The Jazz Bakery Blues

We almost lost The Jazz Bakery! Yup, our “most prestigious jazz space in Los Angeles — a serious, no-frills, seven-nights-a-week nonprofit listening room of international renown, where everybody who’s anybody has played; where iconic musicians turn up in the audience as regularly as on the bandstand.” Yes!  That Jazz Bakery! Like so many others, they’d “lost their lease.” Pues ni modo.

Our “musical metropolis,” called The GRAMMY Museum, has come to the rescue and is assisting in the relocation efforts. Ruth Price’s The Jazz Bakery, her “baby” which she conceived and founded sixteen years ago, was warmly embraced for this seminal show at the GRAMMY Sound Stage. The GRAMMY Sound Stage is beyond perfect, since it provides for The Jazz Bakery what it provides for all its events: “the finest in world-class ‘A’ list musicians in an intimate space where the contact between musician and audience is focused and unspoiled.” No food and drinks sharing the room — just truly and purely about music.

Our hosts for this evening were KJAZZ’s LeRoy Downs and KPFK’s Sergio Mielniczenko. At last, to see these men behind the voices from the radio. The introductions were brief — it was all about music. Mielniczenko introduced Dori Caymmi, originally from Rio, who relocated to Los Angeles nearly thirty years ago and has been here ever since. Caymmi’s father, Dorival Caymmi, who passed away last year at 94, was considered to be one of the most important songwriters in Brazilian popular music. It’s been written that Caymmi was perhaps second only to Antonio Carlos Jobim “in establishing a songbook of the century’s Brazilian identity,” and Dori is carrying forward the tradition with his lush, sweet sound of the Bossa Nova.

His entrance to the stage through the audience was relaxed and casual, as was his music, but there was something unusual. His guitar that he was carrying had no head on it. There was the main body and a faceplate, but it had no headstock for tuning; instead, tuning was done at a redesigned tailpiece using micrometer-style tuners and special strings with a ball at both ends. The famous headless guitar. The rationale for this overall design was the elimination of unnecessary weight, especially the unbalanced headstock. What it seemed to do for this performance was allow Caymmi to truly embrace his instrument as he wooed us with selections from his new album, Inner World.

As he played, he chatted with us about what he was playing and how the performance was unrehearsed. It was great. He just played what he thought of right then. He told us he was sixty-six and that’s how he felt — like Route 66. Hardly. There were a lot of miles yet to be covered with him on any route he chooses. Even when he was singing in Portuguese, it was possible to translate what he was singing just by what he was playing, as long as you were able to give the emotional involvement and vulnerability. After almost an hour, he decided that it was enough, so we all took a break and regrouped our musical sensibilities in preparation for Ernie Andrews and the Blues.

LeRoy Downs brought us into the second half of the program with his mellifluous voice paving the way like a butter crème frosting. Then Ernie Andrews flowed through the audience and onto the stage. There he was — tall and debonair with his beautifully tailored double-breasted suit, crispy white shirt with French cuffs looking just like “they don’t make ‘em like that anymore.”  Then he smoothly told us, “I might be a little bit late, but you think I wasn’t coming?” Oh no baby, not at all. Then he told us he was a “utility singer” and we should “just let it swing — whatever we miss, just ride with it.”

This was an “E” ticket ride in the style of old Disneyland. He took us places that we’d never thought about, and there he was with us the whole time.

Raised in Los Angeles, Mr. Andrews has spent most of his life here. Like so many musicians, he too started off singing in a church choir and was discovered while in high school. But what I was hearing wasn’t gospel — it was the incredible singing of blues, ballads and standards.

His opening song, “Once In a Lifetime,” is a forgotten gem from the songbook of Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse’s musical Stop the World — I Want to Get Off.  This is when Andrews is at his finest, delivering songs that tell a story. Oh, but he also had stories that didn’t require a song. He told us that he’d “had too much of everything and not enough of nothing.” Then he’d glide into another song, always graciously and generously giving time to his backup musicians to have their solos. Never missing a riff, he set us up for one song with lyrics that lead up to the punch-line, “So, if I were you baby, I’d love me.” He didn’t have to ask twice. His closing song sounded so comfortingly familiar but with an unexpected arrangement. It was James Taylor’s “Fire and Rain.” Once again, Mr. Andrews told us a timeless story that we’d heard before, but he made it new all over again.

And now, The Jazz Bakery — the venue for this kind of jazz’s most seamless, intimate performances of our wonderful music talents from all generations — has been rendered homeless. It may have lost its lease, but it was proven this evening, with the sold out crowd, that it hasn’t lost its audience. Thanks to the GRAMMY museum, it won’t be treated like a “red-headed stepchild” either.  $o there, Mr. Landlord!