Steve Hochman on June 12th, 2018

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“What’s hip today might become passé.”

So sang Marcus Scott, fronting Tower of Power as the Oakland band closed the weekend’s Playboy Jazz Festival at the Hollywood Bowl on Sunday with a boisterous, funky, brass-driven blast.

He might as well have laughed as he sang that, the words coming from a song (“What is Hip?”) written a full 45 years ago, from a band currently celebrating 50 years in the business, with most of the crowd of about 18,000 singing and dancing along.

Passé? Not from where we sat.

To a great extent that was the theme of the day, which saw the festival celebrating its own 40-year milestone, a time in which its organizers have worked hard to keep it vibrant. Or at least it was a theme, with a lineup that featured music and musicians who have lasted through the ages, venerable sounds and/or daring approaches that not just endure, but thrive:

On one end there was the the latest edition of Count Basie Orchestra — officially “The Legendary Count Basie Orchestra,” featuring a few musicians who played with the Count himself, with a set that included a tribute to Joe Williams, the classic singer in the band, who would have been a full 100 this year. From “April in Paris” (a Basie hit from 60 years ago, a time when his sound might have already seemed anachronistic in the age of rock ’n’ roll, which it of course influenced) to “Everyday I Have the Blues” (sung by forceful Everett Greene in the spirit of Williams) to the Basie signature jam “One O’Clock Jump” (first recorded 81 years ago!), it was a masterful display.

On the other was saxophonist Charles Lloyd, celebrating his 80th birthday this year and more than 60 years of challenging conventions, starting his set with the sometimes-country-tinged band the Marvels with a smoldering, pointed and poignant instrumental of Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War” and bursting into full flame with guest singer Lucinda Williams (coming from outside the jazz world, so challenging here just by her presence) on a set-closing version of her furious kiss-off song “We’ve Come Too Far to Turn Around.” To call Lloyd genre-defying or boundary-breaking would be inaccurate. He’s spent his career ignoring genre labels and refusing to recognize boundaries. Those things, to him, are other people’s problems.

The Marvels is testimony to that, with guitarist Bill Frisell (a kindred spirit in those regards) a virtual co-leader at times, joined here by fellow guitarist Stuart Mathis, from Williams’ band, and the powerful regular Lloyd rhythm section of bassist Reuben Rogers and drummer Eric Harland. They were equally creative, and at home, with Ornette Coleman’s spirited “Ramblin’” as with Williams’ somber “Dust” and the new, anthemic “Too Late To Turn Back Now.” This served as a strong preview of the album they all made together, “Vanished Gardens,” being released later this month (and, full disclosure, for which this writer penned the liner notes).

At various points on the scale between there were the Hubtones, an all-star trumpet array playing the music of Freddie Hubbard, who would have turned 80 this year (he died 10 years ago), and pianist Ramsey Lewis, who turned 83 last month, with decades of effortless flitting between jazz, soul and pop.

Hubtones’ trumpeters Randy Brecker, Nicholas Payton, Jeremy Pelt and David Weiss have all had varied, exploratory careers of their own. Here in homage to Hubbard, they focused largely on the bebop and post-bebop with which he established himself as one of the essential leaders and sidemen of the Blue Note roster in the ‘60s and, finishing with “Red Clay,” a progressive-yet-grounded innovator on the CTI label in the ‘70s. The horn quartet’s round-robins of solos and sharp ensemble blasts were perfect homage, matched by the spectacular piano solos by Benny Green (like Hubbard, a veteran of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, though many years later). And drummer Roy McCurdy showed off the spectacular artistry he’d displayed for decades as a veteran of sessions with Ella Fitzgerald, Art Pepper and the 1963 “Sonny Meets Hawk” album featuring Sonny Rollins and Coleman Hawkins, among many others.

Lewis, leading his current quintet, showcased the spirit and chops that made him for years equally part of the jazz and pop worlds. While he parlayed the Beatles (“Here, There and Everywhere”) and Stevie Wonder (“Living in the City”) with panache, the highlights were clearly the vocalise-feature “Sun Goddess” (a 1976 collaboration with Earth, Wind & Fire, whose Maurice White had been Lewis’ drummer before he founded the R&B band) and, of course, “The In-Crowd,” the bubbly, very-live instrumental that was a No. 5 pop hit in 1965, here given a playful run, Lewis teasing throughout with various musical quotes and asides.

Younger acts on the bill offered a variety of cross-genre and cross-cultural approaches, as well. Kneebody, a quintet that first came together at the Eastman School of Music, has picked up the torch of ‘70s-rooted electric fusion, bringing a few contemporary twists to the styles pioneered by Chick Corea’s Return to Forever, Weather Report and others (mostly growing out of Miles Davis’ “Bitches Brew” band).

Veteran bassist-singer Richard Bona and his band Mandekan Cubano explored the Cameroon-Cuban connection (Bona was born and raised in Central African Cameroon), giving some new spins to sounds and styles that crossed back and forth across the Atlantic countless times over centuries. The best moments of the set came when it was virtually impossible to tell where the African elements ended and the Caribbean sounds began, which is exactly the point of this project.

R&B singer Jazmine Sullivan gave the penultimate set in something of a Mary J. Blige mode, starting with her 2009 revenge-hit “Bust Your Windows.” The don’t-mess-with-me tone threaded through her performance and provided the most compelling moments, but overall she lacked the something-special extra qualities that make Blige a star.

And that left it to Tower of Power to close the night with a party. Funkier than contemporaries Chicago, more substantial than Kool & the Gang, ToP showed itself at the, uh, top of its game among the horn-heavy bands of its era. And that vaunted horn section remains supreme, still anchored by Emilio Castillo (tenor sax) and Stephen “Doc” Kupka (baritone), alongside founding drummer David Garibaldi, who started playing together on the East Bay circuit in 1968. Though their surrounding cast has changed much over the years, with dozens of musicians having come and gone — Scott is at least the 12th lead singer they’ve had — the ToP sound this night was the same as it ever was, a mix of sharp, crisp funk (“What Is Hip?”) and yearning ballads (“You’re Still a Young Man,” “So Very Hard to Go”) as appealing and reliable on songs from the new “Soul Side of Town” album as on the old hits that were standards of ‘70s radio.

What is hip? Lasting. Staying. Continuing. Bringing happiness to fans for decades. That is hip.