STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

Goodness gracious, great balls of fire!

The Sun Valley Jazz and Music Festival may have been pared down into the Sun Valley Jazz Party this year. But it certainly didn’t lack in enthusiasm, either from the musicians who kept the blaring trumpets and jokes rolling or from the boisterous fans who were quick to show their appreciation for a good riff.

And Dave Bennett put an exclamation on it all with his rollicking tribute to Jerry Lee Lewis.

Bennett, a young Michigan musician who covers the genres from hard driving swing and jazz to rockabilly and pop, brought the crowd in Sun Valley Resort’s Limelight Ballroom to their feet as he performed “Whole lotta Shakin’ Going On,” his hands a blur as he pounded the keys flipping his hands in the air a foot above the piano keys.

Bennett leaned back from his piano seat, nearly parallel to the floor, his light brown locks bouncing on his forehead. Then he stood up on the piano bench as he turned up the tempo “just a little bit” on “Maybelline.”

“Another festival had a misprint on the program. They said we were going to do a tribute to Jerry Lewis!” he told the crowd, leaving them to imagine how he might play the goofy comedian.

Bennett hit the ivories on the piano with his right foot as he sang “Me and Bobby McGee” as Jerry Lee Lewis aka The Killer might have performed it. And the crowd responded, dancing in their chairs and flocking to the dance floor amidst enthusiastic cheers and claps.

“This has been a lot of fun getting to play with people we’ve never played with before,” Bennett said. “You’ve treated us so well we’re not going to leave Sun Valley. We don’t even have to play music for you. We’ll come to your homes and mow your lawns,” he quipped.

The Jazz Party, now in its 35^th year, drew people from around the country, along with plenty of locals. Ketchum residents Dale and Peggy Bates were constant fixtures on the dance floor, as they have been for many years.

And Hailey Dr. Tom Crais showed up a big smile on his face.

“I’m from New Orleans so I grew up on this music,” said Crais, one of the Jazz Party’s sponsors.

One woman from Seattle proudly sported her vest covered with badges from Jazz Festivals throughout the country.

“It weighs a lot! Like 22 pounds,” she said. “And I have two of them. Obviously, I love the music. I’ve followed it all over.”

Jazz is known for its improvisation, but this festival called on improvisation to the max as many musicians came without their bands, instead mixing and matching with other musicians on sets paying tribute to the likes of Louie Armstrong, Hank Williams and Al Hirt.

Trumpet player Greg Varlotta got the crowd rocking on Al Hirt’s familiar “Java,” a Allen Toussaint song that reached No. 4 on the Billboard charts in 1964 and won a Grammy Award for Hirt. Then he mesmerized them, his trumpet resembling a bumblebee on Hirt’s “Theme to the Green Hornet.”

Come Sunday morning, the last day of the four-day party, one pianist played a haunting version of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” and attendees danced across the ballroom pumping parasols in the air to “When the Saints Go Marching In.”

Trombone player Dave Ruffner of the Blue Street Jazz Band took a few minutes off the gospel set to offer his customary sermon—a little different with a high stakes election just two weeks away.

“Remember, we might be Americans now but our citizenry is in heaven,” he told the audience. “Scripture says we need to submit to authority whoever they are … submit to authority and stay out of trouble… No  matter who wins, we need to love one another and remember that this is only temporal.”