New film traces the cultural history of jazz in Santa Cruz
WALLACE BAINE - Sentinel Staff Writer
The history of jazz in Santa Cruz is not one story but several. When filmmaker and lifelong jazz fan Ken Koenig decided to make a film on the subject, he had to confront that one bedeviling question: Where do you start?
The great old big-band ballroom at the Cocoanut Grove? The influential and beloved Kuumbwa Jazz Center? Band leader Don McCaslin and the Cooper House scene of the 1970s and '80s? The top-flight jazz educational program at Cabrillo College led by Lile Cruse and Ray Brown?
Those subjects certainly serve as the tent poles of "Santa Cruz Swings," Koenig's new film on jazz in Santa Cruz to be screened Thursday at Kuumbwa. But the starting point and end point of the film centers on one sunny summer day in June 2006. On that day, musician Bob Oberg gathered more than 50 working jazz musicians at the end of the Santa Cruz Wharf for one giant group photo, designed specifically to evoke the famous image from the 1950s, "A Good Day in Harlem."
"Oberg asked me to film the taking of the picture," Koenig said of the inspiration for the film. "We were going to make a little film just about that event only. In the meantime, we started to interview some of the musicians that were there, and they provided some wonderful background material. And I thought, 'Wow, we ought to make a film about the history of jazz here.'"
Santa Cruz has, for decades, attracted many of the greatest
names in jazz history -- from Benny Goodman to Dizzy Gillespie to Wynton Marsalis -- first at the Cocoanut Grove, and later at the Kuumbwa. But it has also nurtured a deep jazz culture of its own, represented by McCaslin, the late pianist Smith Dobson and others, and today carried on by younger musicians who grew up in the local culture.
"It's an homage to Santa Cruz," said Koenig, a 25-year resident. "I've loved living here all these years and I wanted to honor Santa Cruz in this way."
The film uses archival photos and footage to uncover Santa Cruz's history as part of the flourishing West Coast jazz scene. The Cocoanut Grove at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk served as the epicenter for Santa Cruz's musical culture in the 1930s and '40s, attracting the big bands of such icons as Goodman, Glenn Miller, Harry James, Stan Kenton and Paul Whiteman.
What's more, the Grove inspired a burgeoning scene of smaller clubs along Beach Street. The film features footage of veteran jazz singer Ralston Brown strolling along Beach Street, pointing out where clubs such as the Casbah and the Mamboo Gardens which, during World War II and the Korean War, would attract local kids and servicemen stationed at Ford Ord.
Lesser known was Capitola's influence in creating a jazz-friendly alternative to the Beach Street scene. In Capitola in the 1930s, at the Capitola Ballroom, soon-to-be-famous band leader Gil Evans and his band held court. The Ballroom later became the Saba nightclub, which burned down in 1957.
Central to the film, however, is Don McCaslin and the cultural scene his group Warmth inspired playing live, often seven days a week, at the outdoor cafe at the Cooper House on the Pacific Garden Mall. The Cooper House and the Kuumbwa, established in 1975 as a nonprofit, as well as the Cabrillo program, formed a backdrop that inspired several generations of jazz musicians. Many of those younger musicians, including McCaslin's son Donny McCaslin, Jeff Ballard and twins Remy and Pascal LeBoeuf, have gone on to establish careers in New York. Several more including Jesse Scheinin and Ben Flocks are following the same path.
Koenig interviewed many of those younger musicians as well as notable Santa Cruz musicians such as Stan Poplin, Gail Dobson and Claudia Villela, and Kuumbwa co-founders Tim Jackson and Rich Wills.
Koenig, a longtime psychiatrist who retired from practice in 2007, also made a film about the Hermosa Beach club The Lighthouse and is working on a film about the late-jazz drummer Shelly Manne, and is working with Aptos-based jazz singer Ron Kaplan on a film about the Great American songbook.
"One of the reasons I came to Santa Cruz was because of Kuumbwa," said Koenig, who took photographs of performers at Kuumbwa in the 1980s and '90s. He had come to Santa Cruz from Denver to interview for a job. A fellow psychiatrist introduced him to Kuumbwa, and that, he said, cinched it.
WHAT: 'Santa Cruz Swings,' a film by Ken Koenig.
WHEN: 7 p.m. Thursday.
WHERE: Kuumbwa Jazz Center, 320-2 Cedar St., Santa Cruz
COST: Tickets are $15.
INFORMATION: 427-2227 or
www.kuumbwajazz.org.
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