Santa Paula Airport: 85th year celebrated with special Sunday attractions

From New York City clubs to the Santa Paula Airport will be a trip through time for an acclaimed jazz and Big Band singer that will help celebrate the airport’s 85th Anniversary, Sunday, August 2.

This First Sunday at the Santa Paula Airport will be a blast to the past with a tribute to the August 1930 ribbon cutting and air show that opened the venue once famed as the Antique Airplane Capital of the World. The free celebration will be held from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

And noted songstress Molly Ryan, who will make a special appearance Sunday, will not only sing songs from the era but will also be the focus of a special release party for “Let’s Fly Away” her latest album.

According to Dale Sumersille, executive director of the Aviation Museum of Santa Paula, “In celebration of our 85th, we will be using the entire airport for a variety of displays,” including a vintage static aircraft display on Beech Taxiway with more than a dozen aircraft and the Tri-County Mustang and Ventura County Corvette car clubs showing off their sweet rides on Curtiss Taxiway. 

Eagle Taxiway will be the scene of live entertainment, there will be food, vendor and display booths many detailing the creation of world famous Santa Paula Airport and the ranchers and aviators (notably Ralph Dickenson and Dan Emmett) behind it. There will also be children’s activities, displays by other Ventura County Museums, tours of the Aviation Museum’s famed Chain of Hangars and The Young Eagles free plane rides for youth ages 8 to 17 (contact Neil Fowler, (805) 647-6994 for information and reservations).

Molly Ryan will be performing live at 11 a.m., 12 noon and 1 p.m. including songs from her newest release “Let’s Fly Away”.

“A critic’s favorite” is how author and Wall Street Journal music writer Will Friedwald describes Ryan’s singing, which “swings the melody” and words without affectation but rather has a “straight-ahead innocence and total believability to the music that refuses to admit,” that more than seven decades have passed.

“Worldly wise beyond her years but wonderfully gentle and lyrical at the same time” is how Friedwald describes Ryan, whose voice has also been described as silvery and lush, an elegant vocal style that evokes — but brings new life to — the songs Big Band singers made famous in the 1930s.

Since moving to New York City in 2003, Ryan has become one of the most sought-after vocalists on the jazz scene and performed at such prestigious Manhattan venues as the Café Carlyle, Waldorf Astoria, Rainbow Room, Birdland, New York Historical Society Museum and The Player’s Club. She has performed alongside an array of prominent jazz artists as well as with the preeminent 1920s-style orchestra, Vince Giordano’s Nighthawks. She is a member of Gordon Au’s Grand Street Stompers and is the rhythm guitarist and vocalist with James Langton’s New York All-Star Big Band. The versatile Ryan also performs periodically with the gypsy jazz group Fête Manouche.

Ryan has appeared at numerous jazz festivals throughout the U.S. and abroad ranging from the New York Hot Jazz Festival and Old Jazz Meeting “Zlota Tarka” in Ilawa, Poland to the Sweet and Hot Music Festival in Los Angeles.

She has headlined in Paris at jazz clubs such as the famed Le Petit Journal and Autour de Midi, was a featured guest vocalist throughout Germany in a monumental tribute to clarinet legend Benny Goodman (and took part in a spectacular recreation of Goodman’s Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert as well as the centennial salute to Jimmy Dorsey at New York City’s famed Birdland jazz club, where she also regularly performs).

Ryan’s own band also performed a critically acclaimed tribute to Mae West.

Her debut album, “Dream a Little Dream” was released in 2002; she had a second solo album “Songbird in the Moonlight” and she can be heard on various other releases. In 2013 she released “Swing For Your Supper” also featuring guest vocalists.