A Reed Man in Full Swing : Jazz Saxophonist Flip Phillips, 76, Says He’s Putting the Notes Together Better Than Ever

Ask tenor saxophonist Flip Phillips why he plays jazz, and he answers the way he plays: in perfect time without missing a beat.

“I like to swing,” said Phillips, the reed man best known for his dynamic solo work with Woody Herman’s band from 1944-46 and with Norman Granz’ Jazz at the Philharmonic (JATP) all-star troupe from 1946 to 1956. Swing, the buoyant yet driving feel that is at the heart of good mainstream jazz, is also at the core of Phillips’ art.

“I call it swinging,” the vital 76-year-old saxophonist said during a phone conversation from his home in Pompano Beach, Fla. “I think it moves you, it makes you feel good. That’s No. 1. That’s No. 100. It just moves you. When the music’s swinging, there’s nothing like it. It’s the greatest thing in music.”

Phillips, who brings his quartet to the Hyatt Newporter hotel in Newport Beach tonight, earned his reputation as a hard-cooking improviser. His tumultuous renditions of such tunes as “Northwest Passage” with Herman and “Perdido” with JATP brought audiences to their feet.

“There’s an old expression: If you want to make a dollar, make the people holler,” he quipped in the thick accent that Brooklyn natives like Phillips rarely lose.

But Phillips, who moved to Florida after leaving JATP and currently works only occasionally, was never simply a get-them-shouting showstopper. His rich, luxuriant tone--reflecting dual influences of Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young--was custom-made for tender ballads, of which he was, and remains, a masterful interpreter.

“Yeah, I’ve got the soft side, too, so I can play both ways,” he said.

Listen to Phillips most recent recording--1988’s “A Real Swinger”--and you’ll hear a man who can still play fast and clean on the up-tempos and with that sumptuous sound on the slower ones. To the saxophonist, his present work is his best.

“It’s supposed to get better; otherwise you might as well quit,” he said. “All the notes I have accumulated in the past 50 years, I put them together a little better. They’re the same notes, but I’m more mature now.”

“I’m gonna keep doin’ it till I get it right,” he said with a laugh.

These days, Phillips couples occasional club dates in his Florida climes--he recently worked a few weekends at Ernie’s in nearby Delray Beach--with one-nighters such as the one at the Hyatt Newporter and appearances at jazz parties.

He attended one of the latter in Odessa, Tex., last spring and he’ll make what he estimates is his 25th curtain call at Dick Gibson’s Colorado Jazz Party in Denver later this month. Gibson has been holding the annual, invitation-only affairs since 1962, first in Colorado Springs and then in Denver.

“I missed the first one, and one other because of hurricanes. I couldn’t get out,” he said.

Gibson’s party is a bash that Phillips looks forward to because all the established older jazz musicians play it, he said. It’s almost like the “old days,” the period during the ‘30s and ‘40s that Phillips says was the “greatest era in American music.”

The musician looks back at that period with more than a hint of nostalgia.

“There was no better time,” he said matter-of-factly. “Every club had a group, every theater had a big band. There was music all around. Where is that today? It’s gone. It’s a shame. Everything was swinging. The music made everybody feel good.”

Phillips had an impressive early career. He first was heard as a clarinetist with trumpeter Frankie Newton’s combo, which often worked on fabled 52nd Street in Manhattan. Then he accented his tenor saxophone artistry with Herman and JATP. With the latter group, he was heard performing with such greats as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Young, Hawkins and others.

“I was a giant among giants,” he said, laughing a bit nervously, acknowledging the splendor of his cohorts while perhaps wondering how he was able to keep such high company.

“Let me tell ya,” he continued in a quiet, confidential tone, “there were some nights that it was the greatest thing that ever happened and it wasn’t recorded.” (Many JATP concerts were taped and released on such Granz-owned labels as Clef, Norgran and Verve.) “That’s when it made you want to pull your hair out. These nights were when everybody was on and it was just as exciting as it can be. You couldn’t beat it no how.”

The musicians also had strong personal relationships. “We were like a family, all great friends,” Phillps recalled. “We’d hang out. We traveled in the U.S. in cars and Lester wouldn’t ride with anybody but me. We were good buddies. I understood the funny way he talked, and he understood me.

“And (pianist) Oscar Peterson, I taught him how to drive a car. Hawk (Coleman Hawkins) and I, we used to go shopping at places like Abercrombie & Fitch in New York. He liked to look sharp, so did I. I think about (Hawkins, Young and Parker) a lot, and the fact that they’re gone makes me sad. We had some great times.”

Phillips said today’s young jazz audience is starting to find out about JATP. “Kids, like 19 or 20, they come up to me and say, ‘Boy, that was great, where can we get those records?’ They’re just beginning to hear them” on the radio, he said.

Phillips, who was born Joseph Filipelli but changed his name because people couldn’t spell or pronounce the original, chose Florida for its climate and its profusion of golf courses. He plays two to three times a week.

“It’s a frustrating game but I’m gonna get it,” said the man whose idol was not a musician but a baseball player: Babe Ruth.

The saxophonist says he picks up his horn up “once in a while.” “Well, maybe 15, 20 minutes, an hour a day, whenever I feel like it,” he finally admitted. “Sometimes I forget. I just go off to the golf course and skip a couple of days.”

Phillips says he’s had a great life, but he’s not crazy about getting old. “I used to be able to jump over buildings. Now I can jump six inches,” he said. “I have to watch my diet. That’s a drag. I gotta take things a little slower.”

If he has a goal left, Phillips says it’s to live until the year 2000. “I want to see those balloons go up in Times Square. I don’t know why, but that would make me happy.”

The Flip Phillips Quartet will play tonight at 7:30 at the Hyatt Newporter, 1107 Jamboree Road, Newport Beach. Tickets: $$6 to $7. Information: (714) 729-1234.