JAZZ REVIEW : 9th Annual L.A. Classic Festival Off to Good Start

Despite the recession, the ninth annual Labor Day weekend Los Angeles Classic Jazz Festival appears to be at or slightly ahead of its 5,000 daily attendance record set in 1991, projecting a total of 20,000 admissions between noon Friday and Monday afternoon, when a monster jam session will conclude the proceedings at two airport hotels.

More than ever, the festival has a split if not splintered personality. The principal appeal continues to be nostalgia. The surprisingly crisp and disciplined Tex Beneke band, its 78-year-old leader no longer playing tenor but singing the oldies in a strong twangy voice, drew a huge standing-room-only crowd.

There were 28 traditional bands within hearing range, ranging from the supremely corny (and hugely popular) Igor’s Cowboy Band, in cavalry outfits, out of Tempe, Ariz., to the respectful recreations of Pasadena’s veteran Golden Eagle band, with its own large following. The Dixieland anthems got their customary workouts by groups not only domestic but foreign, including Yoshio Toyama’s Saints from Japan, Greentown from what was once Yugoslavia and Fat Sams, a Scottish group led by Hamish McGregor that also played tributes to Count Basie and other moderns--very swingingly, too.

The show biz-oriented favorites included, as before, Banu Gibson, one of the best of the belting vocalists, and Conrad Janis’ Beverly Hills Unlisted Jazz Band.

But along with the strutting pleasures of the past, the festival has always stressed the timeless skills of great instrumentalists working together in various permutations. There were more than four dozen all-stars on hand this time, among them Yank Lawson, still blowing a lot of trumpet at the age of 81, and Peter Ecklund, an impressive Beiderbecke-influenced, Yale-educated cornetist who is a half-century Lawson’s junior.

Another senior, 79-year-old George Van Epps, playing the seven-string amplified guitar he devised years ago, reaffirmed that jazz can swing and be most extraordinarily beautiful.

There seemed a remarkable population of masterful clarinetists--Chuck Hedges, Ken Peplowsky, Abe Most, Mahlon Clark, Bobby Gordon--and of reed man generally, with Tommy Newsom, of the “Tonight” show band, playing some sharp and driving tenor and Jim Galloway, Rick Fay and George Probert having their own soprano summit.

One of the festival’s unlikely surprises was the teaming of Jackie Coon on fluegelhorn and Eddie Erickson on banjo, the latter playing with a kind of lyricism uncharacteristic of the instrument to create an oddly attractive duet. Coon, working in the larger groupings as well, proved again he has few peers on that mellow horn.

Working to increase the participation of black musicians, the festival offered Pieces of Eight, a kind of successor firm to Joe Liggins and the Honeydrippers, doing late ‘40s rhythm and blues; the Chester Lane Five (Lane, a Louis Jordan Tympany Five alumnus); the Miller-Eaton vocal trio out of St. Louis; and Chris Kelly’s Black and White New Orleans Jazz Band, playing some of the most authentic-sounding of the revivals.

Johnny Crawford, once the son of Chuck Connors on “The Rifleman” TV series, now fronts a tux-wearing band doing Paul Whiteman encores and sings “Just a Gigolo” in a period tenor.

And, as yet another offering in the festival’s eclectic mix, actress-singer Angela Carole Brown did a sleekly arranged bilingual tribute to Josephine Baker.

The festival’s all-points inclusionism might dismay jazz purists, but it probably helped keep the crowds coming in a time when other jazz parties have encountered heavy weather.