Jazz Group Goes for the Juggernaut : Concert: Frank Capp and Nat Pierce believe in giving the people what they want. They perform tonight in Newport Beach.

In the music business, the word commercial definitely has more than one meaning.

To a record company executive, it might suggest a megahit, such as Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.”

But to drummer Frank Capp and pianist-composer-arranger Nat Pierce, who lead the Los Angeles-based jazz orchestra commonly known as the Capp-Pierce Juggernaut, commercial simply connotes having a vocalist in the band and playing music that might be called “toe-tapping.”

“People are paying to be entertained. If they want avant-garde, or Ornette Coleman, they’re not going to come and hear our band,” said the tall, robust 66-year-old Pierce during a conversation in the den of Capp’s Studio City home.

“Our fans know what to expect: that they can pat their foot and possibly whistle an air or two,” Pierce added with a broad smile.

“Or dance to it,” said Capp, 59, a smaller man than Pierce, dressed in color-compatible brown shoes and slacks and a tan shirt. He sat on a white couch near Pierce, his longtime partner who was wearing gray slacks and white shirt, his full head of salt-and-pepper hair combed straight back. “Our feeling is that we should give the people something entertaining without compromising the music.”

“Not that we’re trying to be like Lawrence Welk or nothing,” Pierce said in a thick Boston-ese accent that the native of Somerville, Mass., has obviously never shaken. “But a tune like (the Mercer Ellington blues) ‘Things Ain’t What They Used to Be,’ with (trombonist) Buster Cooper going crazy at the end, I’d say that’s kind of commercial.”

While the Capp-Pierce band’s Concord Jazz albums--including just-released “Juggernaut”--don’t sell even in the hundreds of thousands, much less in the millions, the ensemble has gathered a solid Southern California following since its inception in 1975 and remains one of the most popular non-touring jazz bands around.

Consider: The group plays tonight at the Hyatt Newporter in Newport Beach, Sunday at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, July 25 on the Santa Monica Pier, July 28 at the Malibu Arts Fair, and returns to Orange County on Aug. 9 to play the Irvine Marriott. (Capp, who is touring the eastern United States with Frank Sinatra, will miss tonight’s and Sunday’s engagements; Frank DeVito is the scheduled sub. Capp will be back in time for the Irvine gig.)

One key to the success of the band is that a good deal of its material is patterned after, if not taken directly from, the repertoires of the orchestras of Count Basie and Woody Herman--both of whom Pierce was intimately associated with.

Pierce met Basie in 1950 in Boston, and their musical friendship lasted until Basie’s death in 1984. Pierce often subbed for Basie at rehearsals, and when the bandleader suffered a heart attack in the late ‘70s, Pierce toured in his stead. Pierce worked for Herman, both as pianist and arranger, from 1951 to ‘55, and again from 1961 to ’66.

The Juggernaut, which took its name from a 1976 review by Times jazz critic Leonard Feather, offers such Basie numbers as “April in Paris,” “Basie” and “Little Pony,” as well as tunes Herman performed, such as “Sister Sadie.”

“But it doesn’t matter whether you play something exactly the way someone else did, either as an arrangement or an improvised solo, it still comes out like you,” Pierce said.

In terms of Pierce’s compositions--such as “New York Shuffle,” “Basie Deep Fry” and “Mr. Softie”--and arrangements for Juggernaut, how does this happen?

“With the sound, a nice big fat sound that’s not too heavy and, by the same token, not too light,” said Pierce, whose career has included performances with Coleman Hawkins, Roy Eldridge, among other mainstream jazz greats. “Something that swings, something that would be Basie’s idea of what a big band should sound like. . . . It’s happy music that you can swing on to the end of your days.”

“Our style, which is close to Basie’s style, is based around block ensemble writing,” said Capp, who has played with singers Ella Fitzgerald and Peggy Lee, and saxophonists Art Pepper and Stan Getz. He was referring to harmonized parts for winds and brass that make the many instruments almost sound like one big instrument.

Another factor in the band’s continuing appeal has been the addition of a singer. Ernie Andrews, Joe Williams and Ernestine Anderson have recorded with the ensemble; currently, Barbara Morrison, a rousing blues belter who also can handle jazz tunes with aplomb, works most of the band’s engagements. She’ll be on tap for all the aforementioned dates except July 25 in Santa Monica. (Andrews, the band’s original vocalist, still puts in an appearance occasionally.)

“After the band first started, when we were playing a club in Canoga Park owned by Al LaPlant that was called King Arthur’s, we were getting repeat customers and getting a good response, but it just needed something additional,” remembered Capp, who is recovering nicely from an April 30 operation he underwent for a heart aneurysm.

“I recalled having heard Ernie with Harry James’ band. I knew he had some charts, so I called him and asked him to do a gig,” he said. “He came on, and within a couple of gigs, he became established as our singer. We loved him, the people loved him. Then Nat started writing for him. We had a certain chemistry that worked.”

A third element that’s kept the Capp-Pierce band a favorite with listeners is its high-caliber instrumentalists. Through the years, the lineup has boasted saxophonists Marshall Royal, Pete Christlieb, Red Holloway, Richie Kamuca, Bob Cooper and Rickey Woodard; trumpeters Bill Berry, Blue Mitchell, Snooky Young, Al Aarons, Bobby Shew and Frank Szabo, and trombonists Buster Cooper, Thurman Green and Garnett Brown.

Berry, who leads his own Los Angeles big band, in which Capp has been the drummer since it started in 1971, is a charter member of Capp-Pierce, and he stays on for what he considers to be very good reasons.

“I’ve been there since the first gig at King Arthur’s, and I’m in there because it’s a helluva band, a great band, and it swings, which is what I believe in,” Berry said. “All the guys are professional jazz musicians; they’ve always worked in jazz. It’s like family. And it’s funny, though we use a lot of the same personnel, their band and mine sound totally different.”

The band began almost by accident. Capp, who had moved to Southern California in 1953 while working with Peggy Lee and after stints with Stan Kenton and Neal Hefti, was contracting for Hefti in the mid-’70s. Composer and arranger Hefti--famed in the jazz community for his work for Herman and Basie--decided he wanted to start a band again.

“I got him a date at King Arthur’s, and about a month before the gig, Neal changed his mind,” Capp said. “So I was stuck, because Al LaPlant had an open date now. I knew Nat, who I first met in New York in the late ‘50s, had some Basie charts, and some written by Neal for Basie, and so I asked him to do this one-nighter with me. He said, ‘Yeah,’ so we called the band the ‘Capp-Pierce Orchestra.’ ”

The band caught on and was soon working regularly at the club.

“About every two weeks,” Pierce said. “We didn’t want to wear out our audience, and besides, there were other bands in town that wanted to play there.”

The recent “Juggernaut” album is, in fact, the band’s debut, and it was recorded at King Arthur’s in the late ‘70s. The instrumentals--such as “Dickie’s Dream” (which Pierce had arranged for an all-star Basie band that appeared in the 1957 TV show “The Sound of Jazz”), “Moten Swing” and “Basie”--like Andrews’ vocals, are exhilarating, percolating treatments that sound as if they were done yesterday.

Asked what it feels like to play with the band, Pierce grew pensive, then said: “It’s hard to put it in words. Sometimes you don’t get too much, like for one, two tunes, it doesn’t seem to mesh. Then other times, it seems to go by itself. It’s like you’re being lifted off the ground. It’s a great feeling. Then you can’t possibly do anything wrong, and if you do, it sounds right.”

“I pretty much agree with Nat,” Capp said. “The band is like a human emotion. Sometimes you’re flying high, other times you’re a little depressed, and that’s the way the band feels when we’re playing. But it’s almost always together--hey, everybody misses an entrance every now and then--it has a level of consistency that’s highly professional. That’s what I like.”