Missteps Keep Bowl Show From Swinging

“Swing Night” at the Hollywood Bowl Friday and Saturday had a lot less to do with swing music than it did with Duke Ellington. That was all to the good, since the swing-era segments--the first featuring singer James Naughton, the second showcasing the Royal Crown Revue--left much to be desired. And although Ellington’s music can hardly be considered representative of the swing era, we can never really hear too much of it, especially in this centennial year of his birth.

The most appealing moments in Friday night’s program were provided by the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra’s fascinating presentation of the Ellington concerto grosso piece “Night Creatures,” followed by a group of intriguing orchestral arrangements of “Satin Doll,” “Caravan” and “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing).”

As a small supplement, principal clarinetist Gary Bovyer delivered a workmanlike--if not especially swinging--version of Artie Shaw’s “Concerto for Clarinet.”

But what could the Bowl programmers have been thinking when they booked Naughton, a film and Broadway actor, to sing “Songs of the Swing Era”?

Talented though he may be as an actor, pleasant though his baritone voice may have sounded, Naughton’s perception of the elements of swing appeared virtually nil. Nor did his choice of material--”The Folks Who Live on the Hill,” “Street of Dreams”--have anything to do with swing other than having been written in the ‘30s.

Further compounding the disconnected quality of his set, he made the even stranger choice to sing “Moody’s Mood for Love”--a piece based upon Eddie Jefferson’s vocalese version of an improvised “Mood for Love” solo by saxophonist James Moody dating from the bop period of the early ‘50s. Curious.

The appearance of the Royal Crown Revue was not at all curious, however. Its presence obviously intended to bridge the program into the revivalist swing music of the ‘90s. The problem was that the band’s music seemed far more concerned with attitude than content.

Leaning heavily upon the riffing, urban blues styles of the ‘40s, dressed in snappy zoot suits, affecting hipster mannerisms, the Royal Crowns would have done well to have enhanced the largely forgettable set of originals with a few well-seasoned swing standards.