JAZZ REVIEW : A MUSICAL FIELD DAY WITH SOME BASIE ALUMNI

The Sherman Oaks rendezvous where a jazz policy once flourished (when it was known as Carmelo’s), then disintegrated (during its days as the Flamingo), is open again after six months of darkness. Now named Tracy’s Dinner House, the restaurant on Van Nuys Boulevard north of Ventura has embarked on a seven-nights-a-week music regimen. For starters, Gregg Field, the young drummer who came to prominence with the Basie band, gave the Count-down Monday evening.

Playing to a near-capacity crowd in a room that now has a more agreeable ambiance, Field predictably stuck to a predominantly Basie-oriented program, with three fellow alumni in the lineup: Snooky Young, trumpet, and Bob Summers, fluegelhorn, whose styles offered a neat contrast between swing and bop directions; and bassist John Clayton, whose bass solos enabled him to do double duty, since the pianist never showed up.

The very phrase “pianoless Basie orchestra” seems oxymoronic, yet somehow it worked, mainly because the charts (by Neal Hefti, Sam Nestico and Clayton) set the mood and the reed section (including Danny House, borrowed from the present vacationing Basie band) achieved an admirable blend. Such valuable standards as “Cherry Point” (House on alto, Buddy Childers on trumpet) and “Splanky” (Bob Cooper and Terry Harrington on tenor saxes) made a firm imprint.

Before Field returns on Monday for an encore, the room tonight and Thursday will present the Step Sisters, a vocal group that backed Linda Ronstadt on a hit album; Friday through Sunday the Art Graham Trio will introduce as its vocalist Bill Terry, one of the room’s three new partners.