THE
BEAUTIFUL BAND was ready and waiting when
conductor John Clayton came out carrying his bass and cued them,
right in the middle of Jazz Bakery proprietor Ruth Price's
introduction. They played one shocking quarter note, and Price
stopped talking.
The note was flawless. It didn't last long, but you wondered,
how did they get that little ordinary thing to sound so good?
Silence followed. The house was packed.
After quite a few seconds, another beautiful lonely note was
struck, and then another sounded, sooner this time, like a
lighthouse seen from sea. Co-leader Jeff Clayton began to play
''Blue Monk'' on his alto saxophone, starting out like Hank
Crawford until the ghost of Cannonball Adderley dropped down from
the barn rafters and began to guide his fingers toward the
hard core.
The sound became a little bit bluer than Monk usually got,
honest, and the band shifted its hams and gathered in a few chords
from somewhere deep in the history of jazz.
NOW
A GLEEFUL HOWL surmounted a million dollars worth of
brass talent: Snooky Young was taking a joyous growl chorus,
drawing on the lore he's absorbed since his days beside Sy Oliver
in Jimmy Lunceford's band.
It was killer work, which it ought to be, since the player spent
years playing lead trumpet with Count Basie and paced the brass
section of Doc Severinsen's Tonight 
Show
band when the program moved to the coast.
Before long, fellow Basie veteran John Clayton, conducting
the three intertwining wind choirs in his best Gene Kelly mode, had
brought the number, which he calls ''I Be Serious About Dem
Blues,'' to a close.
And somewhere, the band had revealed its personality, that of a
gorgeous giant beast with exquisite manners. It's the young blood
brother of the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis band that used to thrill New
York, of which Snooky Young was a founding member.
THE
THRILLS CAME thick and fast all evening in Culver
City. This was before anyone knew they'd become part of the Los
Angeles Philharmonic.
''A Jazz Party'' was a key-evasive chart in which tenormen
Charles Owens and Ricky Woodard dueled like Frank Foster and Frank
Wess used to do in the Basie band. This ensemble seemed a
little more intimidating; its voice being well-tuned thunder.
Yet the giant had a pianissimo costume, little black hats over
the bells of the trombones and trumpets, silvery flutes and
clarinets standing in for the martial saxophones. This costume it
donned for ''Back Home in Indiana,'' on which co-leader Jeff
Hamilton used whispering brushes on his drums instead of
sticks. Here the chords drifted softly past, opening and closing
like fireflies, each one glowing like foot lights in a different
pastel color. John Clayton was the author.
The sound appeared again on a showcase for the trombone
section, ''Sunny Side of the Street,'' a comment on the famous Sy
Oliver chart for Tommy Dorsey during which four of the best section
men in the business got solo space: Maurice Spears, Ira Nepus,
George Bohannon and Thurman Green. Oh, can they play!
YOUNG
DIANA KRALL
TOOK HER PLACE inside this warm misty sound
when it came her turn to sing, rendering ''The Gentle Rain''
as though she were one of the veteran sidemen. She backed herself
on piano, too, in a couple of charming trio numbers. She swings out
and is not afraid on that instrument, and her singing is
confidential and delightful.
A tribute to Duke Ellington closed the program, during which
Jeff Clayton soared as sinuously as Johnny Hodges on Billy
Strayhorn's ''Star Crossed Lovers,'' taking a very beautiful
solo. Bill Cunliffe made like Ellington on his piano to
introduce ''Things Ain't What They Used to Be.''
That brought the band back in full but elegant cry as they
fulfilled their aspiration to get up on top of the top.
