Wilbur Brown: A Well-Kept Secret : The 58-year-old native Angeleno is one of the most inventive mainstream saxophone improvisers.

There are a lot of well-kept secrets in the Los Angeles jazz community. In the near future, with a little luck, saxophonist Wilbur Brown may no longer be way up on that list.

The 58-year-old native Angeleno, who plays tonight at Legends of Hollywood and Sunday, with Pat Britt, at the Cat and Fiddle Pub, is one of the most inventive and persuasive of mainstream jazz improvisers. And he can play the blues with such authority and vigor that you have to look down to check if you’ve still got your socks on.

Playing to the house is one of Brown’s key concepts. “I try to get a balance between what I can do and what the public can expect from me. I try not to wear them down,” said the man who’s worked with singer Lloyd Price, vibist Lionel Hampton and the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra in his 40-year career. “Part of playing is that people enjoy it. I like to play for smiling faces instead of for people with rocks in their hands,” he said with a laugh.

Brown got started early, leaving high school to go on the road with R&B; folks like Joe Liggins and Roy Milton. “Those guys were in their heyday, so for me to play with them was special,” he recalled. “At first, I was making $15 a night. I thought I was getting rich, but $15, that was money then.”

After time in the Air Force during the Korean War, Brown returned to Los Angeles, played with various bands and made a few LPs, including drummer Ron Jefferson’s “Love Lifted Me” and trumpeter Carmell Jones’ “Business Meeting,” both for the late Dick Bock’s Pacific Jazz label.

There was plenty of work for a musician in the mid-’50s, Brown said. “It seemed like there was little old funky club every 10 feet and you could learn how to play in front of people,” he said. “Now everything is so different. Now they expect everybody to be a consummate professional without having had a place to get seasoned. It’s not fair to the young artists.”

Among his steady gigs were working with trumpeter John Anderson’s seven-piece band at the Sirroco in North Hollywood, which eventually became the famed jazz room Donte’s. And at a club down the street from the Sirroco, Brown and a trio, with drummer Joe Peters, played for strippers. “We were there for a year and a half,” he said. “Those were nice days. Music’s always fun for me as long as nobody tries to make work out of it, like having me do dance steps.”

From 1962-72, Brown lived on New York’s Lower East Side. “Everybody lived down there,” he said. “Joe Farrell lived across the street, and in the neighborhood were (drummers) Ed Blackwell and Billy Higgins and (saxophonists) Jackie McLean, Clifford Jordan, George Coleman, Bennie Maupin and Hank Mobley. We’d all see each on the street, but we didn’t play together all that much, unless it was a gig.”

In Manhattan, Brown formed solid associations with a number of top artists, from Kenny Dorham, who had worked with Charlie Parker and had been musical director of Art Blakey’s first batch of Jazz Messengers, to Joe Henderson, who fronted a rehearsal big band, and Price, who kept a coterie of jazzmen in his ensemble. “Lloyd didn’t just sing his pop tunes like ‘Personality,’ ” Brown said. “He’d do standards, too, and he had a book of instrumentals written by Slide Hampton and others.”

Looking over his career, Brown said, “I’ve had some nice guys be nice to me, from Thad Jones and Frank Foster to Joe Henderson and Pat Britt. I didn’t run into too many rough customers. There are enough of them out there but it’s been my good fortune not to be associated with them.”

RIM SHOTS: A retrospective of the career of clarinetist Barney Bigard, including taped interviews, reminiscences and musical interludes, will highlight the next meeting of the Duke Ellington Society, taking place Monday, 7:30 p.m., at the Veterans Memorial Center, Culver Boulevard and Overland Avenue, Culver City. Information: (213) 290-1291, (213) 399-3112. . . . Jazz from bassist Henry Franklin’s duo and poetry from Merilene Murphy and Sara Baranian mesh at “Poetry on the Move,” a Soulvisions presentation Sunday, 6-9:30 p.m., at the Good Life Health Food Cafe, 3631 Crenshaw Blvd.