Philadelphia Daily News from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 55

Philadelphia Dally News Friday, March 15. 1985 55 1 rW i IVir i m. if i iiin, -AjhiW mi Preservation Hall Jazz Band, including local product Allan Jaffe on tuba, appears in concert Thursday at Irvine Auditorium fin ous and straightforward. "Dixieland usually more rehearsed. You would never play Dixieland at a funeral.

It doesn't have that function. Also, the feeling is different. New Orleans jazz is basically an emotional music where the musicians are expressing how they feel. No two concerts are identical. With Dixieland, technique is a lot more important and they do a lot of fancy things." Preservation Hall Jazz Band performs Thursday, 8 p.m.

at Irvine Auditorium, 34th and Spruce streets. Tickets: $12.50 and $17.50. Choice Chestnuts Eight to the Bar boogies at the Chestnut Cabaret tonight, after the FlashbackFlashforward dance. Then, tomorrow night promises the local debut of the Jorma Kouko-nen Jaco Pastorious Band, blending one rock and blues stalwart (Jefferson AirplaneHot Tuna's guitarist Jorma) and one jazz rock great (bassist Jaco, late of Weather Report.) Country and bluegrass music shares the stage with a legendary English folky at the Chestnut Cabaret on Wednesday. Up first is Chris Hillman and his buddy Al Perkins.

Hillman was a critical factor in the growth of country rock music, as an original member of The Byrds, then The Flying Burrito Brothers, Manassas, and then the Souther-Hillman-Furay Band. He's currently represented with a tasty new album on Sugar Hill Records, "Morning Sky." Just added to the Wednesday show (and also featured Thursday, by his lonesome) is the one and only Donovan, who'll be performing hits like "Sunshine Superman" and "Season of the Witch," "Hurdy Gurdy Man" and "Atlantis." Didja know that it was actually at a Donovan concert in California, when he tossed handsful of flowers into the audience, that a writer coined the phrase "flower Or that Donovan was a key player in the move to metaphysical themes in pop, in the exalted company of the Beatles and Beach Boys, when they all fell under the spiritual spell of an Indian guru? And that Donovan also pioneered the mix of folk and cool jazz, years before Joni Mitchell or Phoebe Snow got into that bag? Interestingly, this sweet voiced singersongwriter is still very much the same gentle chap, still writing about life and living, and the basic imagery of nature the wind, the sun, colors, mountains and flowers. So if you're going to hear him, "Wear Your Love Like Heaven." Hear 'n' Gone The Tower has Hank Williams, Jr. tomorrow night, then pours out the heavy metal on Thursday with the flowers of Dutch rockdom Krokus and a German aggregation called Accept, whom I've finally started to on their third LP "Metal Heart." Hey, they got real tunes New Music comes to the Painted Bride tonight with Interplay, then tomorrrow, swing with the Widespread Jazz Orchestra, a big, brassy group devoted to the jump 'n jive music of the 1940s. They're about to get a deserving push from CBS Records Glory in the green at a St.

Patrick's Eve concert at International House to-. morrow with Mick Moloney, Eugene O'Donnell, step dancer Donnie Gol-len and lots more. There's good rockin on TV 12 on Tuesday at 11:10 p.m. with Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins Laugh it up with Kip Adotta at the Comedy Works or Larry Amaros at the Comedy Factory Outlet. PRESERVATION HALL JAZZ BAND timers (actually three working bands that alternate nights) and the frantic "Dixieland" style of music -prof erred by the Pete Fountains and Al Hirts, which most people associate with New Orleans.

"New Orleans jazz is functional music of a different kind of city," explains Jaffe. "People there like to party, they like parades, they like good times, they go to a lot of picnics; and they like music at all these things. New Orleans jazz takes elements from gospel music, spirituals, parade music, a lot of quadrilles, and some of the slave songs. For example, the bands might take a song and use it in church for prayer, then they might take that same song and play it sadly on the way to a funeral and joyfully coming back, then play it in a dance hall or bar room that night. So the important thing is that the music performed a function.

That's what New Orleans jazz is, Spontane Preservation's on-tour ticket prices and CBS record albums are much dearer, but consider all you're saving in plane fare and hotel accommodations!) Jaffe draws a strong distinction between the warm 'n' easy, "playing melody with a beat" jazz music delivered by the Preservation Hall old By JONATHAN TAKIFF Daily News Music Writer Allan Jaffe is coming home on Thursday to show off his i pride and joy, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, in a benefit concert at Irvine Auditorium. Yes, strange as it may seem, that world famous and much treasured traditional jazz band from New Orleans is actually fronted by an interloper from Pennsylvania! Jaffe was born in Pottsville and then spent time in West Philadelphia, where he attended the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, class of '57. The irony deepens when you see Jaffe a chunky, 50-year-old, white tuba player amidst the 70-to-85-year-old black musicians who are the core, the history, and the drama of this classic American group. Preservation Hall players like pianist James "Sing" Miller (born 1913) and banjoist Narvin Kimball ('09) remember first hand how their music was born. It started when turn-of-the-century New Orleans musicians loosened up the formal restrictions of ragtime, giving the music a lighter lift, allowing the joy and communicative personality of the individual players to shine through.

For Jaffe, the appreciation of New Orleans music traditions filtered down through his father, a banjo player in the Aqua String Band, and through his high school marching band. Then this spirit was rejuvenated when he did an army hitch at Fort Polk, and made frequent visits to the Crescent City. After marrying in 1960, Jaffe and his wife Sandy decided to live in New Orleans, largely because of its musical associations. They became regulars at the informal "kitty sessions" featuring elderly, under-appreciated black musicians. The jams were held at a rundown art gallery, and the Jaffes began working there nights (while holding down day jobs) when the place became Preservation Hall.

Jaffe took coaching on New Orleans-style' tuba playing from old-time brass bandsmen Willert Tilman and Punch Miller, so he could work out with the bands at the hall and in Sunday parades. Then, when the New Orleans Society for the Preservation of Traditional Jazz fell apart, the Jaffes took over running the operation as a labor of love. From the start, they were determined that the welfare and comfort of the players would come first. cians were guaranteed union scale wages, even if the gate receipts and and the money from the request pot ($1 for traditional tunes, $5 for "The Saints Go Marching didn't cover it. 'No booze or B-girls would be allowed on their premises.

And the audience would have to tough it out, sitting on hard benches or the floor. But the price was and still remains right. It costs just $1 to get in the door, making Preservation Hall the best live music buy in New Orleans, and also the most authentic. (Yes, ity 11 UII.I. ift nainAi Donovan: Chestnut Cabaret.