Hot jazz from a cold land

Do you like jazz? I love it.

If I say “jazz town,” what do you think of? New York, Paris, New

Orleans, Chicago, Kansas City? All correct answers, and there are at

least 38.5 more.

But here are two that may not leap to mind: Costa Mesa and

Novosibirsk, Siberia.

Costa Mesa is really close, and Siberia is really far, but the two

have become one at the 2005 Orange County Classic Jazz Festival -- a

four-day super-jazz-jam at the Costa Mesa Hilton on Bristol and the

Costa Mesa Holiday Inn just across the street. Each hotel has been

wailing with the sounds of classic jazz since Thursday, featuring

bands from around the world, literally.

One of them is the Siberian Jazz Band -- seven players from

Novosibirsk, which is the largest city in Siberia, as if you didn’t

know that.

The boys from Novosibirsk have been traveling the world since

1991, knocking people out with their jazz skills, overseas and at

home. In fact, according to the band’s founder, Boris Balakhnin, for

a while their Siberian neighbors weren’t sure what that noise coming

from their instruments was, but that’s all over now.

“At the beginning, when the band formed, people were puzzled,”

Balakhnin told a Pilot reporter. “They asked what we were playing.

Now, the music is popular at home.”

Whether you call it classic jazz or traditional jazz or Dixieland,

it’s the art form that was born in New Orleans in the early part of

the 20th Century.

Dixieland was built on the blues and ragtime forms, which had been

percolating in the South since the 1880s, but added a big scoop of

brass and a distinctive rhythm to the mix.

The traditional jazz firestorm started in New Orleans, then spread

north in all directions to Chicago, New York, Kansas City and the

West Coast.

There are endless arguments about who the daddy of Dixieland was,

but short of DNA testing, most people suspect Bix Beiderbecke --

although Louis Armstrong and King Oliver are looking mighty guilty.

Being partial to piano men, I’m nuts for Ferdinand “Jelly Roll”

Morton and Fats Waller. Anyone who can listen to Fats do “Ain’t

Misbehavin’” with that effortless stride bass and not smile needs to

have his smiler checked.

If all those names make your eyes light up and your feet tap

uncontrollably, then the Orange County Jazz Festival is where you

were meant to be. For traditional jazz fans, it’s the mother lode.

Better hurry though. Today is the final day, and the bands will be

honkin’ at the Hilton from 10:30 this morning until about 6 this

evening.

Eighteen bands play one-hour sets in six different rooms as fans

move from one room to the next, soaking in as much hot jazz as they

can, which is a lot, and hot.

Just the names of some of the bands tell you all you need to know

how high the needle on the fun meter goes: Chicago Six; Black Dogs;

Crazy Rhythm Hot Society Orchestra; Gator Beat; High Sierra Jazz

Band; Titanic Jazz Band; Nanette & Her Hotsy Totsy Boys; Night

Blooming Jazzmen (Get it? Night Blooming Jazzmen? Come on, people,

work with me on this); Paris Washboard, which is from Paris; Sac a

Pulses, which is from Clermont-Ferrand, France; the aforementioned

Siberian Jazz Band, which is from Russia; and Igor’s Jazz Cowboys

from ... Tempe, Ariz.

And if that’s not international enough for you, in honor of the

festival and its host city, the Titanic Jazz Band wrote a song called

“Costa Mesa U.S.A.” -- based on a melody composed in France.

Where did the name “Dixieland” come from anyway? I’m going to go

way out on a limb and guess it had something to do with the South.

But more specifically, it came from the Original Dixieland Jazz Band

-- a New Orleans group that made the first commercial recording of

classic jazz in 1917 and became known far and wide because of it.

I first became aware of Dixieland as a young, obnoxious teenoid in

the very Big Apple when my older sister, Nina, came home with an

album (a large, black vinyl disc that emitted sounds when played on a

“turntable”) by a group called the Dukes of Dixieland. She had been

to a famous Manhattan jazz club, on 50th Street, called the

Roundtable, where the Dukes of Dixieland were doing a two-week gig.

The Dukes whipped New York and her and me into a frenzy, and by

the end of their first week at the Roundtable, the Dukes were booked

on the Ed Sullivan Show.

The band, led by brothers, Fred and Frankie Assunto, had been

playing at Mama Lou’s Seafood and the Moonlight Inn in New Orleans

since 1946 before becoming an overnight sensation. Oh well -- o7sic

transit gloriaf7, which is Latin for “Gloria got sick on the

subway.”

If you can get to the Orange County Classic Jazz Festival today,

do it, by all means. You have my personal guarantee that you will be

tapping most if not all of your fingers and the majority of your toes

until Wednesday, maybe even Friday. If you can’t, you’ll have to wait

till next year, but it will definitely be worth it.

Will Dixieland be around for another hundred years? Hope so. But

like Fats Waller said, “One never knows, do one?” I gotta go.

* PETER BUFFA is a former Costa Mesa mayor. His column runs

Sundays. He may be reached by e-mail at o7ptrb4@aol.comf7.