‘Light’ Jazz Has Found a Hefty Market in S.D.

Exact demographics for the San Diego market may not be their strong point, but the people at GRP, perhaps the leading “light” jazz label, know they’ve got a major market here.

“San Diego’s always been considered a good jazz town because of KIFM and the promoters--the shows they do at places like Humphrey’s and the Bacchanal,” said Mark Wexler, head of marketing for the New York record label that was founded by Dave Grusin and Larry Rosen.

Even though Wexler labeled San Diego a small town and pegged the area’s population at “about 750,000” (it’s well over 2 million), he had a better idea of just how well his company’s records--by artists such as Lee Ritenour, Grusin, Chick Corea, David Benoit and Tom Scott--are doing.

Wexler couldn’t supply figures for San Diego alone, but said sales here account for a significant portion of the label’s Southern California sales, which totaled more than $3 million last year.

Tower Records on Sports Arena Boulevard, the largest record store in the county, with sales of $500,000 a month, can attest to GRP’s strength here.

“It’s a very good market,” said Danny Birch, assistant manager at the store. “There are two radio stations in town that play commercial jazz. You don’t find that in other cities. They’ve always done well, even when they were independent.”

GRP signed a distribution agreement with MCA a couple of years ago that puts its albums in nearly every major record store in the country. Birch said a top GRP artist such as keyboard man David Benoit might sell 300 to 400 albums at the Sports Arena Tower store alone. By comparison, straight jazz artists are lucky to sell half-a-dozen copies.

Those who enjoy echoic sax riffs a la David Sanborn or the Chinese water torture of drum machines will want to check out saxophonist Gerald Albright’s 8:30 p.m. appearance March 8 at the Bacchanal.

Albright is a versatile talent. Immediately after college, he toured with keyboard player Patrice Rushen, first on sax, later on bass. Unfortunately, there’s only one track from his new self-produced “Bermuda Nights,” where his playing takes precedence over the electronic Jacuzzi jazz fog. On the composition “Too Cool,” his smooth, sexy playing, reminiscent of Grover Washington Jr.’s, is perfectly set off by the lyrical work of Bobby Lyle on acoustic piano.

Undoubtedly, the album is headed for commercial success, having already sold 120,000 copies. Albright acknowledges his desire to make music that appeals to a wide audience. Pressed, he even admits being a victim of the corporate marketing machine at Atlantic Records, his label.

“A lot has to go into the way the record company likes to market me,” Albright said. “There’s a fine line between how they’d like to market me and how I’d like to be marketed. My music touches the technical, electronic side, and the beat. Record companies subconsciously think you’ve got to have some kind of beat to promote sales. Between those two elements, we arrived at the type of music that I’m doing, and I feel real comfortable doing it.”

For a more challenging evening, consider hearing free-form reed master Vinny Golia on Monday night at Jazz Mine Records and CDs in La Jolla. Golia has recorded with New York free jazz tenor sax man Tim Berne and with pianist Wayne Peet and bassist Ken Filiano, who will form part of a quintet for the Jazz Mine date. His new album, “Worldwide and Portable,” is one of about a dozen he’s made as a leader.

Tierrasanta producer and musician John Archer placed his name among rarefied company on Grammy night last week. Archer and Ronn Satterfield are the players behind the local band Checkfield. Both are fluent on guitar, piano, vocals and synthesizers, and they play a majority of the instruments on Checkfield’s new 11-song album, “Through the Lens.”

Some call the music, with its thick, studio-produced textures, “New Age.” Recorded at Network Productions in Rancho Bernardo, where Archer works as a producer, the album is receiving local radio play and selling well in such cities as San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Minneapolis and Chicago.

But it was Archer’s work at the control board that got the Grammy nomination, not the music. Along with albums by Doc Severinsen, Stevie Winwood, Glenn Frey, Little Feat and Scritti Politti, Checkfield’s album was up for best engineering.

“We paid very careful attention to the blends between the acoustic and synthesized instruments,” Archer said, explaining why he thinks the recording was a contender. “Most people would be hard-pressed to tell what’s acoustic and what’s synthesized.”

Despite Archer’s seamless production, the Grammy people gave the engineering award to singer Winwood’s “Roll With It.”

SHORT RIFFS: The last of the Athenaeum’s five-part jazz history lecture series starts at 7 p.m. Monday. San Diego Union music critic George Varga will talk about jazz and its many mutations in the 1970s and ‘80s. . . . By the way, the Athenaeum has been adding to its jazz collection--on tape, CD and vinyl--and a $35 membership provides you access to the whole works. A librarian at the La Jolla cultural center has about 1,000 jazz recordings, including 500 records, more than 200 tapes and 200 CDs. There’s a five-album limit per checkout. . . . Guitarist Joe D’Orio opens three nights at Diego’s Loft tonight. . . . Pianist Jimmy Corsaro and singer Sharon Andrews play Wednesday through Saturday nights at The Library on Mission Gorge Road, a piano lounge in the form of two living rooms filled with books.