The Mike Barone Big Band With Ernie Watts
by BRANDT REITER
L.A. Weekly - August 29, 2003

Ever since postwar economics helped push them to the brink of extinction a half-century ago, big bands have been a commercial albatross--they're just too expensive to operate. Yet this week the venerable Jazz Bakery resumes its "Big Band Mondays"; the last Sunday in September will see upstart Fitzgerald's kick off its own semi-regular series of the same; and a select smattering of other Southland clubs are routinely squeezing in similarly large assemblages. How is this possible? Again, economics--ones peculiar to our strange city. Between SoCal's universities and the studio industry, there are scads of well-paying gigs for disciplined musicians who can swing in any style--probably as good a definition of a jazz player as any. Add relatively affordable housing (compared with NYC), and what you get is a colossal, captive concentration of high-end talent that's available at night and ravenous for good charts to play. Just ask Mike Barone, who came to L.A. in '59 as a freelance trombonist, spent 23 years arranging for the old, undervalued Tonight Show orchestra, formed his current oversized ensemble as labor of love around 1997 and has kept it afloat since. If you've never experienced the singular joy that only a live big band can afford, this is a splendid opportunity: Filled with first-call players like trumpeter Steve Huffsteter (who runs an excellent large ensemble of his own), lead altoist Brian Scanlon and vigilant drummer Paul Kreibich, it's one of the tighter big groups in the region. And Barone's got a true ringer in the house tonight: His fellow Tonight Show vet Ernie Watts, whose powerful tenor work with Charlie Haden's Quartet West has revealed him as nothing short of world class. (Expect a breathtaking "We'll be Together Again.") At Clancy's Crabshack, Fri., Aug 29.