SCANDAL AND ALL THAT JAZZ

KRISS Ross has a difficult job. The night I visited his Washington jazz club he was on stage having champagne poured down his throat by a 72-year-old singer called Eartha Kitt. Not that Mr Ross seemed fazed by the experience. As promotions manager at Blues Alley, the capital's finest supper jazz bar (think Ronnie Scott's but a little smaller), he has seen most things, even if he discreetly declines to discuss the more sensitive issues.

This is Washington by night and, as we all now know, some of the locals can get up to some interesting activities out of hours. Luckily or unluckily for them there are plenty of dimly lit jazz clubs which provide just the right atmosphere.

Blues Alley, despite being down a shabby little side street, is upmarket by Washington standards, sited in fashionable Georgetown. It costs around $35 to see the still-sexy Miss Kitt and other top attractions, including Branford Marsalis, McCoy Tyner and the deliciously named Cyrus Chestnut. But if you can't afford the entrance fee, you can always stand in the alley and listen for free while playing Spot the Senator. The night I visited the club, Miss Kitt, looking and sounding just as sensationally sultry as she did 35 years ago, had the audience entranced with her non-stop stream of cabaret stormers. It was almost as fascinating as watching the audience. Surely that distinguished- looking middle-aged man at the next table must be something on the Hill, and could that sophisticated young woman sitting next to him be his wife ... or researcher? Washington may not seem the logical destination for jazz and blues lovers but DC has the highest black population of any city in the US and also happens to be the birthplace of the country's most famous jazz composer and bandleader. Edward Kennedy Ellington was so good they nicknamed him Duke, which in many people's book outranks a mere president, even if the jazzman's father was once a butler at the White House. Washington, naturally, will be celebrating the birth of its most famous jazz son in appropriate style, with concerts and an exhibition in the grandiose Union Station, which is itself worth more than a look with its vaulted ceilings, shopping mall and fine restaurants. Chief among these is B Smith's, in the flashily beaux-arts former Presidential Suite, with its contemporary southern cooking. And, yes, there's live jazz most WAY TO GO travelled to Washington with 427 8800) which has three- night nights. You can still hear echoes of Ellington all over the city even though he left for New York (probably from Union Station) when he was still a young man. The clubs can be upmarket like Blues Alley, but there's also plenty of music to be heard in the dozens of somewhat shadier bars for the price of a few drinks. Take the Scandal Tour during the day (a delightfully silly bus ride around the places where various politicians and judges got up to no good, promising "lies, theft and prostitution ... and that's just the Senate"), then check out the bars and clubs by night to see if you can flush out your own bit of political incorrectness. THE closest I came to spotting a politician was seeing Clinton's ex-spin d o c t o r G e o r g e Stephanopoulos signing his telltale autobiography in Kramerbooks, next door to the saucily named Madam's Organ club (It's in the trendy Adams-Morgan district. Geddit?). Frankly, the bluesy sounds coming from Madam's were more tempting than queuing for George's moniker. I was on scandal watch again in One Step Down, an authentic jazz bar in Foggy Bottom (where do they get those names?), which is the second oldest continuous jazz club in the States. It must also be one of the smallest, with room for only about 75 customers; the band shoehorned in at the end of the bar and within conversation distance of the nearest patrons. This is my favourite DC dive. Owner Catherine "The Chick" Stuart presides behind the bar while Steve, a great bear of a man with a beret incongruously atop his head, serves the customers wedged into intimate booths fashioned from old church pews. Each booth has its own tabletop jukebox with a jazz lover's dream selection. Sadly it wasn't working the night I visited, but the live show, featuring alto sax man Joe Ford and some fine local musicians, was fair compensation. I was the last to leave (at 2.30am, since you ask) and if there were any politicians engaged in hanky-panky I missed them. Mind you, when the music is so good who needs the scandal.

Copyright 1999
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