Volunteers Jazz Up a Famous L.A. Thoroughfare

For a few hours, Central Avenue’s past as the heart of L.A.’s jazz scene came alive Saturday and that gave one-time trumpeter and vocalist Clora Bryant goose bumps.

“I live jazz every day and I love this,� the 72-year-old Bryant said, rubbing the goose bumps on her arms as she watched some of the nearly 1,000 volunteers who fanned out across Central’s old jazz quarter to spruce it up as part of a cultural preservation effort by L.A. Works.

The nonprofit organization, which was founded in 1991, had focused its annual L.A. Works Day on improving such things as schools and housing projects. But on Saturday, organizers decided to concentrate its ninth annual workday on Central Avenue between Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Vernon Avenue in an effort to help preserve something of the thoroughfare’s heyday as the capital of jazz on the West Coast.

Volunteers painted jazz-themed murals. They repainted faded storefronts. They built flower boxes and trash containers decorated with multicolored tile--a reminder of the tile that once was a fixture at the Dunbar Hotel, one of Central’s prime jazz spots. They put tile on a low retaining wall where the Sentinel, South-Central’s most prominent newspaper, was once located. They resodded the front lawn at nearby Wadsworth Avenue School.

Jazz is no longer heard on the avenue. Many of the clubs and hotels, like the Dunbar, are boarded up or used for something else.

Amid the work, which closed Central for several hours, Bryant hugged strangers and remembered Central as it used to be.

“I was 17 when I came to L.A.,� she recalled. “I played at the Dunbar, the Down Beat Club, the [Club] Alabam, the Elks Club. I thought I had died and gone to heaven.�

Residents, important politicians, music lovers and “even the pimps� reveled in Central’s status during its jazz heyday from the 1920s until the early ‘50s, she said.

Bryant, who gives talks about jazz and occasional performances, smiled broadly as she remembered a high-note contest she once had with Il Kalian, a trumpeter in Duke Ellington’s band, at a club on Central in 1947.

“That even got some mention in the local papers when I won,� she recalled. “But I think he let me win.�

Not all of the work centered on jazz.

In an alley behind the Dunbar Child Development Center, architect Stephanie Hobbs, 25, and Fox cable executive Moira Delaney, 31, were among those painting a children’s mural. The scene of children playing underneath a rainbow prompted muralist Shari Basch to ask, “You guys ever think of doing this for a living?�

Near Central and Vernon, the jazz theme was not lost on a group of Amherst College alums, who dubbed themselves Work Group No. 17 as they attached tile to a trash container.

“L.A. is full of places that have a lot of history,� said Amherst graduate and L.A. native Jonathan Troper, 38.

“The history is so covered up, you don’t know what was there before. So this is an important thing we’re doing.�

Some residents and workers were caught off-guard by the activity, but were heartened by it.

“This is really cool,� said Bryon Salguero, 19, a clerk at an AutoZone store on Central. “Anything that helps the community is great.�

Ana Padilla, who lives off 43rd Street, had to restrain her 5-year-old son’s desire to join in the work. “I don’t think you can help them,� she told son Joshua in Spanish.

But when one L.A. Works official said he could pitch in, Padilla had to nearly sprint to keep up with him as he tore down Central with other youngsters armed with trash bags.

“Wait for me!� she called out.