JAZZ REVIEW : ‘Basie Suite’ a Lively Retrospective at Teacher Convention

SAN DIEGO —  At the sprawling, 33-acre Town and Country Hotel, where panel discussions, classes and live music sessions took place in a dozen of the hotel’s venues, Friday’s most eagerly awaited event at the National Association of Jazz Educators Convention took place in the large Atlas Ballroom, where Frank Foster, leader of the Count Basie Orchestra, presented the premier of the “Basie Jazz History Suite.”

This elaborate 97-minute production turned out to be mainly a retrospective of the orchestra’s most durable hits, linked with a narration read by Joe Williams.

No concert by this orchestra can lack excitement, and such warhorse tunes as “Jumpin’ at the Woodside” and “Whirly Bird” (the latter featuring Foster in a greased-lightning tenor-sax solo) found the man in peak form.

The narration, however, was something else. Williams’ reading of the script was hesitant--not surprisingly, since the flat, matter-of-fact writing was at odds with his loose, easygoing personality. It could have used some of Basie’s own dry, elliptical wit.

The Kansas City years were glossed over with indecent haste. The blues, a vital thread during the band’s 50-year history, was not touched for an hour into the show.

Important alumni were left out: Even Gerald Wilson, who later in the evening would receive an award from the association’s Black Caucus, was not mentioned. Guest soloist Snooky Young’s heralded participation (the “Tonight Show” trumpeter once played with Basie) consisted of a single short number.

The soloists were in dazzling form. The brass section roared; the saxes had one wondrous soli outing.

The concluding 17 minutes, comprising a new three-part composition by Frank Foster, was a skillfully organized series of frameworks to show the band’s current and future direction.

Preceding the Basie segment were two small band sets: One by Red Rodney’s vigorous, tightly knit quintet and one by five faculty members from the Southland’s Dick Grove School of Music, led by the trombonist Rob McConnell, who admitted that the Rodney group was hard to follow.

Earlier in the day, some of the smaller rooms were filled with the sounds of intimate jazz. From Denver came the vastly underrated Getz-like tenor sax of Spike Robinson, teamed with a soulfully swinging pianist and singer, Ellyn Rucker. They will be in Los Angeles Tuesday at Alfonse’s.

From France by way of Los Angeles came the Aldeberts, Louis and Monique. After all their years trying to gain a major foothold in Los Angeles, their appearance here before a crowd that had never heard of them was a revelation. The two singers (Louis also plays electric keyboard) were a delight in their hour of original songs and adaptations of Bill Evans and Michel Legrand. Singing in English, French and Le Jazz Scat, the Aldeberts are a cool Franco-American champagne cocktail.

The convention has been valuable not only for the music but for such side shows as the exhibit hall, where a mob of visitors milled around examining the dozens of display booths, promoting colleges (the New York University booth lists its jazz degrees), jazz books (hundreds of them), festivals, instruction manuals, saxophone reeds and, of course, T-shirts, which outshone the patrons in their rainbow variety.