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Instead, the Beyond the Bell jazz combo made up of students from L.A,'s Washington Prep and Fremont High School, under the direction of Anthony White, provided a West Coast cool musical ambience.
This gathering was all about the music. After all, it's still winter. Even with bright Southern California sunshine, the air was brisk. And bunnies don't do brisk.
Which was OK, because festival producer Darlene Chan and emcee Bill Cosby had plenty of cool surprises to spring on the 75 or so artists and musicians, festival organizers, Playboy execs and media reps from around the world gathered under the huge tent in the Beverly Hills-adjacent mansion's backyard, adjacent to the infamous grotto and the exotic, sometimes noisy bird aviary.
Seated together in the front row of the audience were Hugh Hefner, Playboy's founder and Playboy Jazz Festivals exec producer, and Dick Rosenzweig, the festival's president.
Chan, whose FestivalWest crew has produced the Playboy jamfest since its second year, and Cosby, emcee for the 29th time, had lots of unscripted fun at the podium.
She vainly tried to play it straight in reading the list of performers for each day, while he cracked wise at every possible opportunity, just like the class clown he's always been, breaking up the house many times along the way.
"Ten groups make their debut appearances this year, so nobody can say it's the same ol' same ol,'" Chan said about booking fresh talent for 2010.
"We were thinking a little outside the box."
"What box?" Cosby asked, mock-shocked.
"The jazz box," she said, faux exasperated.
"I've got bad news for you," he said, adopting his booming professorial Dr. Cosby tone. "THIS...is a BOWL!"
The multitudes howled. The exotic fowl squawked their approval.
Among the June weekend's many highlights: Keyboardist/composer Chick Corea's Freedom Band; 10-time Grammy-winning guitarist/singer George Benson; the long-awaited return of modern vocalese legends The Manhattan Transfer, Cuba's salsa superstars Los Van Van, and soul-jazz keyboard legend Les McCann; the by-popular-demand encore of gifted bassist-bandleader Esperanza Spalding; the festival debut of standout vocalist Kurt Elling and San Francisco's 40-member Jazz Mafia...
It just goes on and on. The weekend's 22 artists or groups reflect the many styles of America's first original musical art form, now more than a century old. There's jazz from traditional to swing to bop and beyond, from big-band and vocal jazz to fusion and smooth jazz; from Latin jazz to African music and the blues, the deepest roots of jazz.
"What is always special for me is the entire event," Hefner told The Signal, "but this year, I'm tickled that Manhattan Transfer is back."
So are Chan and Cosby, who joined Hefner in welcoming the group's Tim Hauser and Alan Paul to the news conference.
Hauser and Cosby go back to 1962, when Cosby was fresh out of Temple University and Hauser was still attending Villanova.
The group's relationship with Playboy dates to the mid-1970s, when Hefner hired them to play an extended stand in the ballroom at what became the Playboy Hotel in Chicago.
And Chan said high on her list of favorite festival moments is the quartet joining Weather Report for a one-time-only joint performance of "Birdland" at the Bowl in June 1982.
"It was ... a magical moment," she said. "From the front to the very back seats, people were (standing) ... just amazing."
This June, the eight-time Grammy-winning vocal group continues celebrating its 40th anniversary with its third Playboy Jazz appearance, backing their most recent album, "The Chick Corea Songbook," out in fall 2009.
"It's a great project," Paul said. "It was so nice after all these years to have something like that to dive into, to get our teeth into. Chick's music is so fantastic, so complex, challenging, and we're very happy with it."
Onstage at the Bowl? "We're probably going to do at least half the songs on our new album and a lot from our best book of stuff,'" Hauser said.
"And we have an incredible band. Yaron Gershovsky, our music director/keyboard player, has been with us since Cheryl (Bentyne) came in, 31 years. Gary Wicks is on bass, Adam Hawley on guitar and Steve Hass on drums. These guys have played with us a long time."
"For us, playing the Playboy Jazz Festival is even more than a really great gig - it's very, very personal, and that means a lot by itself," Hauser added.
Will Corea, a Saturday headliner, perform with Manhattan Transfer on Sunday? Or vice versa? Will filmed footage of the 1982 jam with Weather Report be integrated somehow in the quartet's 2010 set? Stay tuned.
While Chan and her crew usually avoid booking the same artist in consecutive years just to keep things fresh, a notable 2010 exception is 25-year-old Esperanza Spalding, who in 2009 not only debuted at the Bowl, but also played at The White House and the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony honoring President Obama.
"Esperanza broke it up at the festival last year, so she will be back this year," Rosenzweig said. "She's worth the price of admission alone."
Cosby got lots of laughs after Chan got to Spalding's name on the list of Sunday performers, and the audience clapped enthusiastically.
"Now, how many of you are applauding because she's great looking?" he challenged. Silence. "Liars, every one of you!" he went on.
"Half of you could not come up here and imitate what she plays. She is also a professor - the youngest professor - at the Berklee School of Music. She is a genius. And we want you to, this time, to pay attention, please, not to the face, but to the hands."
Exempt from the no-back-to-back years rule, Cosby also fronts a jazz combo each June, Cos of Good Music. He picks a tune and an arrangement, the players rehearse a time or two, and they all have a large time onstage at the Bowl. Sometimes they even let Dr. Cosby sit in with them on percussion.
On Sunday afternoon, Cosby's 2010 lineup features Dwayne Burno (bass), Ndugu Chancler (drums), Mark Gross (sax), Jay Hoggard (vibes), D.D. Jackson (piano) and Ingrid Jensen (trumpet/fluegelhorn).
"I love my 3:30 slot, because it doesn't bother me that people are ignoring us," Cosby said sarcastically. "Some artists go crazy, but I love it. (From the stage) you see people (come in) with their ice chests, going across (the aisles) and greeting each other while my band is playing what I think is my great arrangement."
But it's OK, Cosby said, "As long as they bought tickets to see George Benson..."
In addition to world-famous superstars and breakout talents such as Benson and Spalding, the festival fields jazz groups from L.A.-area high schools, like the one playing the news conference.
"We always launch each day with a high school band, and it's great for the kids," Rosenzweig said. "We tell them, ‘At 2:30 in the afternoon, when you were on the stage, you may feel like as if there aren't many people in the audience, but there are 5,000 people here already, and you have never played before 5,000 people before."
As Cosby noted, "These kids are the future" of jazz.
Part of the festival's appeal year after year is the sense of exploration and discovery in the air. Rosenzweig noted that even established artists try new things at the Bowl.
"Because we are ordinarily the first festival of the summer in this country and Europe, they often try to break in new material, and usually it works," he said. "Sometimes it's completely different from anything you've ever heard before from a major name. People get a kick out of it."
The festival sells out most years, drawing around 35,000 fans. Rosenzweig is optimistic all the tickets will go this year, too, sketchy economy notwithstanding.
"To fill almost 18,000 seats two days in a row in this economy could be difficult," he said. "But we're sold out in a couple of sections already. People look forward to this event with such anticipation that I don't anticipate we'll have any problems."
It is, after all, a pretty good deal - 11 artists for between $20 and $150 per ticket. Even an expensive seat is cheaper than it would cost to see the artists individually. And it's hard to put a price tag on the Bowl experience.
"We've got a great lineup, and I'm looking forward to it," Hefner said. "It's always a grand party.
* * * * *
ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: 'Girls Next Door' update
On another personal and professional note, Hefner is busier than ever with his "Girls Next Door" franchise on the E! Entertainment cable channel.
"We have two spinoffs," he said Wednesday in an exclusive interview with The-Signal.com. "‘Kendra' is about to begin its second season with Kendra Wilkinson, and Holly (Madison) is about to begin her spinoff called ‘Holly's World in Vegas.'" Both were original "Girls Next Door" cast members who exited in 2008.
With their replacements, twins Kristina and Karissa Shannon, exiting "GND" after last season, Hefner said remaining playmate Crystal Harris is now "THE girlfriend" for him, and that the original show's focus is changing for its upcoming seventh season.
"We're going to be opening it up to be almost like a sorority," he said. "There will be more emphasis on the Playmate house, and the girls coming in and testing. If you remember the old classic film ‘Stage Door' with Lucille Ball, Katherine Hepburn and all those ladies - it's going to have a little of that quality."
Not bad for a guy who'll celebrate his 84th birthday April 9.
"Well, we're dancing as fast as we can just to keep me young!" Hefner laughed.
