Northpinellas: Ghosts of jazz concerts past blast forth

CLEARWATER -- Long before Clearwater started its jazz "holiday," now into its 21st year, the city was home to a thriving jazz scene. For three years in early 1970s, a relative handful of local residents were treated to a series of intimate evening concerts byperformers such as Woody Herman and his "Thundering Herd," Harry James, Stan Kenton, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, the Four Freshmen and Buddy Rich.

They played in the ballroom at the Fort Harrison Hotel.

It has taken nearly three decades, but a Los Angeles producer and sound engineer, Ron Hitchcock, has rescued the aging reel-to-reel tapes of some of the concerts and captured thatperiod in Clearwater history on three compact discs. Also in the works is a deal to have them distributed nationally.

A Clearwater native, Hitchcock is marketing the CDs through a small company he formed using the slogan, "Capturing a moment in time."

Hitchcock, 55, once taped some of the concerts for WAZE, the jazz radio stationdowntown where he worked after graduating from Clearwater High. His bosses at the time, WAZE founders Gene Robinson and Chuck Adams, had gambled on the idea that local jazz fans would flock to see big-name performers in a small venue.

If you were one of the city's more prominent businessmen -- or were tight with one -- you probably had a ticket, only half believing that such well-known names were rolling through your small hometown.

You sat in a small, circular sea of dark suits and wide ties, fur coats and bouffant hairdos, white tablecloths and little black ash trays (smoking sections still were 20 years away).

You chuckled at the band's corny wisecracks or saw Woody Herman begin each number with a "One, two -- one, two three. . . ."

You listened to songs about "girls," not women.

And in an era when rock'n' roll became more serious and political, you heard the Four Freshmen with their sweaters and the wholesome harmonies that inspired the Beach Boys. "You look to me like misty roses, too soft to touch, but too lovely to leave alone," they crooned.

Finally, you heard musicians who didn't just play -- they "blew like hell," as Stan Kenton once said.

Often the fun continued well into the next morning.Local residents would invite band members to their homes for drinks and food, and everyone would sit and listen to tapes of the just-completed concert.

"They were big events," said Clearwater City Commissioner Bob Clark, who at the time worked at rival station WTAN and is a longtime friend of Hitchcock's. "It was a big deal."

Clark, then in his 20s, remembers skipping most of the concerts, not wanting to support the competition. But he relented whenthe Four Freshmen came to town.

Hitchcock said it was Clark who in 1998 "actually tickled my imagination to go look (the concerts) up again."

Robinson, the WAZE co-founder, has died. But his partner,Adams, recalled how they started.

One night in 1970, Adams was in Fort Harrison's rooftop ballroom having a drink and listening to live music when one of the entertainers invited him to a Woody Herman show in Tampa. When they arrived later that night, Adams was surprised to see such an informal set-up. About 150 people were clustered around Herman's big band, and the musicians mingled with the audience during intermissions.

Excited by the experience, Adams told Robinson, who suggested that WAZE book Herman at the Fort Harrison Hotel.

Herman agreed to come the next week, providing the stationpaid the $3,500 to fly the group down from Louisville and put them up at the Fort Harrison. Adjusted for inflation, the investment would be about $15,000 today.

Adams and Robinson split the cost, figuring that if no one came, the worst that could happen was a memorable private concert for two.

They sold tickets to 35 local businessmen, who each paid $350 for a table of10. The hotel charged no rent but got all the revenue from $1 drinks from the bar at the back of the room. (Today's cost would be about $5 per drink.)

After the success of the first concerts, the partners began to book other acts. "And once we did that for six or seven months, the bands started to come to us," Adams said.

With its warm, intimate audiences and post-concert parties, Clearwater became known among bands as a popular destination, Adams said.

A few years later, the concerts provided one of the sparks that led to the first Clearwater Jazz Holiday in 1980. They ended after the AM station was sold in 1974 to a Pittsburgh businessman who turned to a rock 'n' roll format.

Meanwhile, Hitchcock left Clearwater in the 1970s for Los Angeles, where he built a successful career as a sound engineer for several artists, including Neil Diamond and Rita Coolidge. His work on a 1976 Harry James album earned a Grammy nomination.

He said he got the idea for reproducing the Clearwater concerts during a slow period in his career about two years ago. "I was just looking around for something to do," he said. He traveled to Clearwater to rescue the concert tapes from Robinson's living room, where they sat in disarray. Adams, who had a matching set, had kept his copies for years on the floors of closets and in cars.

Next, Hitchcock got consent from the artists' families, who hold the copyrights to the performances.

It took a year, he said, to make CDs of three concerts -- one by Stan Kenton, who performed in Clearwater March 1971; another by Woody Herman from that April; and a third from October 1971 by the Four Freshmen. A fourth CD featuring Harry James is on the way.

After some work and editing, the sound is true, including the applause and laughter of the audience, the lawyers, bank presidents and restaurant owners of Clearwater, and their friends and family.

Hitchcock's favorite is the Woody Herman concert. That night, he said, "Everybody was on."

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