Johnny Frigo Ready to Fiddle Around

It took jazz violinist Johnny Frigo awhile but he is finally a hit--at age 71. Why did national recognition come so late? Frigo laughs and says, “Maybe I wasn’t ready.” There is a more realistic reason: He has enjoyed a long and very successful career in his native Chicago, working in many other areas.

“I guess I’m an unusual individual; I have so many interests,” says Frigo, who performs tonight through Sunday at the Loa. “I play bass; I paint pictures; I play golf; I’ve done a lot of jingle work, I’ve written music and lyrics and arrangements for my wife, Brittney Browne, who’s an actress and singer. I just kept making a good living, but people were bugging me: ‘Anybody can play bass; why don’t you do something with your fiddle?’ ”

Except for one album on Mercury (in which his backup group included guitarist Herb Ellis and bassist Ray Brown, who will be with him at the Loa), Frigo never bothered to take advantage of his talent on violin. For five years he played bass in a group called the Soft Winds, with Herb Ellis and the pianist Lou Carter; together they composed “Detour Ahead,” which was recorded by Billie Holiday and became a jazz standard.

He practically had to be bludgeoned into the violin initiative. “A feller at Universal Studios called me and said, ‘Be here Thursday night at 8, and bring your violin.’ I thought he meant for a jingle, but he said, ‘No, I’ve booked you for your own album; you’ve been sitting on your talent all these years and now you’re gonna go in there and do something about it.’ So I did an album, which isn’t out yet.

“Then one night I was playing at the Conrad Hilton--you know, strolling violins, that kind of thing--and after work I went across the street to hear Herb Ellis, Ray Brown and Monty Alexander. I took my violin with me because I didn’t want to leave it in the car. They said, ‘Why don’t you sit in?’ I told them I’d hardly worked any jazz gigs lately, but they insisted, so I played two tunes.”

A month later Frigo was invited by Brown to fly out to Los Angeles for a live recording session at the Loa. Frigo’s guest solo work on four cuts of the album (“Triple Treat II” on Concord Jazz) caused such a stir that he was invited to return as a leader in his own right. He will follow it with a date in Chicago (with Ellis and Brown) at the Jazz Showcase.

Frigo has the enviable problem of now knowing how to subdivide the time among his several gifts. “I still paint; I do pastels, but put the colors on very heavily so they look like oils. I also cut up music and make collages. I don’t care about selling them, but I like seeing my work displayed, and the Universal Studio in Chicago has become my art gallery.”

As a violinist, he once shared practice sessions with the legendary Eddie South, but names Joe Venuti as his main influence. “But I think I play more in a horn-like style. I like to dig in powerfully and create moods with my violin.”

His range of interests continues to expand. “I enjoy writing poetry, and I’ve just signed up for a 10- week poetry class at a library here. It’ll be the first class I’ve taken in anything since 1934.”

Is it his versatility that has held Frigo back? Or his modesty? A recent incident suggests an answer.

“I was invited by Monty to play with him at a Dick Gibson jazz concert in Denver. Well, the next day the headline in the newspaper read ‘Jazz Violinist, 71, Melts Hearts of Crowd at Paramount,’ ” he said.

“I was so embarrassed. Here I was sharing a show with these giants I’ve heard about all my life--Sweets Edison, Peanuts Hucko, Flip Phillips, Al Grey--and I was the one who got the attention. I called all those guys the next day and apologized profusely.”