Kay Starr

Candye Kane firmly believes that country music --traditional country music, that is--has universal appeal. "The problem with country is that everyone lumps it all together, the modern with the traditional," said the 28-year-old singer-songwriter, who, since moving to Encinitas four years ago, has been perpetuating old-time twang in nightclubs all over San Diego County, either on her own or with her backup trio, the Jolly Ranchers.

The Moscow Classical Ballet has announced that veteran Kirov ballerina Tatiana Terekhova will dance with the company on its first U.S. tour, which begins in El Paso this week. The company is scheduled to dance at the Orange County Performing Arts Center next week, Oct. 4-9, and Oct. 11-16 at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium.

More than 80 concert events, including appearances by the Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic, the Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig, Dame Joan Sutherland, Jessye Norman, Ivo Pogorelich, the Juilliard Quartet and the Irish Rovers, will be offered by the Ambassador International Cultural Foundation during its 1986-87 season.

Said veteran benefit-goer Diane Morton: "The best benefit I've ever been to." Others at the Beverly Hilton were as exhilarated over the USC Friends of Music night, dubbed "Ella." The black-tie crowd had just been mesmerized by a unique reunion: 74-year-old Ella Fitzgerald singing on stage with the jazz greats who have accompanied her over the years--drummer Louis Bellson, pianist Gerald Wiggins, Buddy Collette on tenor sax, Marshall Royal on alto sax and Snooky Young on trumpet.

On most nights the Hollywood Palladium vibrates to the sound of loud and raucous rock concerts. But for one night late last fall, the Palladium took on a romantic tone as it turned back the clock five decades to the bygone era of the big-band. For the new KCET special, "Those Fabulous '40s," fashionably dressed couples hit the floor, jitterbugging and dancing cheek to cheek to the music of such greats as Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Harry James, Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw.

Swing is all the rage this year. But for some, swing dancing and big-band music are more than today's fads. They're lifetime obsessions. Several hundred such swing devotees were at the Grand Ballroom of the Doubletree Hotel Orange County Airport in Costa Mesa on Sunday, twirling, stepping and very occasionally leaving their feet as nine big bands paraded across two stages over 10 hours in the ballroom.

Helen O'Connell, the petite singer who with Bob Eberly formed one of the most enduring duos in American popular music, died Thursday at a San Diego hospice. Her manager, Gloria Burke, said she was 73. With her when she died were her husband, Frank DeVol, the orchestra leader, arranger and composer, and three of her four daughters. Most recently she had become a soloist, appearing throughout the country on her own or with "ghost bands," the remnants of the dance music bands of the 1930s and '40s.

This piano gets around. Pure white, classically elegant, coolly sophisticated, the 9-foot Steinway grand is known to its owner as CD-700. But it may be more familiar to motorists and news watchers as the co-star of last week's Fringe Festival rush-hour concert atop Seventh Market Place overlooking the Harbor Freeway. Next week it travels to Dodger Stadium to open the papal Mass. The week after that it will back Shirley Jones in her concert at Downey's Colonial Faire in Furman Park.

Summer's arrival this weekend means that school's out, the beach is in and Disneyland's annual big band festival is on. Beginning Saturday with Joe Graves leading the Harry James Orchestra, the series will bring a dozen of the world's best-known big bands to the park's Plaza Gardens bandstand over the next 11 weeks.

Talk about a name-dropper. Joe Graydon seems to know them all. "Here's some of the people I've used," he said of a hastily scribbled list. Included were Kay Starr, Martha Tilton, Tony Martin, Frankie Laine, Margaret Whiting, Herb Jeffries, Maxene Andrews, Harry Babbitt, Connie Haines . . . and more than 20 other singers, a few vocal groups, a couple of dancers, six specialty musicians and 10 big bands.