A Fitful Marriage of Jazz and Blues at the Bowl

It’s hard to imagine jazz without a blues component. Sure, a few exceptions come to mind, but mention a great jazz artist and there’s a virtual certainty that it will be a player with deeply embedded blues roots.

The reverse, however, is not necessarily a mirror image. There are plenty of major blues artists who would have great difficulty surviving in a jazz milieu. Mastery of the traditional patterns, rhythms and melodic melismas of the blues style doesn’t necessarily prepare them to deal with the diverse harmonic schemes and multiplicity of styles essential to every jazz artist’s musical palette.

This fundamental contrast was on full display Wednesday night at the Hollywood Bowl in “Blues, Hot and Live.”

The opening act, the Jazz-Blues All-Stars, an ensemble formed for the show, gave a convincing display of what happens when jazz players perform standard 12-bar blues numbers as well as standards in a blues context. Articulating their solos with the manner, the emphasis and the slippery, sliding phrases of blues style, front-line soloists Red Holloway, Houston Person and Rickey Woodard used their tenor saxophones to shout, cajole and preach their way into jazz/blues compatibility.

They did so despite the occasional difficulties experienced by the rhythm section (organist Larry Goldings, guitarist Ron Eschete and drummer Jeff Hamilton) in its quest for musical togetherness.

When everything got into sync, the results were irresistible, especially when Woodard--surely one of the most underrated tenor saxophonists in jazz--was soloing. Delivering a set of hard-driving, in-your-face choruses in the grooving “Blues Up and Down,” he was superb, countering his up-tempo work with warmly muscular soloing on ballads.

Headlining the second half of the bill, singer Etta James and her Roots Band displayed both the pleasures and the limitations in a blues performance. Although James won a Grammy in 1995 for best jazz vocal, the jazz qualities in her Wednesday-night appearance were elusive, at best.

Her singing style continues to be one of the glories of the blues--a sung-spoken, persuasive monologue interspersed with glorifying shouts. And her rendering of “At Last” underscored her capacity to cross over into pop.

But James didn’t aid her cause by offering so many funereal-tempo numbers. Backed by a stirring ensemble, she made too little use of their abilities--or her own--to offer the sort of high-voltage numbers that might have brought the crowd of 12,000-plus to their feet. A little more jazz energy might have helped.