Ace Harris Brings a Lifetime of Backing Legends to S.D.

San Diego’s newest resident jazz master is Johnny (Ace) Harris, the singer and pianist whose career spans collaborations with many of jazz’s legends.

Before moving to San Diego three months ago. Harris, 67, spent six years as the house pianist at the Moana Hotel, one of the oldest resorts on Waikiki. He has quickly caught on here, with a regular Wednesday night date at the Inn L’Auberge in Del Mar, plus Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights in the Prince of Wales restaurant at the Hotel del Coronado (you can stop in just for a drink).

On Harris’ first night at the Hotel Del, movie critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert stopped in to cheer their old pal. They first met Harris several years ago at the Dunes Hotel in Las Vegas, and were at the Hotel Del for a convention. Due to their nonstop requests, Harris’ opening-night set went well past midnight (he usually stops at 11).

Harris first came to musical fame as a pianist and arranger for the Ink Spots in 1942 and ’43 Also in the 1940s, he played with countless jazz heroes. He was with Louis Armstrong in 1947 when the trumpeter toured Africa--one of the first times a Western jazz musician had visited the place of jazz’s deepest roots.

“We found out where this music really came from,” Harris said. “I knew the basis of blues and folk and spirituals had been African, but I thought there had been a much wider transition. I heard things that I didn’t think I’d hear, that sounded like some of the things I’d been raised with.”

Harris also played many times with Billie Holiday during the late 1950s, the years of her final career revival before she died in 1959.

In New York, Harris also played several clubs with Coltrane in the early 1960s. In those days, the saxophonist was not yet into the wild, free-form music he experimented with only a few years later.

Harris’ last recordings were made in 1976. One album is titled “Feelings,” another, “Sophisticated Lady,” a tribute to Duke Ellington.

Harris entered a music career quite naturally. His father, Charles Jacob Harris, was a classical concert pianist and a graduate of the Boston Conservatory of Music. Harris’ mother also had a music degree.

Though Harris sang often as a teen-ager, he spent most of his career as a pianist. But his singing talents weren’t totally for naught.

“As I evolved into a jazz musician, I started to work with groups that were primarily singers, and I became a vocal coach because a lot of the guys couldn’t read music. As I did this, I stopped singing, but I knew I could sing. The last four or five years, I started to sing again.” (His pupils included Joe Alexander, Monroe Powell of the Platters, and Ted Ross, who played the Cowardly Lion in the film and Broadway musical, “The Wiz.”)

Harris’ repertoire of jazz and popular song titles is too extensive to enumerate.

“But I could probably play for a whole week without repeating myself,” he said.

Grossmont College’s jazz program is getting a shot of new life thanks to music instructor David Salisbury, who joined the faculty this fall.

Salisbury, who has music degrees from the Berklee College of Music and San Diego State University, is rebuilding the jazz program at Grossmont after his predecessor left for Cuyamaca College, taking most of Grossmont’s top players with him.

This Sunday at 7:30 p.m., Salisbury’s mostly inexperienced but enthusiastic young charges will run down a mix of classical and jazz music in their fall semester concert at the Theatre East (East County Performing Arts Center) in El Cajon.

“The thing I’ve tried to emphasize is a more full-on vocal program,” Salisbury said. “On top of that, I’ve tried to encourage people to do some arranging, and to encourage people to do smaller solos, such as one vocalist with guitar or piano.”

Among Salisbury’s pride and joys are the 25-piece Grossmont Griffin Jazz Ensemble, a vocal quartet (which includes Salisbury until he finds a student replacement) and a sax ensemble.

Salisbury’s saxes have been working hard.

Alto and soprano sax student Michael Berry has done an arrangement of Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” for jazz saxes.

“He put the melody on soprano sax, and scored alto, tenor and baritone under that,” Salisbury said. “It’s neat to hear that particular composition, which everyone associates with piano or the orchestral version, in this smaller sax ensemble.”

Salisbury also arranged his own composition, “Jerry’s Blues,” a stride piano piece with the saxes in mind. The song is a tribute to Salisbury’s late friend, Jerry Whitcomb, a composer from Ashland, Ore.

“The bari (baritone) sax does the walking bass, the soprano takes an improvised solo,” he said. “It’s an interesting combination for a quartet ensemble.”

Tickets for this Sunday evening’s “Kaleidoscope of Musical Ensembles” are $5. The program will also include a clarinet choir, a flute chorus and brass chorale.

RIFFS: Former John Coltrane saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, who stays closer to earth these days than he did during his free-blowing, early 1960s Coltrane years, plays the Jazz Note in Pacific Beach (above Diego’s restaurant) Friday through Sunday. . . .

Stanley Turrentine, a funk-jazz fusion hero of the mid-1970s, has since played in both straight-ahead and lighter jazz formats. Turrentine hoists his sax at Smokey’s in Mission Valley this Thursday night at 7. . . .

Vocalist Bobby Caldwell will be on hand Thursday at 5:30 for a free preview party for his new album, “Stuck on You,” at Paparazzi, a restaurant at The Aventine hotel/office complex in the Golden Triangle. Caldwell will sing to pre-recorded accompaniment.