Friday night in the Avenue Market and Tessa Hill-Aston is pumped. Half of Sandtown and Upton is here, standing shoulder to shoulder, filling the back half of the market as Carlos Johnson and his Zone One Band swing through another tune.

"Didn't I tell you?" she says. "Look at 'em. They're still bringing in chairs."

A Rasta brother who calls himself "Africa" is here to be with what he calls "my family"; "Sister" and her girlfriends are here; "Slinky" is here, waiting for "Scooter," his partner in the Tasmanian Devils dance duo. It is 8: 30 p.m. and some folks have been here almost four hours already.

Hill-Aston, 48, makes her way through the crowd and calls to an acquaintance: "Hey, Thelma. Next Friday is one year."

"One year?"

"You know I was supposed to be here 60 days. Next Friday is 365," she says, her voice full of sass and "I told you so" confidence. "Next Friday is the night. One year. One year."

Hill-Aston is an unlikely impresario, an executive assistant in the city's Housing Authority. She thinks of herself as a "black Martha Stewart," a home-and-garden gal who grew up in Cherry Hill, graduated from Forest Park High School and Coppin State. She says she likes nothing better than sitting down with a few friends, a few brews and a few dozen steamed crabs. Tonight, though, she is here, grooving to her creation: "Cool Jazz on the Avenue."

On Friday nights, this one-time city market in the 1700 block of Pennsylvania Avenue becomes part jazz club, part reunion hall. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, come for the free shows. The early birds claim the tables. Some regulars bring their own chairs.

"Everybody comes here and there's no difference of lifestyle," Hill-Aston says above the music. "Here, it's just common ground. They shake hands, have a beer and meet a friend."

The concert series started a year ago when city Housing Commissioner Daniel P. Henson III asked Hill-Aston to see if she could come up with anything to turn the market around. Nearly a year had passed since the market reopened after a $4 million renovation. It had new paint, a new name, even an Afro-centric theme. But there were few customers. Merchants were struggling and complaining.

Jazz seemed the remedy. It tapped into the avenue's rich history. Everyone remembered the old days, or had a story about the Royal Theatre, the Penn Hotel, Ike Dixon's Comedy Club. Henson could look at a current photo and point out the building that once housed Pop Kelly's.

Mention Pennsylvania Avenue and black Baltimore goes into a nostalgia jag about the good old days when the joints were jumping and Nat King Cole, James Brown, the Orioles and Billie Holiday came around. They talk about those days and no one mentions segregation. But, as Duke Ellington once said, "Things ain't what they used to be."

No trouble

The neighborhood changed, in some ways for the worse. Before starting the concerts, Hill-Aston asked some co-workers to act as security guards and escorts. Ronnie Johnson, 46, was one of those who helped out.

"I knew that it needed [it]," says Johnson, who works in city human services. "And knowing the neighborhood like I do, I figured I would get some respect. But nothing really big happened."

Nobody, it turned out, came for trouble. They came for the music and a little fun. That they came at all surprised Clifford Kidwell, 35, who with his wife, Stephanie, 33, runs Shuckers on the Avenue.

"I didn't have a real bright outlook at first, but after the first couple of nights and I saw the turnout, I said, 'Tessa. We got to keep this thing going,' " he says, standing near two deep fryers filled with bubbling, boiling oil. "Honestly, I hope it never goes away."

Friday nights are big nights for Shuckers, bringing in more receipts than in two or three other days. People line up two and three deep at the counter. And some come back during the week.

The jazz shows were supposed to last only eight weeks. But people kept coming, more each Friday. An entire neighborhood of 40-somethings turned out. Chess nuts commandeered a table. The turning point came at the end of the second month.

"I was up by the microphone and people just walked up and started dropping money. I started crying," says Hill-Aston. "Everybody said, 'Thank you for giving us something to do.' "

Contributions

Now the concerts are paid for with contributions dropped into a donation box that is pushed around the room all night long. Tomorrow night should bring in a good take. Carlos Johnson is playing. He grew up around here and did pretty well in the music business. During a break on this night he stands by a door and tries to give a quick bio, but people keep interrupting, shaking his hand, showing him a photocopy of a 30-year-old news clip.

"Hey, Carlos," smiles one old fan. "You're the only reason I'm down here."

"How you doing, brother?" says Johnson.

A woman presses close and says, "I'm getting me a hug," and Johnson obligingly breaks away for a moment.

"It's just a pleasure to do this," he says. "I've been all over the

world, and it's great to come home and be recognized by your people."

In a few minutes, he is back on stage, blowing into his alto saxophone beneath banners of Zambia and Mauritania. The music is loud, harsh as it bounces and echoes off the concrete walls and floor. The only quiet place is in the office of Ron Harvey, the market's general manager. He has his own thoughts about the Friday night scene.

"We want to be more than just jazz. That's not what the market was set up for," he says. "We're not a club. But the jazz does show people what the market has."

Harvey, like Hill-Aston, wants to carry the momentum beyond the market. They're working to have the area declared a historic district.

Harvey can imagine this strip of Pennsylvania Avenue transformed into an African-American version of Georgetown. Hill-Aston has pulled together $350,000 from the city, state and MTA for street-scape work, a fence and lighting. She wants pastel colors on store fronts, planters, a farmer's market like the ones downtown and in Govans. The barriers to achieving such dreams are enormous, though. The people and the merchants have to buy into it.

"A lot of the merchants have been disillusioned. There was nothing going on. They were concerned about the crime, the trash," says Harvey. "I've never seen an area where trash accumulates so fast as in these three blocks."

Long-term effort

It will take years to turn around a decline decades in the making. But those are the concerns of the city fathers and the public policy gurus. On this evening, no one worries about the future of Pennsylvania Avenue. They're too busy dancing, laughing, listening to Johnson tear through "Wade in the Water" and "Summertime." Later, Baretta Mercer, 43, joins the band for "Mustang Sally."

"All you want to do is ride around, Sally," she sings, then holds the microphone out to a roomful of people who grew up singing Wilson Pickett's hit and yell back to her: "Ride Sally, ride!"

Mercer used to sing with a Top 40 band. Now she wants to put some songs together, go into the studio, cut a CD, maybe get a contract.

"I'm going to keep on going," she says, noting, "My legs are just as good as Tina Turner's."

A girlfriend told her about the jazz night eight months ago. Since then she has been a regular.

"You see so many people that you haven't seen in years," she says. "It's like a big class reunion."

Mercer isn't the only one in the Avenue Market this night with dreams of stardom. George "Slinky" Garrett, 18, wants to dance on Broadway. He is, in Hill-Aston's eyes, an admirable young man. He's in school, out of trouble and has a good dose of talent. He and his partner, Charles "Scooter" Covington, have been dancing here since that first Friday night.

"I didn't think the older people would like the younger thing," says Garrett. Tall and lanky, you can imagine him slinking across the dance floor, using a step or two from his idol, Michael Jackson.

"This is where our fans are at," he says. "Plus, they treat us well and I like the music."

The music is what brings Thomas E. Harris, 46, over from his home on Gilmore Avenue. Harris is in insurance and spends the evening working the room, passing out red, hand-cut business cards. He says these evenings are "a showcase that we don't have, especially for mature entertainment." As he talks, two old friends embrace near him.

Class-free gathering

"That's one of the great things of coming down here," he says. "You don't know who you're going to run into. I've seen my clients, old clients that I haven't seen in years. Every walk of life is in this place. Everything from the homeless, doctors, lawyers, Indian chiefs, and nobody knows who's who or what's what. There's no class distinction."

And never any problem.

"People come here to have a good time. We're not here for a disturbance. We're not having it," says Robert Hall, 43, of the Freeloaders, the oldest social club in Sandtown.

Hall says his father used to sing with Johnson. "I think they should keep this going. Look, we have things dying here. We need to keep this alive."

As the evening nears its end, Johnson leads the crowd through a bit of Bobby Womack's tune, "Harry Hippy." Around 9: 30 p.m. he closes out with the theme from "The Flintstones." Iris "Sister" Williams, a 43-year-old cook, stops on her way out for a few words about the evening.

"I love it," she says. "It unites us in togetherness. It's powerful. It's like something we've all been looking for."

She lingers a moment, ignoring a friend who pesters her.

"Sister, come on," the friend says. "I don't want to miss my ride."

But Williams has more to say.

"It has been so great to see all these brothers and sisters," she says. "It's all perfect. It's beautiful."

Her friend will not be ignored. She cuts her eyes at Williams, cocks her head at a "don't-give-me-no-mess" angle. Sister relents.

"Peace," she says, and walks into the night.

Jazz on the Avenue

What: Friday Jazz at 5 featuring Carlos Johnson and his Zone One Band

When: Tomorrow, 5 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.

Where: The Avenue Market, 1700 Pennsylvania Ave.

Pub Date: 11/12/98