Remembering a Forgotten Jazz Giant : Tribute: Pete Rugolo, the veteran arranger and band leader, will be honored tonight at the Grand Avenue Bar.

Pete Rugolo may well be the most unfairly forgotten man of jazz. An attempt to rectify that injustice will be undertaken this evening when some of his most brilliant arrangements, for Stan Kenton and for his own orchestras, will be performed, by a band under the direction of trumpeter Paul Cacia, in a Rugolo tribute at the Grand Avenue Bar of the Biltmore.

Ironically, to the extent that Rugolo is known at all to younger jazz fans, it is not for his music, but for the fact (mentioned in Miles Davis’ book) that during a sojourn as A&R; man at Capitol Records he produced the memorable “Birth of the Cool” Davis sessions.

There is much more to his story. He was Kenton’s main arranger during its first era of success (1945-9); he led a band on a record date that had Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Fats Navarro, Buddy De Franco, Lennie Tristano and Dizzy Gillespie as the sidemen; he wrote music for Louis Armstrong and Jack Teagarden, heard in one of the two Armstrong pictures he scored. He led his own orchestra at Birdland and at Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom with Herbie Mann, Kai Winding, Julius Watkins and 18 others; he recorded albums in the 1950s using such West Coast heavies as Andre Previn, Maynard Ferguson, Pete Candoli, Shelly Manne, Shorty Rogers and Frank Rosolino. His track record clearly is too good to be forgotten.

There is another irony: a half century before the recent brouhaha about Mills College allegedly going co-ed, Rugolo was there in 1938-9, studying music with Darius Milhaud.

“I was the first boy there,” he says, “but Dave Brubeck and his brother Howard and several other men came in soon after me. We all wanted to study with Milhaud.”

A score he mailed to Kenton during Army service landed him a job with the band. His original works during those years included many written for individuals or groups within the orchestra: “Artistry in Percussion,” “Theme for Alto,” “Safranski,” “Fugue for Rhythm Section,” as well as such originals as “Interlude,” “Blues in Riff,” “Collaboration” and “Cuban Carnival,” and all the best arrangements of standard songs for Kenton’s vocalist, June Christy, one or two of which will be sung tonight by Cacia’s wife, Janine Cameo. (Some of Rugolo’s old Kenton colleagues such as Laurindo Almeida, Buddy Childers and Bob Cooper will be in the band this evening.)

Leaving Kenton, Rugolo took the job with Capitol. “Bebop was getting hot, so I signed up Dave Lambert, Babs Gonzales, Buddy De Franco, Lennie Tristano, and of course Miles. I also found Harry Belafonte and made his first records--they bombed.”

While on the West Coast recording Nat King Cole, he was approached to score a jazz-oriented film, “The Strip.” “Louis Armstrong was in it; the company liked my work, and I wound up on the coast full time, writing movies, including a lot of musicals for Joe Pasternak.

“I stayed with films through the ‘50s, but still had time to arrange and conduct record dates for Nat Cole, Billy Eckstine, June Christy, Peggy Lee, Mel Torme and others. In 1954 I had my own band of East Coast musicians for a while, but I soon decided the road was not for me.

“The switch to television began with ‘Thriller,’ the Boris Karloff series, in 1960. From that point on I was so busy writing 40 minutes of music every week, for all kinds of TV series, themes and pilots, that I had no time for anything else.”

Rugolo’s television career earned him two Emmys for “The Bold Ones” and “The Challengers,” and several nominations. But despite his use of jazz elements wherever they were suited to the films, his jazz image was behind him. By the time he finished his last regular series, “Family,” in the early 1980s, a young generation had some along that knew nothing about his early accomplishments.

“I would like to get back into jazz,” he says now, “but I don’t know who to call, how to go about it. I’ve been writing a few things for Paul Cacia.”

Always diffident about his own gifts, he insists that his old albums didn’t sell. “Mitch Miller was in charge at Columbia Records and he made me do all those crazy novelty things; then when I was at Mercury, stereo had just come in and they had me doing ping-pong charts with a double sized band. But I guess they could put together a decent CD out of some of the better things I managed to slip in.”

Better yet, they could put Pete Rugolo back where he belongs: leading yet another all-star orchestra and a fresh set of arrangements to display, for a new audience, a talent that has been too long neglected.