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NEW ORLEANS JAZZ ASCONA 2001, "When the Saints go Marching . . ."

W. Royal Stokes

Kicking off on Friday, June 29, this year's 10-day festival of three-dozen or so musical groups in Ascona, a charming resort village in the southern, Italian-language section of Switzerland, already over the course of its initial four days paid splendid homage to several of the genres its namesake city is famous for.

Anyone whose visit to the Crescent City coincides with a jazzman's or jazzwoman's funeral has found himself or herself "second-lining" to a marching band following the deceased one's cortege. Well, Ascona Jazz, happily, doesn't need a departure to the "Glory Land" in order to send forth a couple of stomping bands that all afternoon wind their ways through narrow alley-like streets with a hundred or two fast-stepping fans in tow. They are Italy's Ambrosia Brass Band and the Happy Feet Brass Band from the Netherlands, with sometimes one, sometimes the other fronted by virtuoso dancer and prancer Earl Conway, Grandmarshall from New Orleans.

Among the nearly twenty venues, most along the lake front and at least a half-dozen or so always in action simultaneously, is the huge tent-like structure Torre, which stages two concerts each evening. The crack Lars Edegran band provided a lively late-evening program on opening night, "New Orleans Blues," featuring singers Juanita Brooks, Topsy Chapman, and Big Al Carson. Chapman's "Fine and Mellow" reached deeply into the classic Billie Holiday vehicle for its irony, Brooks' rendered "On the Sunny Side of the Street" with tumultuous swing, and Carson took his and the other two vocalists on a swaggering tour of "Honky Tonk Town." With the leader at the piano, Chris Tyle was on trumpet, Tom Fisher on reeds, Fred Lonzo on trombone, Mark Brooks on bass, and Ernest Elly at the drums.

Several of the European bands here make learned, and quite effective, use of their familiarity with historic recorded materials in a repertory fashion, and one of the most authoritative of these is the Oliver River Gess Band, a nine-piece Italian unit, which held forth one early evening at Hotel Tamaro's sidewalk café. King Oliver's "Snag It," Bix Beiderbecke's take on "Royal Garden Blues," and Duke Ellington's "Black and Tan Fantasy" were some of its offerings, on the first-named of which two young cornetists captured very nicely the uncannily ESP-like breaks of Joe Oliver and his disciple, Louis Armstrong.

Ascona Jazz regularly includes the blues, and a major interpreter of it, and on this year's bill, is Netherlands guitarist/singer Hans Theessink, whose Blue Groove is filled out with percussionist Ali Thelfa and tuba player Jon Sass. Drawing from Delta Blues and later styles, as well as gospel, and acknowledging as influences such legends as Memphis Minnie McCoy and the recently deceased John Lee Hooker, the threesome, on successive evenings, had the tented night spot Meeting Point and Stage Chiesa, a bandstand at the foot of an historic church, rocking with "St. James Infirmary," and "I Shall Not Be Moved." On a subsequent evening the trio joined forces for a combustible program in Torre with Mississippi-raised singer Terry Evans, who from the outset established a one-on-one rapport with the members of the overflow audience on such staples of the blues idiom as "Walking the Dog" and "Home Cookin' Baby."

Dutch multi-instrumentalist Joep Peeters' hosted "At Last the 1951 Show," an extravaganza on the Torre stage the fourth evening. The revue celebrated hit recordings of a half-century ago by Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sidney Bechet, and others, with a powerful all-star front line of Dan Barrett on cornet, Brian Ogilvie, tenor saxophone, clarinetist Frank Roberscheuten, Tom Baker on trombone, cornet, and alto saxophone, and Peeters at the vibes. Swing Era stylist extraordinaire Rebecca Kilgore was in great voice on a sparkling "Undecided" and the classic ballad "Because of You." Shaunette Hildabrand, a transplanted Oklahoman who has resided in Germany, and now Holland, this past decade, displayed her multiple, and very impressive, talents on the dreamy torch song "Laura" and on "How Do You Like Your Eggs in the Morning," a hilarious duet with irrepressible cut-up Peeters. "Cottontail," an instrumental, and "Castle Rock," a Peeters' vocal feature, were roof raisers, providing opportunity for the horns to display solo gifts and to jam collectively, urged on by the world-class rhythm team of pianist Harry Kanters, guitarist Dirk van der Linden, bassist Karel Algoed, and drummer Onno de Bruyn.

Among many others holding forth at various venues in diverse fashion these first few days of Jazz Ascona 2001 were drummer Slick Salzer's Swing Academy from the Netherlands, with reed player Charly Höllering, a quartet that could well be a reincarnation of any number of 1930s 52nd Street combos; local Ticino piano phenomenon Silvan Zingg, whose repertoire of Meade Lux Lewis' "Honky Tonk Train Blues" and countless other boogie woogie classics of 1920s Chicago, along with his own compositions in the style, kept the feet of his fascinated audience tapping nightly in Meeting Point; two madcap aggregations from France, Les Gigolos and Les Haricots Rouges, both given to send-ups of the tradition but both bands, like one of their principal inspirations, the zanny 1940s Spike Jones Orchestra, are made up of extremely capable musicians with well-founded jazz instincts, notwithstanding the purple suits and mugging of the latter and the smoke bombs and out-of-the-blue chorus-line kicks of the former; and the capacious-voiced Bill Ramsey, a Cincinnati native and long-time expatriate to Germany, who lent gracious style and, frequently, solid swing, to "Georgia on My Mind," "I Can't Give You Anything But Love, Baby," "Pennies from Heaven," and other standards of the 1930s and '40s, supported by the wonderful Jazz Band Ball Orchestra from Krakow, Poland.

W. Royal Stokes is the author of Living the Jazz Life: Conversations with Forty Musicians about their Careers in Jazz (Oxford University Press, 2000), Swing Era New York: The Jazz Photographs of Charles Peterson (Temple University Press, 1994), and The Jazz Scene: An Informal History from New Orleans to 1990 (Oxford University Press, 1991).