Jabberwocky with a Beat

I'm gonna pack my suitcase

Pack

You should be movin'

Pack

You need some groovin'

Pack

The blues have done their bit, yeah!

This jabberwockian fantasy is not the handiwork of a beat generation poet, but the nightly stock in trade of the nation's slickest new vocal group--the Lambert, Hendricks and Ross trio. In Los Angeles' Crescendo Club last week, the three performers triple-tongued their way through these lines (to Everyday) and half a dozen other numbers. What they were up to was a startling vocal and verbal imitation of instrumental jazz, particularly the big-band style of the 1930s. The whisky drinkers, like the trio's record fans, dug the act with the fervor of a bunch of auto buffs at an antique-car rally.

The trio sings broadly swinging, word-for-note versions of arrangements by such famed big bands as Count Basic, Jimmy Lunceford, Duke Ellington. Jon Hendricks himself composes most of the lyrics, which are supposed to approximate--in sound and sense--the instrumental feel of the original band arrangement. Example: last week Singer Annie Ross, cast in the role of "brass," opened with the line "Dig Count Basie blow Joe's blues away," was seconded by the "reeds" (Hendricks, Arranger Dave Lambert) with the line "Blow Joe's blues away." After that the two sections sang together in a bouncing counterpoint, with the "brass" falling back and punctuating the "reed" line with repeated "yeahs!" Farther along, Singers Lambert and Ross took over the role of "trombones," while Hendricks as a solo "reed" came in on every third line. In the finale, the three bundled their heads at the microphone in a blast of harmony: "Dig Basic, and every day he'll blow your blues away, yeah!"

At times the lyrics tumbled out like rolling dice; at times they floated with a coolly languid back beat. Sometimes the trio sang three different lyric lines simultaneously :

Tell me what I am to do, show goes on

at 2. Baby says we're through.

Gotta go play the clown. Two o'clock is

round, and my baby put me down.

Blues . . . back . . . stage.

To prepare herself for the tongue-tripping convolutions of the lyrics, Annie practices each number at triple the speed it is to be performed.

The inspiration for the trio's verbal jazz comes from Lyricist Hendricks, who nearly ten years ago heard a version of Moody's Mood for Love in which lyrics had been dubbed in for a saxophone solo. Hendricks (now 37) and Boston Jazz Veteran (41) Dave Lambert experimented with instrumental-styled vocal writing for several years, eventually teamed up with London-born Annie Ross. The three of them now sing 30 songs, many of them Basie classics, e.g., Avenue C, It's Sand, Man--heavily flavored with jazz argot:

Just pick up your toes 'n' lay 'em

down . . .

You gotta really ruffle up the floor . . .

Time to dig some sand, man.

Big, bold, broad beat brought back by

Basie's Band, man!

The trio now has two briskly selling albums, plus as many nightclub engagements as it can handle (including a Las Vegas offer that may go to $3,000 a week). A columnist suffering from typewriter fatigue recently, tagged the trio the Gilbert & Sullivans of Jazz. A more apt title might be the James Joyces of Jive.

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