LOS ANGELES FESTIVAL : AT 50, BILLY HIGGINS STILL HAS THE BEAT

With more than 30 years of jazz experience backing the likes of Ornette Coleman, Dexter Gordon, Sonny Rollins and Thelonious Monk under his belt, drummer Billy Higgins shouldn’t be surprised by much when it comes to percussion.

But one local event constantly does just that--the annual Day of the Drum Festival held at the Watts Towers. The sixth edition of the annual event, co-sponsored by the City of Los Angeles and AT&T; Communications, will be presented as part of the Fringe Festival Saturday and Sunday.

“I get surprised all the time (there) because the drums have a certain role to play and they’re not always out front,” said Higgins in a phone interview from his San Francisco hotel. “With this (festival), the instrument is in the front line plus you find drums from all the cultures of the world--Mexico, India, Africa, Brazil.

“That starts a whole other thing going because a lot of people never knew they had drum ensembles from Mexico or Japan. Korea has a long history of drum ensembles.”

Higgins, 50, will appear Sunday with the Watts Drum Ensemble, a unit featuring nine local drummers playing standard trap kits. Higgins is committed to the personal element involved in playing drums.

“You still got to have the human being to play the drums because the drum is about the spirit too,” Higgins explained. “The drums are not really that mechanical.

“You can program a drum machine to play anything but the drum machine does not breathe. And jazz is one type of music where you have to breathe and it has to be human.”

The Los Angeles native caught the spirit early growing up in the heart of the post-World War II jazz scene on Central Avenue. “I’ve been playing drums since I was 5 years old,” he recalled. “I just went right to ‘em.”

Neighbors and schoolteachers steered Higgins towards jazz masters like Max Roach and Kenny Clarke. He was only 14 when he met trumpeter Don Cherry in school and the pair did some West Coast roadwork with saxophonist George Newman as the Jazz Messiahs in 1953.

The next step, in 1955, was rehearsing and ultimately working with Ornette Coleman. Coleman’s radical approach stirred up much controversy in the local musical community.

“It didn’t affect me because at the time I was rehearsing with Ornette, I was playing with (blues vocalist) Jimmy Witherspoon or (jazz saxophonist) Teddy Edwards. The drums are a springboard for anything to happen because you’re not bogged down with conception . . . at least I wasn’t,” he said.

Higgins went to New York in 1959 with Coleman’s ground-breaking quartet but had to leave the group the next year when he lost his cabaret card (a requirement for working in nightclubs there).

By 1964, Higgins was starting to work as one of the regular drummers on recording sessions for the Blue Note label. He remained in New York for the next 15 years--working for 3 1/2 years with saxophonist Sonny Rollins and starting an ongoing relationship with pianist Cedar Walton in 1970--before moving back to Los Angeles in 1978.

The move didn’t make Higgins cut back on his busy schedule. He records anywhere from six to 15 albums a year and spends eight months on the road annually. Higgins was in the midst of a two-week stretch of club and festival appearances in the Bay Area with Cedar Walton and the Timeless All-Star sextet.

“You have to play differently to learn how to make instrument work with a trio, quartet or sextet so I’m still in school,” Higgins declared. “I’m in so many different situations that playing music and playing a style is two different things for me.

“Once you get a style, you’re limited to that. The whole thing is to try to be open to all of it so you can encompass everything at that moment.”

As a leader, Higgins has recorded three albums for European labels and two in the last four years for the American labels Riza and Contemporary. But Higgins does have a trademark for people to remember him by--the broad grin he always seems to sport when he’s playing.

“I don’t realize I’m smiling but I’m just feeling rich and having so much fun,” said Higgins. “I feel blessed to play music and it’s also an honor to play music. You’ve got a lot of people’s feelings in your hands.”