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Big-Band Salute to the Brave

By Jerry Karp, Special to The Chronicle
Sunday, February 19, 2006

It's impossible not to imagine that an explosion -- a big one -- is imminent.

What has begun as a swinging, textured big-band rhapsody has turned urgent, verging toward the discordant, as a pair of tenor saxophonists stand to do battle. Propelled by a steadily accelerating rhythm section, the two horns trade lines, growing more frenzied as they joust, pushing toward a precipice of chaos. What we're hearing is "Work Routine 2," the ninth section of the "Port Chicago" suite, a 14-movement composition for 15-piece ensemble by local musician and jazz orchestra leader Marcus Shelby.

On July 17, 1944, a cataclysmic blast at the Port Chicago Naval Weapons Base at Suisun Bay, near Martinez, killed 320 sailors and wounded 390 as they were loading munitions onto a Liberty Ship. The sailors, almost all African Americans, were poorly trained, poorly equipped and forced to work at breakneck speed by the white officers who made bets on the amount of ordnance each loading crew could handle in a day.

A scant three weeks later, the surviving sailors were ordered to resume their duties, with no improvement of equipment or change in the procedures that had killed their comrades. The sailors who sat down on the docks rather than walk back into that deathtrap were tried and convicted of mutiny. Efforts to exonerate them continue.

This is the story told musically in Shelby's "Port Chicago" suite, commissioned in 2002 by the Equal Justice Society, a San Francisco group of lawyers dedicated to the preservation of civil and personal rights, to commemorate the organization's 20th anniversary. The piece had its performance premiere in June 2004, and Shelby took his orchestra into the studio to record the suite in June 2005. The orchestra will present "The Port Chicago Suite" at Yoshi's on Tuesday and Wednesday to celebrate the CD's release.

"Eva Paterson, the head of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights (now the EJS) called us into her office," Shelby says. "Me, Karen Brown from the Oakland Ballet and a few others. Eva wanted to commission a piece dealing with civil rights. We sat at her conference table and tossed around ideas, but the topic is so vast."

It was Shelby's friend and frequent collaborator, writer and director Val Hendrickson, who eventually suggested the Port Chicago incident. "It was perfect," Shelby says. "An event that occurred close to San Francisco and had an immediacy because of the Iraq war."

One of the Bay Area's most visible jazz artists and busiest bassists, Shelby is an accomplished composer and arranger for large orchestra. His most recent works include "The Lights Suite" and "Brown Dreams." The Marcus Shelby Orchestra, founded in 2000, is both supple and robust, containing some of San Francisco's talented young players. Saxophonists Rob Barics, Gabe Eaton and Evan Francis, trumpeters Darren Johnston and Erik Jekabson and pianist Adam Shulman are among the musicians whose solos propel "The Port Chicago Suite."

And while the suite incorporates a compelling diversity of jazz flavorings, including bebop, post-bop, Afro-Cuban and blues, there's no mistaking the pervasive influence of Shelby's most profound artistic inspiration, the sophisticated big-band splendor of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn. The drama of the Port Chicago story emanates from the explosion, the sit-down and the subsequent court-martials, but as the piece unfolds, it's clear that Shelby has crafted the suite within a more nuanced cultural context. After a brief introduction, "Opening Dance" provides a big-band swing romp that harks back to the great big bands of the '30s, evoking the spirit of the era immediately predating the war.

Key to the story is the fact that, in the segregated wartime Navy, blacks were relegated almost exclusively to low-level positions entailing manual labor, with virtually no chance for advancement.

"The fact that Jim Crow existed in the armed forces was a shock to many of these young sailors," Shelby explains. "That's the irony. They had joined the armed forces to get away from that reality, to feel a worth and value, really wanting to serve their country, only to be put into another Jim Crow situation."

These realities are set to music in the somber movement "Barracks Life," as the newly conscripted sailors begin to realize what Navy life holds in store for them, and in the quietly uplifting "Black in Blue," which represents the sailors' pride in their service, despite their less-than-ideal conditions. Shelby was aided in the project by Robert Allen, author of the in-depth study "The Port Chicago Mutiny," published in 1989, and by Hendrickson, who created a narrative outline that provided the foundation for the musical story.

The piece was conceived with dance in mind, and the Oakland Ballet, before its recent demise, was investigating the possibility of creating accompanying choreography. Shelby and the lawyers' society are looking for a new collaborative dance partner.

Now 40, Shelby has had plenty of experience with multigenre collaborations. He has composed frequently for theater, film and dance, beginning in 1992, when he worked with choreographer Pat Taylor in Los Angeles on a piece based on the paintings of Romare Bearden and the poetry of Langston Hughes. He's collaborated with the Robert Moses Dance Company, the Savage Dance Company and ODC/Dance, among many others. He's also a resident composer at Intersection for the Arts, the innovative San Francisco nonprofit arts organization.

Shelby's music career started when, after completing an electrical engineering degree at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, he accepted a scholarship to California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles, where he studied with jazz greats James Newton and Charlie Haden. He also spent formative time at the World Stage, a nonprofit jazz center run by drumming master Billy Higgins. During these years, Shelby played with Black/Note, a five-piece post-bop ensemble that recorded four albums and toured as an opening act for Wynton Marsalis.

Moving to San Francisco in 1996, Shelby led the popular Marcus Shelby Trio, with pianist Matt Clark and drummer Jaz Sawyer, from 1997 through 2000. Then, spurred by his desire to explore more intricate compositional territory as well as his interest in multigenre projects, Shelby formed his orchestra.

"I love history and politics," Shelby says. "Many of my projects have dealt with African American history. That's empowered me and given me a sense of purpose."

As to "The Port Chicago Suite," Shelby acknowledges that the piece will ultimately stand or fall on the quality of the music. He has taken great effort to give his musicians plenty of room to breathe, to improvise and, most of all, to swing. Still, he identifies fiercely with the suite's message.

"It's been probably the most important thing, artistically, in my life as a composer," he says. "Once the government started to investigate what had happened at Port Chicago, they quietly started to desegregate the military. To me, that makes these soldiers heroes. The sailors who refused to work were convicted of mutiny, but their actions helped end Jim Crow in the armed forces."

The Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra plays at 8 and 10 p.m. Tues. and Wed. at Yoshi's, 510 Embarcadero W., Oakland. $10-$14. (510) 238-9200, www.yoshis.com.

Jerry Karp is a freelance writer.

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URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/02/19/PKG2KH5HLM1.DTL