THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, May 19, 1996 TAG: 9605180092
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY IDA KAY JORDAN, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 53 lines
The Hotel Paradise Roof Garden Orchestra with vocalist Becky Livas will be featured at ARTitude Adjustment, a party Friday night to benefit the weekend's 26th annual Seawall Art Show.
The party will begin at 6 p.m. at The Max restaurant on the Portsmouth waterfront.
The orchestra, directed by Portsmouth resident Lynn Summerall, is a 16-piece band specializing in music from the 1930s and '40s. The orchestra plays weekly at Uncle Louie's at Wards Corner in Norfolk and performs regularly at other locations around Hampton Roads.
``This is great music,'' says Bobby Nash, chairman of the Seawall Art Show steering committee, which is sponsoring the benefit. ``It's hard to beat the dance style inspired by these tunes.''
The band plays nothing newer than 1935, thus it does not produce the ``swing'' sound of the big bands of Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey. Instead, its sounds bridge the gap between the ragtime era after World War I and the swing age that came into its own just before World War II.
The period was marked by the compositions of Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Duke Ellington, Jerome Kern, Harold Arlen, Jelly Roll Morton, W.C. Handy and George Gershwin.
As Summerall puts it, ``Broadway was young, jazz was younger.''
The music was heard across the country on radio or wind-up phonographs or, beginning in 1927, in talking motion pictures.
Almost every hotel of any size in the nation had its own live orchestra or string ensemble to accompany dinner. The dance bands played in ballrooms, on patios or just beneath the clouds of a roof garden, where elegant couples dressed in evening attire danced among the potted palms.
``There isn't really a Hotel Paradise, as far as we know,'' Summerall says. ``But we hope our music will take you there anyway.''
He describes the band's music as ``sweet,'' ``hot'' and ``low-down,'' sometimes resembling Guy Lombardo at the Waldorf-Astoria or Al Jolsen's shows at the Winter Garden Theater.
The Paradise Roof Garden Orchestra made its debut in Virginia Beach in 1992 and has been performing regularly since then. The players come from all over Hampton Roads, some from as far away as Elizabeth City, N.C., and Richmond.
A Max hors d'oeuvres buffet will be served at the benefit party. T-shirts with this year's poster design by Robert Burnell, which is featured on today's Currents cover, also will be sold for $12.50 during the evening.
Tickets are $15 per person and are available by calling 393-8983. by CNB