All That Jazz Arrives Today for Music Festival

Call it Invasion of the Banjos. In one of two festivals that close out Orange County Centennial activities this weekend, 21 Dixieland and traditional jazz bands descend on Costa Mesa today through Sunday for the first South Coast Centennial Jazz Festival.

While that may conjure up images of straw hats and endless choruses of “When the Saints Go Marching In,” the fact is that the bands tap a spectrum of early jazz styles that may shatter some pizza-palace stereotypes.

The Costa Mesa-based South Frisco Jazz Band, for instance, steers well clear of the “straw hat, vest and garter routine,” according to band leader and banjoist Vince Saunders. The band prefers a more sober look, with ties, and finds its musical inspiration about 2,300 miles west of New Orleans, in the San Francisco sound championed in the 1940s by Turk Murphy and Lu Watters.

Like Watters, Saunders’ band sports a two-cornet lineup that recalls King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band, circa 1923, the Chicago ensemble that featured an up-and-coming musician named Louis Armstrong.

“We try to re-create the type of sound (you would hear) had you walked into a Chicago jazz club in 1923 or 1924,” said tuba player Bob Rann.

Saunders formed the band in 1956 and four players remain from the original lineup. In 1978, Jim Snyder joined the group as trombonist (replacing Frank Demond, who had left several years earlier to join Preservation Hall in New Orleans) and a year later, Leon Oakley joined as the second cornet. The eight-man lineup has remained intact for 10 years.

That’s no easy task, considering that Snyder lives in Chicago and Oakley makes his home in San Rafael, north of San Francisco. The band gets together only about once a month, to play in festivals, and virtually never rehearses together.

The band builds its repertoire by listening to old recordings by the Oliver band and others in the vast and still-growing record collection of washboard player Bob Raggio. When a tune is chosen, Raggio tapes copies for all the band members to learn. The first time they play a new tune together is on stage, in front of an audience.

Rann calls it a “by-the-seat-of-the-pants approach,” but he said it works. “We’ve been around long enough to know each other and to not step on each other’s toes, musically,” he said.

Demond, a former Newport Beach house builder still with Preservation Hall, has said in interviews that moving to New Orleans and immersing himself in that city’s rich musical tradition have been essential to his music. But for his former band mates, all of whom hold regular daytime jobs, the part-time approach seems to work.

“If we had to depend on the band as a six-night-a-week job, that’s what it becomes--a job,” Saunders said. As it is, he added, “we really look forward to getting together.”

The band plays American and international festivals, and toured the Netherlands for 17 days last year. Saunders knows many of the bands in this weekend’s festival and lists the Climax Band from Toronto as one of his favorites. Other international bands include Poland’s Jazz Band Ball Orchestra, the Allotria Jazz Band and Veterinary Street Band from West Germany and Fat Sam’s Jazz Band from Scotland.

Among the many U.S. bands is another Orange County-based outfit, Irvine’s Misbehavin’ Jazz Band, the festival’s host group.

“This should be good for Orange County. I’m looking forward to it,” said Fred Montgomery, the band’s leader and drummer. “This is going to introduce (traditional) jazz to people who never heard it before.”

Montgomery’s band also plays the festival circuit, which includes annual stops in Sacramento, Pismo Beach and other cities. As president of the United Jazz Club of Southern California, Montgomery is involved in organizing the annual Los Angeles Classic Jazz Festival on Labor Day weekend.

“The first year is a tough one” for starting a festival, Montgomery said. “After that it catches on fire.”

Lorelei Productions, organizers of the West’s largest annual festival, the Sacramento Dixieland Jazz Jubilee, is producing the South Coast Jazz Festival and plans to make it an annual event.

Bands in the South Coast Metro Jazz Centennial Festival, today through Sunday, will rotate among 10 outdoor and indoor sites in Costa Mesa, including the Westin South Coast Plaza hotel, the Holiday Inn, the Red Lion Inn and the Beverly Heritage Hotel. Shuttle buses will ferry festival-goers from site to site. Programs will be available at registration desk in the lobby of the Westin South Coast Plaza. Hours: 11 a.m. Friday to 1 a.m. Saturday; 11 a.m. Saturday to 1 a.m. Sunday; 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday. Admission: $20 to $25 per day or $40 for the entire festival. Information: (714) 557-6619.

Features performances by: Misbehavin’ Jazz band, South Frisco Jazz Band, Nightblooming Jazzmen, Golden Eagle Jazz Band, Side Street Strutters, Great Pacific Jazz Band, Hot Frogs Jumping Jazz Band, Chicago Six, Fulton Street Jazz Band, Gold Standard Music Company, Tuleberg Jazz Band, Abalone Stompers, Garden Avenue Seven, Creole Rice, Rent Party Revellers, Stumptown Jazz, Climax Jazz Band, Jazz Band Ball Orchestra, Allotria Jazz Band, Veterinary Street Band and Fat Sam’s Jazz Band.