Concert Review: Jonathan Stout and the Campus Five

Hearing the energy and vitality of 1940s swing coming from the Valley Jazz Club in Canoga Park on a Sunday afternoon brought back memories of an older sister’s stories of dancing on the crowded floor of the Hollywood Palladium on Sunset Boulevard during WWII. As a pre-teen, my first exposure to swing was hearing it spun on Los Angeles radio by disc jockeys, on shows like Peter Potter’s Platter Parade of the Pacific and Al Jarvis’ Make Believe Ballroom. Now, many decades later, I was hearing the same vibrant music, performed live—artfully and authentically—by The Campus Five band, a group co-led by Jonathan Stout and Hilary Alexander. Patterned along lines of popular small bands of the swing era, such as the Benny Goodman Sextet and Artie Shaw’s Gramercy Five, this band was right on the mark with enthusiastic and spirit-raising music, played by musicians with an understanding and focus on swing. The Campus Five is a premier swing dance band. Stout, a very fine guitarist and alumnus of the USC Thornton School of Music Jazz Guitar Program, is also a swing dancer, with an intense interest and desire to bring back the original purity of this music. In that spirit, Stout arrived armed with a brace of Gibson arch-top guitars. Why two separate guitars? One is electric for solo features and single string work, and a second that is acoustic only, for his splendid—and period