Bassist John Clayton Puts Heart Into His Musical Style

By DIRK SUTRO

Feb. 25, 1992 12 AM PT

Money and looking good don’t motivate John Clayton, nor, as he gets older, do pretentious shows of technique.

Instead, the 39-year-old bassist is on a musical quest for something deeper, a personal and meaningful approach to jazz.

“You don’t think about the need to make a living,” said Clayton, who fronts a group at the Horton Grand Hotel downtown this Friday and Saturday nights with his brother, 37-year-old saxophonist Jeff Clayton. “People aren’t going to call you because you did something politically correct, got invited to a party, or are handsome or pretty.

“They’re gonna call you because every time you play, magic happens. Therefore, if you just concentrate on the music and then honestly and sincerely approach audiences, it snowballs on you.”

The Claytons are co-leaders of the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra, one of the few young big bands keeping alive the spirited attack and tight arrangements that characterized the Basie and Ellington bands, but with new, original material alongside fresh arrangements of earlier, classic big-band tunes.

For “Heart and Soul,” the orchestra’s second recording, released last year, Clayton contributed three songs of his own, including “I Be Serious ‘Bout Dem Blues,’ a medium tempo swinger with swirling horn sections and long horn solos.

Among retooled big band standards included on the release are a slinky, slowed-down version of Billy Strayhorn’s “Take The A Train” and an update of Benny Carter’s “Easy Money,” laid out with plenty of room for the band’s fine soloists.

This weekend, though, the Claytons will focus more on material from a pending new release, a small-group effort also featuring the brothers’ longtime associates Bill Cunliffe on piano and Ralph Penland on drums.

Clayton, whose mentor was bassist Ray Brown and has been a member of both the Count Basie Orchestra and the Amsterdam Philharmonic, senses a new maturity in the Claytons’ music.

“I think that we’re finally settling down,” he said. “We’re not trying to impress people with playing fast. For us now, the music is getting deeper, we’re thinking more about the emotional and psychological aspects. It’s not louder, faster, higher any more for us.

“For instance, on the new record, we recorded ‘Only the Lonely,’ written for Sinatra, and I got into the lyric, thinking of it in different terms after an encounter with a homeless person one night who was pushing a child in a baby carriage.

“I think about the lyric a lot. It’s that kind of stuff. A half brother of ours was killed by some gang members a year and a half ago. So Jeff wrote a song about that, about the feelings we had. We’re doing some stuff that means more to us personally.”

The Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra, which the brothers co-lead with drummer Jeff Hamilton, packed Catalina’s in Los Angeles to overflowing last week, cramming its 19 players into the tiny room. But there is little chance the ensemble, which also includes such top players as Rickey Woodard, Snooky Young and Oscar Brashear, will play San Diego anytime soon.

San Diego talent agent Tony Sidotti, who books the orchestra, said the members are too busy, and there is no local venue that seems appropriate.

In the meantime, the brothers’ shows this weekend, also featuring Cunliffe and Penland, will begin at 8:30 each evening. There’s no cover charge.

Keeping alive the oldest jazz traditions is more than mere tedium to trumpeter Wendell Brunious, leader of one of three Preservation Hall Jazz bands.

“I think it is one of the hippest things around,” said Brunious, who brings the band to town for a show Friday at 8 p.m. at the Poway Performing Arts Center. “You can get many guys to play a lot of modal scales, or high notes, but what’s so hip about the New Orleans tradition is the feeling. You can’t study feeling. It takes years and years to adopt a feeling like I’m talking about.”

The Preservation Hall bands are headquartered at Preservation Hall in New Orleans, where they play year-round for the steady stream of jazz fans who flock to the original jazz city.

Brunious, 37, has been a member of the group for 15 years. He has watched as original New Orleans musicians pass on and are replaced by younger players. Brunious co-led the band with trumpeter Kid Thomas Valentine until 1982, when Valentine died at the age of 91. Today’s group is a mix of young and old players.

The 7-piece band uses standard jazz instrumentation from early 1900s New Orleans: trumpet, drums, piano, bass, trombone, banjo and clarinet. But the music, while leaning heavily on tradition (“Bourbon St. Parade,” “When The Saints Come Marching In”) isn’t entirely rooted in the past.

“A lot of the songs are from the teens, King Oliver stuff,” Brunious said. “But sometimes I also like to sing a song, like a Jim Reeves song from the 1950s or something.” (Reeves was a country singer; Brunious’ tastes run wide.)

“New Orleans music is not necessarily particular songs,” Brunious said. “It’s more of a concept. Once people start to understand that, that’s when they start to appreciate the music, to let it breathe, let it happen, rather than expecting someone to play something they heard 40 years ago.”

Tickets for Friday night’s show are $15.75-$18.75 for seats in the last two rows of the balcony, available from the Poway Performing Arts Center’s box office.

RIFFS: Trumpeter Tom Harrell, who has managed a prolific jazz career despite suffering from schizophrenia, will be interviewed by phone from New York City on Friday at 2 p.m. on KSDS-FM (88.3) by deejay Gerald Cirrincione. Harrell’s new album is titled “Storm.” . . .

Saxman Arturo Cipriano plays the Ruse performance space (3717 India St.) Wednesday night at 8, and returns for a repeat performance March 4. . . .

Jazz flutist Holly Hofmann will put her classical side on display Wednesday at 8 p.m. at the Horton Grand Hotel downtown with the Allegro Quartet, led by oboist Karen Victor.

CRITIC’S CHOICE: PONCHO SANCHEZ AT UC SAN DIEGO

Poncho Sanchez, the head honcho among the younger generation of Latin jazz percussionists, plays UC San Diego’s Mandeville Auditorium Thursday night at 8. Sanchez and his band are known both for their driving Latin music and ingeniously Latin-ized versions of classic jazz tunes by Clifford Brown, Lester Young and others.

The ensemble combines the tight arrangements and piercing horns of the best big bands with scintillating Latin rhythms. Their version of Thelonious Monk’s “Well You Needn’t,” for example, puts a tangy new twist on a standard that has been worn threadbare by scores of straight-ahead jazz players. Sanchez is up for a Grammy tonight for Best Tropical Latin Performance for his 1991 release, “A Night at Kimball’s East.”

Tickets for tonight’s show at UCSD are $16 ($12 for students). Call 534-6467 for more information.