Towering talent in May 24 benefit
“I’m not OK, but I’m all right,” says Lee Hildebrand, the venerable Bay Area music writer and drummer, characterizing his post-stroke status with a tart line that could’ve been sung by one of the blues artists he’s covered over the past 50 years.
Hildebrand, whose reviews and features about jazz, R&B, gospel and blues musicians ran for decades in The Chronicle, the East Bay Express (where he was a key editor) and many other publications, has recovered significantly since suffering a stroke in November. But he’s lost about 20 percent of his memory — including his way around the computer keyboard, which makes typing rather time-consuming, “and I can’t focus enough to write,” Hildebrand says during a recent phone interview from his Modesto home, a Helen Humes record playing in the background.
To help him get on his feet financially, the Bay Area Jazz Society has started a GoFundMe campaign for Hildebrand and is producing what should be a smashing benefit concert for him, scheduled for May 24 at Geoffrey’s Inner Circle in Oakland. It features a raft of jazz, R&B and gospel artists who’ve benefited from Hildebrand’s solid support and friendship over the years.
The scheduled performers include such notables as singers Sugar Pie DeSanto, Dorothy Morrison, Tower of Power’s Lenny Williams, D’wayne Wiggins of Tony! Toni! Toné! and Denise Perrier; saxophonist John Handy; guitarist Calvin Keys; harmonica ace Mark Hummel; and Terrance Kelly and members of the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir. Levi Seacer Jr . of Prince’s New Power Generation leads the house band.
Hildebrand, who grew up on the Peninsula and played in school bands with the stellar jazz trumpeter Tom Harrell, settled in Oakland in the early 1970s after leaving the Army, where he’d served as a combat medic in Vietnam. He became the expert on the East Bay’s rich musical culture and history, which he brought to life in pieces like the definitive “Oakland Blues” essay he wrote for the 1998 anthology “California Soul: Music of African Americans in the West.”
Journalism “was something I wanted to do,” he says. “I didn’t know what else to do. The playing was on and off.” Hildebrand fondly recalls a yearlong, union-scale gig he had in the early ’70s, playing five nights a week at a Campbell cocktail lounge with an electric accordionist who sang like Dean Martin and “a hip tenor saxophonist named Ernie Chavez . He played like Lester Young and sang like Tony Bennett.”
For Hildebrand, the pleasure of writing about music has been “getting to know the artists. I tried to take unusual angles on their lives. One of the last stories I did was with Merle Haggard a few months before he died. We talked about jazz.”
Hildebrand says he’s grateful so many musicians want to play at the benefit, organized by Jazz Society founder Paul Tillman Smith with the aim of helping Hildebrand move back to Oakland.
“In 50 years, I guess I made an impression on a few of them.”
For more information, go to www.geoffreyslive.com/ upcoming/benefit.
Monterey Jazz
Tickets just went on sale for the 61st annual Monterey Jazz Festival, set to run Sept. 21-23. The multi-stage bash will feature headliners Norah Jones with Brian Blade & Chris Thomas; Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, playing Marsalis’ piece “Spaces” with dancers Lil Buck and Jared Grimes; singer Dianne Reeves; and saxophonist Charles Lloyd & the Marvels with singer Lucinda Williams, among others.
Oscar Hernández & the Spanish Harlem Orchestra debut a new commissioned work, and the artists in residence, saxophonist Tia Fuller and trumpeter Ingrid Jensen, lead a tribute to the late pianist Geri Allen, with drummer Terri Lyne Carrington, pianist Kris Davis, DJ Val and others.
For the full schedule, go to www.montereyjazzfestival.org.
Stern Grove Fest returns
The 81st annual free Stern Grove Festival opens in the San Francisco glade June 17 with a double shot of soul from singers Peabo Bryson and Jeffrey Osborne. The season continues Sundays through Aug. 19 with a lineup that includes Ziggy Marley, Ronnie Spector and the Ronettes, Anoushka Shankar, Mexican Institute of Sound and San Francisco Ballet.
For more information, go to www.sterngrove.org.
All voices
The 34th Harmony Sweepstakes A Cappella Festival National Finals is scheduled to take place May 19 at Marin Veterans Auditorium, when the jazz-singing San Francisco sextet Ro Sham Bo vies against Boston’s Sound Off, 20/20 from the Pacific Northwest, Chicago’s Due North, Up All Night from the mid-Atlantic region, New York’s Feedback and Business Casual from Los Angeles.
For more information, go to www.harmony-sweepstakes.com.
Jesse Hamlin is a Bay Area journalist and former San Francisco Chronicle staff writer.