Sparkling Jazz Pianist Is a Hidden Gem in S.D.

If you were to overhear a conversation between two people talking about the great jazz pianist they heard the night before--maybe the best in the world, one of them says--you figure these guys have either just blown in from New York, or the cheese has fallen off their crackers.

But if you do hear such a conversation, listen closely. Jazz fans usually know what they’re talking about and if they’re talking about one of the world’s great piano stylists, chances are the subject is San Diego’s own Mike Wofford. And you can hear him almost nightly during cocktail hour at the Horton Grand Hotel, or afterwards, a few miles up Interstate 5 at Elario’s in La Jolla.

“When you say he’s exceptional, it’s like an understatement,” said Shep Meyers, also a jazz pianist, about Wofford. “I’ve recorded with Ella Fitzgerald, played with Woody Herman . . . . I’ve arranged for Radio City Music Hall. I’m a good, good professional. And then there’s a person like Mike Wofford. He’s in a class by himself. There may be five people in the world who can do what he does.”

Although Wofford attracts rare public notice in the town where he grew up, jazz musicians say the pianist should be designated a national treasure.

“He’s a monster player . . . the best of the best as far as piano jazz,” said Eddie Arias, business representative of the local chapter of the American Federation of Musicians.

Wofford, 50, has worked with some of the top jazz stars of the past three decades--among them, Sarah Vaughan and the late Shelly Manne--and still tours with such luminaries occasionally. But since 1976, when he moved back to San Diego, Wofford has spent several months each year working local clubs, either solo or with his trio.

This month, the Mike Wofford Trio, which also includes bassist Bob Magnusson and drummer Jim Plank, is backing up tenor saxophonist Benny Golson at Elario’s.

But most jazz musicians would give their right drum sticks to back him .

“I think he is one of the best jazz pianists in the world that I’ve ever heard,” said bassist Bob Magnusson, who is also regarded as one of the world’s best jazz players.

More than massaging the educated ears of San Diego jazz fans, Wofford has assumed a key role in building up jazz in the community by creating an elegant new venue for jazz at the Horton Grand.

By using his family and musical connections--Billy Riley, the Horton Grand’s general manager, is Wofford’s mother--he has transformed the Palace Bar into a stylish jazz listening room, the rival of any club in New York.

“We wanted to have a strong jazz policy that you might expect to find in New York,” the soft-spoken Wofford said during a break recently at the Palace. “The plan was to keep it a purely acoustic piano room. We still feature solo piano at cocktail hour. Evenings we’re branching out to slightly larger groups with saxes and clarinets and various horns--not purely a piano orientation.”

Besides Wofford, a number of San Diego’s top pianists--including Ken Kaiser, Bill Hunter, Bob Hamilton and Randy Porter--play at the Palace with trios and quartets from 7:30 to 11:30 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday.

Wofford acknowledged that jazz is not the most user-friendly form of music.

“It has a limited audience appeal,” he said. “It takes some knowledge on the part of the listener. It’s always been an adventurous kind of ‘seeking’ music. More emphasis is placed on the development of the art than on the development of the audience.”

Wofford’s own art and skill developed along comprehensive lines, other musicians say.

“Mike is kind of a legendary guy to San Diego musicians,” said Magnusson, who met Wofford in the mid-1970s and began recording with him in Los Angeles. Now Magnusson lives in San Diego and plays with the Mike Wofford Trio.

“Having gotten a close look at him in a close context, I’m just amazed at his versatility,” Magnusson said. “I used to think of him as coming out of the Bill Evans school of piano playing, but it doesn’t stop there. Mike does them all, like McCoy Tyner or John Coltrane or that swinging thing Wynton Kelly did with Miles Davis. He can do it all. He has the history of jazz playing under his hands.

“Most people have a style which is sort of theirs. You hear them play and it’s that way,” he said. “Mike has a style, but everything he does comes out differently, depending on the artist he’s playing with. The level of creativity Mike has seems to go on limitlessly with new ideas. There’s a sameness to our playing that he doesn’t have.”

Wofford is especially skilled at what jazz musicians call “comping,” or accompanying other players while they solo.

“One of the things he is able to do is make someone else shine,” said pianist Meyers, who plays here regularly at Croce’s. “It has to do with the ability to listen, and from the egoistic standpoint, subjugating your own playing to another’s.”

“When somebody takes a breath or pauses, he can feed you ideas,” Magnusson added. “He does that. It gives me ideas I might not have thought of otherwise. It’s a Ping-Pong effect.

Wofford developed his own musical abilities in the 1950s. He was born in San Antonio, Texas, and moved to San Diego with his family as a child. His early musical training was in the classics. He played trombone in the youth orchestra and the band at Point Loma High.

At 15, Wofford wrote his first symphony and conducted the San Diego Symphony for the piece’s world premiere. He continued his classical studies at San Diego State while sharpening his jazz skills at the Pour HouseCQ in La Jolla’s Bird Rock area, and at the Beacon Inn in what is now Encinitas, performing with drummer Johnny Guerin, the late trumpet player Don Sleet and saxophonist Gary LeFebvre.CQ

“The black musicians in San Diego were by far the best players and the most important players when I was a kid coming up,” Wofford recalled. “Ted Picou and Leon Petties were very important influences on me.”

Wofford, Sleet, LeFebvre and Guerin eventually left for Los Angeles, where Wofford spent almost 20 years in clubs and recording studios and on national tours with other musicians and stars.

Wofford has extensive recording and concert credits. He has played at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and in such prestige events as the Newport, Berlin and Montery jazz festivals. He will tour Japan in July with an all-star big band led by Benny Carter.

Wofford said he has played on 30 or 40 albums featuring other jazz artists and has eight of his own records, most recently “Funkalero” on the Discovery label.

In 1976, Wofford, his wife, Gina, and six children returned to San Diego. The once-lucrative L.A. studio scene was beginning to dry up, he said. Although Wofford continues to travel to jazz festivals and tour with entertainers such as Vaughan, he is sanguine about the future of the local jazz scene.

“It’s better than it’s been since I’ve been back here,” he said, “although we could use about five more clubs.”

A modest man, Wofford does not not make a big deal out of his musicianship. Not that it would make any difference with San Diego audiences.

“The shame of it all is--here in San Diego--people take it for granted,” said Meyers. “It astounds me that there aren’t lines, you know. To hear what he does, you’re going to have to go to New York.”