Three Sounds for nearly a decade, with George Shearing for about the same length of time, and with Sarah Vaughan for slightly longer. In between, and thereafter, he was a first-call sideman, the kind of player whose very presence in a rhythm section brought a sense of structure and cohesion to the music. A memorial service for Simpkins is scheduled for 1 p.m. on June 19 at the City of Angels Church of Religious Science, 5550 Grosvenor Blvd. Los Angeles. Information: (310) 577-3366. In lieu of flowers, donations should be sent to the Andy Simpkins Memorial Fund at the Santa Fe Jazz Foundation Inc., 110 Vuelta Chamisa, Santa Fe, N.M. 87501.