Big bands, hot tunes, cool kids

It’s been generations since brassy jazz played by guys wearing tuxedoes was America’s mainstream pop music. But, for plenty of people, it still don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.

The audience for what’s lately called “trad” jazz — “traditional” jazz from the danceable days, before postwar bebop revved up the tempos and harshed the sweetness — has been getting younger for years. Look no further than the swing dance revival that heated up in the 1990s and never really cooled off in hip towns like Portland.

Sure, big band jazz is nostalgic, Vancouver bandleader and saxophonist Cary Pederson said, but that’s not why 20-somethings are drawn to it today. “It’s hot. It’s cool. It swings,” Pederson said. “It kicks. It moves. It’s exciting!”

And it just so happens that two of the busiest bona fide big bands that regularly swing Stumptown are based in Vancouver.

You can catch VanPort Jazz, a 17-piece band, at the Aurora Colony and Winery in Aurora, Ore. (about 30 miles south of Vancouver) at 7 p.m. Wednesday. Tony Starlight, the Portland comedian and chameleon-like singer, will front the band for this special performance. After that, VanPort Jazz is booked to play both days (Aug. 25 and 26) of the Airshow of the Cascades in Madras, Ore. Then the band comes home to Vancouver and the Pearson Air Museum Swing Dance on Sept. 23.

“Many big bands are performing once or twice every three to six months, and they’re searching for places to play,” said Pederson. “We are booked out six months in advance.” The group recently had a blast stopping traffic in downtown Portland as part of the free Noontime Showcase concert series by Portland’5 Centers, he said; turnout was great and Starlight was there with his special blend of serious crooning and frontman humor.

VanPort Jazz evolved from what used to be the Beacock Music Swing Band, which was led by the late Dale Beacock, founder of the Vancouver music store. “I cannot believe it’s been six years” since Beacock died in a bicycle accident, Pedersen said.

That Beacock band was what’s called a “new horizons” group, Pederson said; that’s shorthand for amateur musicians of a certain age who play chiefly for fun and nostalgia. And that’s just great, Pederson said — but when he took over, he decided to pursue Dale Beacock’s real dream of elevating the group to a higher level via professional and semi-professional musicians.

How cool, then, to sign up Mike Evans, a former member of the Glenn Miller Orchestra (and a recently retired Clark County Sheriff’s deputy) as lead trumpet player? Super cool, Pederson said. Evans was even invited to tour Europe with the ongoing Glenn Miller Orchestra recently, Pederson said — “But he turned them down because of his commitments to this group. Imagine, he rejected a free trip to Europe to keep playing with us.

“I feel so honored to have him in my group,” Pederson said. “Overall, I’ve never worked with finer people. And it’s all about the beauty that is big band jazz.”

Happy feet

Down on Northeast Dekum Street in Portland is a former Odd Fellows Hall that’s been remodeled and repurposed in a highly Portland way. Downstairs is The Oregon Public House, which bills itself as the worlds’s first nonprofit pub (with about $142,000 given to charity so far); upstairs is the Village Ballroom, a medium-sized venue with room for 300 people — or, to count it another way, 600 happy feet.

The Ne Plus Ultra Jass Orchestra has yet to pack the place like that, according to bandleader Sammuel Murry-Hawkins — but the dancers who did take the floor on July 20 knew their moves. They seemed to represent (at least) three generations, too: there were couples who looked like grandparents, couples who looked like parents — and at least one 20-something couple that seemed to be out on a dancing date. They were dressed to the nines in sharp suit and short dress; the graceful and ebullient young lady sure knew how to kick up her heels.

“We’ve had an audience of eight and we’ve had an audience of 70,” said Murry-Hawkins — who said that he phoned 20 different venues in search of a place to play before The Village Ballroom said yes. The Ne Plus Ultra Jass Orchestra now has a monthly engagement there, at 7 p.m. on the third Thursday of every month.

Murry-Hawkins, who lives in downtown Vancouver, said he launched the Ne Plus Ultra Jass Orchestra because nobody in this region was delving all the way back to the Dixieland and ragtime styles of the 1920s.

That was back before the word “jazz” even had a standard spelling. And it was before guitars and string basses were welcomed into dance bands; in those days, the plucking and strumming came from a banjo, and the bass part was boomed out by a tuba.

But on July 20, the Ne Plus Ultra band took a baby step toward modernity, with a new string bass player debuting. These days, Murry-Hawkins said, it’s hard to replace a professional tuba player on short notice.

Coordinating the schedules of this talented and busy group of 13 instrumentalists is Murry-Hawkins’ biggest challenge, he said. “Most of them play in three or four or five different ensembles,” he said. “The banjo player belongs to nine other groups.”

With his black tuxedo, slicked-back hair, sharp goatee and conductor’s wand, Murry-Hawkins is the very picture of your great-grandparents’ favorite bandleader. His patter behind the microphone is authentic, old-fashioned emcee formality. Occasionally he croons a tune like “You’re Driving Me Crazy” or “Don’t Bring Lulu;” more often he introduces the next tune with a joke, turns his back — and then hops and jiggles about, modestly, while conducting the band.

The point of this music, he said, isn’t the heroic instrumental improvisation that came later — it’s smooth ensemble beauty, pure and simple. The group even features the Tritone Trio, a rare group of male harmony singers.

“The sound is so lush and elegant, the genre is really a combination of classical and jazz,” Murry-Hawkins said.

His band’s Latin name, by the way, literally means “No Greater Than” or “No Further Beyond” — in other words, “The Greatest Jazz Orchestra.” Judge for yourself at the Village Ballroom on the third Thursday of the month.