Carnival of Soul

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In Michael Seligman’s Palm Springs condo, a new turntable sits on a table — one of his kids purchased it for him as a gift. At 84, he says he has no idea about its modern technology features. But he’s excited to drag out his old jazz records for the first time in many years, after the CD revolution in the ’80s made turntables obsolete.

Seligman doesn’t recall the title of the Miles Davis record that made him fall in love with jazz, but it started when he was in his teens growing up in Massachusetts. 

“When I was a kid at 16 years old, there was a jazz club in Boston called Storyville, and they had the top jazz people. I used to go there and listen to jazz and they’d kick me out for being underage,” Seligman said. 

Seligman would go on to spend 38 years producing the Oscars, as well as presidential galas and the inaugurations of Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

But now, he’s focused on his next production: a jazz festival in Palm Springs. 

“We want to do it every year and we want to make a big success out of it,” said Seligman, who moved to the city five years ago. 

The inaugural Palm Springs International Jazz Festival will take place November 23-24 at the Annenberg Theater inside the Palm Springs Art Museum. Ten-time Grammy winner and Afro-Cuban jazz trumpeter Arturo Sandoval is scheduled to appear, and vocalists Stacey Kent, Tierney Sutton and René Marie will perform sets backed by former Davis keyboardist John Beasley and his 18-piece big band. 

Seligman wants to expand the festival in years to come. 

“We’re pending nonprofit status right now,” he said. “None of us are taking any money, and we’re doing it out of the love for jazz.”

Many music critics agree that jazz is a dying genre. It hit an all-time low five years ago, according to Nielsen’s 2014 year-end report. All jazz artists combined sold only 5.2 million albums. That same year, pop vocalist Taylor Swift sold 3.7 million copies alone.

There have been glimmers of hope, however: Hip-hop artist Kendrick Lamar collaborated with saxophonist Kamasi Washington in 2015. Dr. Dre, Beastie Boys and A Tribe Called Quest used samples of famous jazz recordings by Jimmy Smith, David Axelrod and Art Blakey throughout the ’90s. 

Jazz festival organizers say the key to the event’s success is Palm Springs itself. 

The city has a storied history with the genre, from the big band era in the ’40s and ’50s to Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack making Palm Springs their playground in the ’50s and ’60s.

“Unfortunately, we don’t have any standing venues for this music in Palm Springs, but I think that’s why the jazz festival will be well received,” said Bob Dickinson, one of the co-organizers of the festival. “We’ll be celebrating the music that’s integral to the history of Palm Springs.”

Chi Chi holds place in city’s jazz history 

You can’t talk about jazz in Palm Springs without talking about the Chi Chi Club. 

The famous downtown venue stood at 217 N. Palm Canyon Drive from the ’40s through the ’60s. 

The building previously housed a bar, Freeman’s Desert Grill, opened by local resident Jack Freeman in 1936. But his business partner, architect Irwin Schulman, renamed it the Chi Chi two years later, according to a Desert Sun column by Nicolette Wenzell of the Palm Springs Historical Society. 

Schulman later expanded the venue, transforming it from a small bar into an extravagant nightclub. 

In October 1948, the Chi Chi debuted a new theater that could hold 750 people, the Starlite Room. (By comparison, the Annenberg Theater has 430 seats.) Renowned actor and bandleader Desi Arnaz and his 17-piece orchestra played its debut. A new dining room, The Blue Room, added space for an additional 250 people.

Club history: Chi Chi club drew stars to stage

Before Vegas: Swinging-est jazz headliners came to Chi Chi in Palm Springs

Bill Alexander, a professional drummer, was selected to be the musical director of the Chi Chi’s house band. He performed as announcer and bandleader. His five- to nine-piece house band opened for acts ranging from jazz legends Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington to comics Milton Berle and Red Skelton.

Additional performers included Ella Fitzgerald, Sara Vaughn and Palm Springs resident Nat King Cole, according to the Palm Springs Historical Society’s Tracy Conrad, who helped organize the Palm Springs International Jazz Festival. 

“Jazz fits into the history of Palm Springs being the Hollywood haven that it was,” Conrad said. 

Alexander kept many secrets of famous Palm Springs residents who hung out in the club, according to his 2006 obituary in The Desert Sun. Greg Purdy, the former director of media relations for The Fabulous Palm Springs Follies, a dance and music revue at the nearby Plaza Theatre, called him “a repository of all the dirt that happened in this town.”

Hoping to capitalize on the city’s appetite for jazz, promoter Gene Norman planned to do a three-day jazz festival in Palm Springs in 1958. The first day would feature Dixieland, or traditional jazz, with a performance by Armstrong; the second day would focus on big band and the final day would be devoted to improvisational jazz, according to Conrad. 

Mayor Frank Bogert was fine with the festival, but police chief Gus Kettmann was not. 

Legendary club: Recalling the grand and gleaming Chi Chi

Norman, who had already done several jazz festivals in California, said the Palm Springs festival was aimed at an older crowd over 30. Kettman believed the festival would draw teenagers and “undue exuberance,” Conrad wrote in a recent column for The Desert Sun. 

The jazz festival never happened. The Desert Sun editorial board even supported the decision to deny the permit, saying the festival would be “lost” on younger visitors. 

A few years later, the nightclub scene began to fade and Schulman sold the Chi Chi in 1961, according to Conrad. The club would go through several new owners who transformed the space for a wide range of uses, from a cabaret that showed adult films to a wax museum and a spaghetti restaurant.

In 1984, it was torn down for the Desert Fashion Plaza expansion. 

All that jazz in the local area

It’s been nearly six decades since the Chi Chi closed down, but vestiges of the culture remain in Palm Springs. 

Wang’s in the Desert hosts “Jazzville,” a weekly live jazz series. Both Oscar’s bar and the Purple Room supper club, a Sinatra and Rat Pack hangout, host vocal jazz performers. 

In 2013, Gail Christian and Lucy DeBardelaben started the Palm Springs Women’s Jazz Festival with a mission to expose audiences to different types of jazz and create opportunities for young female artists. The festival was held at various venues throughout the city, including the Annenberg Theater and Rivera hotel, with grants and support from PS Resorts, a nonprofit charged with growing tourism in Palm Springs. 

Notable performers included jazz drummer and producer Terri Lyne Carrington, vocalist and pianist Diane Schuur, Grammy Award-winning jazz vocalist Dee Dee Bridgewater and Chilean jazz artist Claudia Acuña. 

Palm Springs: An all-women’s Jazz festival is the valley’s ‘best kept secret’

But since its founding, the women’s jazz festival has been held in different months due to larger local events. Festivals like Desert Trip have made it difficult for potential out-of-town audience members to find hotel rooms and, as a result, the festival has had problems settling on dates, Christian told The Desert Sun in 2017. 

That year, the festival only drew 1,200 people. Organizers took a one-year hiatus in 2018.

“At some point after five years you’ve got to have more to look forward to than concerts that draw 400 people,” Christian said. “That’s not good enough for the effort. We’ve got to find a way to break through or use another approach to get the music to people. We want to be the jazz festival every year until we die, but we’ve got to solve these problems.”

The festival returned in 2019, with performances held at Oscar’s bar as well as the Indian Wells Theater, which seats 350, at Cal State San Bernardino. During a recent phone interview, Christian said she struggles to find local venues large enough to generate ticket sales that attract bigger names. 

“You’re left with the (Annenberg Theater) and Indian Wells Theater,” Christian said. “The problem is in this economy, it’s hard to find an artist you can break even on with that number of seats, and (you) can’t bring in any jazz singer at the top of the charts.

“Vocalists are going to talk to you wanting $10,000 to $20,000. That’s impossible, but it’s what you’re up against and that’s what you have to overcome.” 

Christian said she is hesitant to work with sponsors because many music backers are alcohol or tobacco companies.

“I spent too many years raising my fists against alcohol and tobacco to turn around, call them up and ask them to help me with a jazz festival,” she said.  

The Palm Springs International Jazz Festival will also be held at the Annenberg Theater. Its organizers set up a nonprofit and are funding this year’s event with donations and ticket sales. The lineup features some of the biggest names in jazz.

Despite the genre’s small audience, Dickinson said he and other organizers are modeling the festival after events like Modernism Week and the Palm Springs International Film Festival, which boast multiple venues throughout the city. 

“Modernism Week is a hugely successful event in Palm Springs,” Dickinson said, “but people who are interested in mid-century modernism is a small percentage of the population.”

The organizer believes there’s potential to build a successful jazz festival in Palm Springs. 

“We have the weather, the proximity to a major metropolitan area and a lot to offer,” Dickinson said. ” Something like this can get lost in a city like Las Vegas because there’s so much going on there.” 

Desert Sun reporter Brian Blueskye covers arts and entertainment. He can be reached at brian.blueskye@desertsun.com or (760) 778-4617. Previous reporting by Bruce Fessier was used in this report. 

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