Masse Reaches Back for Inspiration

Laurel Masse still occasionally listens to the rock and pop music that she enjoyed as a teen-ager in the ‘60s, but that’s about as far as her affection for those styles goes.

“Those songs are nostalgic for me, but I couldn’t sing them now because they don’t mean anything to me,” says Masse, 39, one of the original members of the Manhattan Transfer. She makes her first Los Angeles appearance in five years tonight and Saturday at Lunaria in West Los Angeles.

Rather, Masse finds the classic standards of earlier eras more to her liking. The singer’s latest album, “Laurel Masse Again” (on Disques Beaupre Records), spotlights such tunes as “Something’s Coming” from “West Side Story,” “On the Street Where You Live” from “My Fair Lady” and “I’ve Got the World on a String,” a Harold Arlen tune from the 1932 musical “Cotton Club Parade.”

These selections are from what Masse calls the “Golden Age of American Songwriting.”

“There are a lot of layers to them,” she says. “As I test them against my experience, they still ring true. As I’ve gotten older (and) am more mature, I find that these lyrics age with me. A lyric that was true when I was 30 is true now in a different way.”

Masse, who will be joined at Lunaria by her longtime accompanist, pianist Dean Rolando, also includes jazz tunes--such as Count Basie’s “Jumpin’ at the Woodside” and Sonny Rollins’ “Oleo”--in her set.

“Jazz colors how we approach the music,” says Masse. “And that makes what we do very accessible to people who aren’t diehard jazz fans. Our music leads people into a world that’s close to them that they didn’t think was that close.

“I really dig it when, after a performance, people tell me they thought they didn’t like jazz. And maybe they’ll go out and listen to someone like Charlie Parker or Anita O’Day.”

On James Morrison’s latest Atlantic album, “Snappy Doo,” there’s a good reason the Australian musician didn’t have any trouble getting the horn and brass performers to the studio on time: He, in effect, was those musicians. Morrison overdubbed the trombone, trumpet and saxophone parts on half of album’s tunes; the other half features Morrison on trombone or trumpet with piano-bass-drums accompaniment.

“It was good fun,” says the 28-year-old musician who’ll play mostly trumpet, fluegelhorn and trombone when he appears at Central Park West in Brentwood from Thursday through May 12 with guitarist John Pisano and bassist Andy Simpkins. “I got to know all the guys in the band well,” he quips, “and I didn’t have to worry about whether the guys could read their parts properly.”

Morrison--a prodigy who made his professional debut at age 13 and appeared at the Monterey Jazz Festival in an all-star Australian student band in 1979 at age 16--said his diversity “just sort of happened.”

“I found myself drawn to the instruments and learned them all together,” he says. “At age 8, I played everything I play today. I never learned to be a trumpeter or a trombonist. I learned to be a musician.”

Winner of the 1990 Mo award as Australian Performer of the Year--the other candidates were opera diva Dame Joan Sutherland and rocker John Farnham--Morrison works consistently, most often in Europe, though this is his third tour of the United States. “My wife and I have furniture in Sydney, but we live out of a suitcase,” he laughs.

RIM SHOT: The 22-piece H.M.A. Salsa/Jazz Orchestra, conducted by trumpeter Bobby Rodriguez, will play a benefit for the youth programs of the nonprofit Hispanic Musicians Assn. on Saturday, from 3 to 7 p.m., at the Lighthouse Cafe in Hermosa Beach.