SHORTY ROGERS HUNGERS TO PERFORM

Trumpeter Shorty Rogers might have given up his horn long ago if not for what could be called some heavy bi-continental hounding.

The man whose effervescent, fluid compositions, arrangements and horn solos had become synonymous with the sound of the West Coast jazz movement of the ‘50s, had backed off his instrument by the mid-’60s. Club work had dwindled and Rogers--like other jazzmen such as Bud Shank, Bob Cooper, Conte Candoli and Shelly Manne--became more and more involved in the TV/film studios, but as a writer, not as a player. By 1965, he’d stopped playing entirely.

“My horn just sat there on a stand in my studio,” Rogers said in a recent conversation at his Van Nuys home. “I really didn’t know if I’d ever play again. I figured I probably would some day, but still the horn just sat there.”

It wasn’t until 1981 that Rogers started to blow again and then only because some people wouldn’t let him not play.

“Bud Shank, who’s one of my closest friends (and a colleague of Rogers in the ‘50s), would never fail to tell me, ‘Shorty, you got to get your horn out, you’ve got to be playing again.’ He’d say, ‘I just got back from Europe; everyone was asking about you,’ ” said Rogers, who is featured Sunday at the second annual Pacific Coast Jazz Festival at the Holiday Inn Irvine, along with Gerald Wilson’s Orchestra, Alice Coltrane’s Coltrane Legacy, Terry Gibbs Quartet and others.

At the time, there certainly was a bustle of activity in Great Britain, due to the 1980 reissue of a ‘50s Rogers’ RCA LP, “Blues Express.”

“I kept getting letters from England, with people telling me that ‘Your album has been number one on the jazz charts for a year,” the soft-spoken 63-year-old horn player said. “I didn’t know what they were talking about, since I had never heard about the reissue. But then came requests for me to come over and play, and these requests grew more insistent. Finally, in October, 1982, I left with my wife, Marge, to play a series of concerts in England” with an all-star big band known as the National Youth Jazz Orchestra of Great Britain.

Though it took a while to get himself musically back in shape--”I hadn’t practiced enough for that first tour but it still came off pretty well”--Rogers soon realized how much he had missed the thrill of jazz improvisation.

“What happened was I experienced this wonderful feeling I almost had forgotten: the joy of being a jazz player,” Rogers recalled with a glowing smile. “The joy of getting up in front of people, picking your horn up and blowing it and getting some appreciation. Something in my heart changed, and I realized I wanted to do more. It was quite an experience.”

Since then, Rogers has become increasingly active, first sharing leadership of a band with Shank for a couple of years, and then--for last year’s Pacific Coast Jazz Festival--reorganizing a quintet under the name he used in the ‘50s, The Giants. That quintet, which spotlights pianist Pete Jolly and sax player Bill Perkins, and Rogers’ big band have both been packing various Southern California venues with enthusiastic listeners.

“Recently, the big band played a Monday night at Alfonse’s in Toluca Lake, and it was so jammed, even before we started, that I could hardly get in the place,” he said. “Seeing all those people on a Monday night was wonderful.”

Rogers, renowned for his writing with Woody Herman and Stan Kenton prior to his arrival in Los Angeles in the early ‘50s, feels the jazz scene is experiencing a rebirth. “There’s a lot going on and I do get the feeling we’re on the verge of the kind of explosion I saw in late ‘50s, when there were eight to 10 clubs booking jazz all the time.”

Admitting: “I’m basically just trying to have fun” with music, Rogers is determined to approach his return to improvisation and band-leading in a natural manner and says he isn’t concerned with whether his music is contemporary or not.

“There’s no planning to do more modern things than I used to do,” he said. “I feel I’m kind of a product of my musical heritage, which ranges from Louis Armstrong to Roy Eldridge to Miles Davis, and if there are any changes coming, they’re gradual. My playing is a combination of things I used to do, because they’re still in my horn, and some newer things, but it’s all really in the area of ‘What’s the most fun?’ ”

Rogers grew up in Manhattan, received his first trumpet as a Bar Mitzvah present--”I went home and played Count Basie’s ‘Sent For You Yesterday’ until I learned (Harry) ‘Sweets’ Edison’s solo note for note”--and graduated from Music and Arts High School. He immediately joined Will Bradley’s band, where he met Shelly Manne, who became his lifelong friend. Stints with Red Norvo, Herman and Kenton followed.

In Los Angeles, his compositional and improvisational work was heard not only on countless LPs but on the sound tracks of such films as “The Wild Ones,” “Man With The Golden Arm” and “Zoot Suit,” and TV series including “Mod Squad” and “Vegas.” He’s currently working on “Private Eye” (Universal), which debuts next season.

Working for the small and big screen offers Rogers “a challenge of a different nature that’s very exciting,” he said. “Beside the musical part of it, you have to learn the needs of a film in terms of timing problems and dramatic problems. You have to make the music work for the film.”

Rogers is sure that he’ll never stop playing again. “There’s a hunger in my heart (for music) that increases,” he said. “If I’m not gigging, my day is not complete without practicing one to two hours. I just want to keep at it. It’s so wonderful and precious. I’ve realized that no matter what you have to do to get it (playing), it’s worth it.”

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