Blast to the past -- Charles H. Loos

* EDITOR’S NOTE: On June 6, the Los Angeles Jazz Institute held a

concert at the Balboa Pavilion to mark the 60th anniversary of Stan

Kenton’s first concert at the Rendezvous Ballroom. That article stoked

memories of Kenton for former Daily Pilot Managing Editor Charles H.

Loos. The following is a reprint of a Loos article that originally ran

Aug. 27, 1979, two days after Kenton’s death:

Let’s get one thing straight right from the top.

Stan Kenton didn’t write “Take the A Train.” Billy Strayhorn wrote

that tribute to a New York subway line for the Duke Ellington Orchestra.

That error happened to be one of the things written for Sunday’s paper

about the death of Stanley Newcombe Kenton.

One of the things that wasn’t written about the death Saturday of Stan

Kenton at the age of 67 is that he took a little piece of a lot of us

with him -- a little piece of our youth. And, if you will, the youth of a

place called Balboa.

There were two Kenton periods in Balboa.

One was in 1941-42 when he first brought his own band to the

Rendezvous Ballroom, that great pastel barn that stretched between Palm

and Washington streets along Ocean Front Avenue, just up from the Balboa

Pier.

That’s where Stan Kenton’s music -- original, individualistic and

controversial -- burst on the American scene. There was “Eager Beaver”

and “Intermission Riff.” There was even a dance step called the Balboa.

Lord, does anybody still remember how it went?

Kenton came back to the Rendezvous in 1957, and there was a new

generation of aficionados.

There were two Kenton albums recorded at the Rendezvous in the late

‘50s -- “Rendezvous With Kenton” in 1957 and “Back to Balboa” in 1958.

Some fans claim those were the best recordings ever made by a Kenton

band. That was because, they argue, the Rendezvous, with its block-long

dance floor and high ceiling, was the only place that ever really could

hold a Kenton band in full flight.

Maybe that’s just nostalgia talking. Anyway, who could ever forget

“The Big Chase,” “Rendezvous at Sunset” or “With the Wind and the Rain in

Your Hair”?

During that period, there also was a perfectly awful Kenton television

show broadcast over a Los Angeles station from the Rendezvous. It was

sponsored by a bread company. Kenton’s plan was to use the “bread” he

made in this venture into pure commercialism to make the Rendezvous home

base for his band.

Mercifully, the television show with its musical tribute to the

wonders of a certain bread, was short-lived. Kenton’s grand design didn’t

work out, and he left the Rendezvous again.

The old ballroom burned down in August 1966 for the second and last

time. The first time was in 1935. Besides all of the music and good

times, the Rendezvous gave Newport Beach two of the town’s most

spectacular fires.

Symbolic, perhaps, of the changing times and the town’s changing

character, condominiums replaced the old barn.

After that, the closest Kenton ever got to Balboa was six miles up the

road at Orange Coast College, where the band would give clinics for

aspiring jazz musicians and play a concert.

The last concert was about a year ago -- Aug. 13, 1978, to be exact.

For a lot of us who were there, it was a lump-in-the-throat evening

because it became clear during the concert that we might be seeing Stan

Kenton fronting a band for the last time.

Sadly, our worst expectations have come to pass. Stan Kenton, who

always seemed so indestructible, is gone.

“Did you know we started in Balboa?” he asked the audience at that

last Orange Coast College concert.

There were a lot of graybeards in the crowd that night, and you knew

how they would answer the question.

Reflecting on the bandleader’s death, drummer Shelly Manne said of the

time he spent with the Kenton band: “Those were some of the best years of

my life.”

He could just as well have been speaking for a lot of Kenton fans.