Let’S Dance Jazz Veterans Team Up With Engineers, Students To Keep Inland Northwest Crowds Hopping

Britches Malone and his Fabulous Big Band plans to get Liberty Lake dancing on July 4.

They’ll load every set with Latin, waltz and fox trot music from the big band era. In fact, the only requirement the band has for choosing songs to play is that they be danceable.

“If we ever play the song at that tempo, people will get up and walk out. It’s dead,” said trumpet player John Wayne Taylor after going through a cha-cha at a recent practice.

They shorten the song and speed up the tempo.

It works. The tune becomes so catchy that the band members tap their feet and move their instruments to the rhythm.

They’re pleased with the new version and the song will likely be on the play list at Liberty Lake.

“A lot of people know how to cha-cha,” said Taylor, who formed the band more than a year ago and manages it.

At a recent performance at Tubbs Beer Garden in Coeur d’Alene, “there was a full moon and people were dancing on top of each other,” remarked one band member.

The 20-plus member band will kick off the Fourth outdoor summer festival at Liberty Lake’s Pavillion Park. The series, sponsored by the nonprofit Friends of Pavillion Park, will include concerts, movies, a garden tour and fun run. It will run through August. The concerts and movies are free.

It’s appropriate that Britches Malone was selected to play at the summer festival. Several band members work at Agilent Technologies, a company that designs cellular telephone test equipment. It’s headquartered in Liberty Lake.

Music is mathematical. Engineers take to the rhythmic patterns and counting in swing music.

“There’s a lot of nerdy engineers that play music,” said trumpet player Albert Einstein Lassiter.

Lassiter’s sons, Adam, who attends Central Valley High School, and Michael, who studies music at Eastern Washington University, both play sax in the band.

Lassiter and Mark Zurfluh, a trumpet player, also play in the Agilent On the Side Band, which performs Dixieland music.

There’s usually around four Agilent employees in the Britches Malone band at any given time.

“A lot of us wanted to play this style of music,” Zurfluh said.

“Many of the band members are engineers. They’re technical. You’ve just got to pull the feeling out of them,” said Judi Carlson, the group’s vocalist.

Carlson sang with the 1940s wonder-group The Modernaires. She also sang with Tex Beneke’s orchestra. Beneke played sax for Glen Miller.

She and her husband Ernie Carlson, a talented trombonist whose work can be found anonymously on the sound tracks of countless Disney movies, moved from California a year ago.

Judi Carlson said she loves playing with the group.

“I really adore the people in this band. I admire them more than the professionals I worked with that were paid the top dollar.”

They strive to look the part they play. Taylor has a stage he’s created, which mimics the big band era, and all band members dress like old-school gangsters for performances.

The band came together through a “divinely orchestrated series of events,” said Taylor.

Taylor called some of the people. They suggested friends. Others called him out of the blue and said they wanted to join.

The band has had six gigs and expects the one at Liberty Lake to be their biggest yet.

Pavillion Park can comfortably hold between 2,000 and 2,500 people, said committee member Jim Frank. That limits which groups can perform at the venue. This year, the biggest act will be country music singer Lacy J. Dalton.

“Most of the talent we’ll have here, people normally have to pay to see,” Frank said.

Many of the people walk or bike to the event and meet neighbors.

“When people talk about the (Liberty Lake) area, it’s one of the things they brag about,” said Rand Hatch, who’s on the organizing committee.

At the concerts, there are typically a lot of people dancing. That will suit Britches Malone.

The group wants to encourage people to get out their zoot suits and dance shoes and boogie.

“Ballroom dancing is really healthy. It taps into something special in a man and a woman about human cooperation,” Taylor said.

This sidebar appeared with the story: MORE FUN Park schedule

Here’s a list of upcoming events that are part of the Summer Festival at Pavillion Park. The park is located at the southeast corner of Country Vista Drive and Molter Road in Liberty Lake.

July 4, concert, Britches Malone and his Fabulous Big Band.

July 15, concert, Spokane Jazz Orchestra Swing Now and Then with vocalist Charlotte Carruthers

July 21, movie, Peter Pan

July 22, movie, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

July 28, movie, Vertigo

July 29, concert, The New Blues Brothers

July 30, Garden Tour and Art Show

Aug. 4, movie, Life is Beautiful

Aug. 5, concert, Lacy J. Dalton

Aug. 11, movie, Black Stallion

Aug. 12, Fun Run

Aug. 18, movie, Goldfinger

Aug. 19, movie, For Your Eyes Only

Aug. 20, movie, Goldeneye