Jazz Pianist Billy Childs Stands Out

Among a promising crop of young jazz pianists that includes Kenny Kirkland and Benny Green, Billy Childs stands out.

Childs mixes classical influences and straight-ahead jazz to produce driving, intricately composed music that sets him apart from the crowd.

On his new release, “His April Touch,” Childs, who plays Elario’s this Thursday through Sunday, proves that he knows his way around a keyboard. This collection of deeply personal, mostly original songs is dedicated to his father, who died last year.

Childs, 34, is a straight-shooter who talks easily and doesn’t hesitate to drop in four-letter words to accent a point.

And he knows exactly what he wants to do with his talents: make original jazz, with no commercial strings attached.

That helps explain why he is perfectly comfortable recording for Windham Hill, a label better known for dreamy, New Age music by artists such as George Winston than for its tiny stable of jazz players, including Childs and his band mate, tenor saxophonist Bob Sheppard.

Childs acknowledges that his two earlier Windham Hill releases, “Take for Example This” (1988) and “Twilight Is Upon Us” (1989), sold poorly, perhaps fewer than 15,000 copies each, but he is happy with the label.

“I like being with them because they let me do what I want creatively, they don’t really hassle me,” said Childs, a June newlywed who lives in Los Angeles, where he was born and raised. “In fact, this last album was the only album in which an executive (from Windham Hill) even came to the studio while I was recording. They pretty much know anything I do is going to be a worthwhile jazz album.”

Childs’ dedication to his art seems on the verge of paying off, at least much more than it has.

“His April Touch,” released last May, topped the jazz chart in the June issue of The Gavin Report, a radio trade publication, meaning the album is enjoying substantial airplay. In sales, however, the new release is moving slowly--it didn’t make sales charts in Billboard and other music industry publications.

Although Childs’ jazz often gets labeled “straight-ahead,” his music has an added dimension because of his classical training.

“I started playing by ear when I was 14,” Childs said. “When I was 16, my parents, realizing I had potential, started me going to lessons that were both classical and jazz. By the time I finished college at USC as a composition major (in 1979), I had a thorough understanding of Western European music.”

Childs improvises as imaginatively and freely as any jazz pianist. The classical influence comes across in the way he structures his tunes.

“A conventional jazz group would play the head melody, solo, and play the head again to go out,” Childs said. “What I try to do is make it more seamless, the difference between the writing and the improvising. The writing becomes more classical in conception. The bass part, for example, will be its own individual part, not a supportive bass. It may carry a melody or counter melody.

“And, during the soloing, I’ll incorporate a form that has relation to the melody of the composition, more in the spirit of the concept of the tune than just soloing over chord changes.”

Along with the classical influences, Childs names Freddie Hubbard as an important role model.

“He’s the best trumpet player I know of,” said Childs, who was in Hubbard’s band from 1978 to 1984. “He taught me how to play jazz. I already had the raw talent, but with him, I refined my skills.

“On the bandstand, if I wasn’t comping (accompanying) right, he’d just say, ‘Lay out!’ Once, he told me how to shape my solos. He told me I was playing too pianistically, playing scales from top to bottom. He’d say start in the middle, make your solos asymmetrical.”

As his career moves into a higher gear, there is a glitch, however. Childs is hurting from tendinitis in a wrist and forearm.

“I’ve tried ultrasound, but the thing that seems to work the best is simple exercises. I was stupid enough to let one doctor shoot my arm with cortisone. It erased the pain temporarily, but it’s not a good thing. The best thing to do is eat healthy and exercise.

“I used to practice like a maniac. I would sometimes play all day, then do a gig or something. Now, I play until my hands start getting tired. You feel tingling or a twinge, that’s when you know.”

Childs has put most of his energies into his own music this year, but in the past, he has contributed to several recordings by other artists, including clarinetist Eddie Daniels’ “This Is Now” (released this year) and several earlier releases from singer Dianne Reeves (Childs and Reeves were band mates in the jazz-rock group Night Flight from 1980 to 1983).

Childs is also breaking into the movies. He is at work on the score for an Australian film about the life of Errol Flynn, due next year.

Beyond his life as a jazz devotee, Childs is something of a sports nut, especially when it comes to basketball.

“I went to my ear doctor last week, and he told my about Magic (Johnson),” Childs said. Johnson announced last week that he has contracted the virus that causes AIDS. “He’s younger than me, but he’s my idol. Before I got into music, I was going to be a basketball player.”

Childs still plays half-court a few times a week. He spends other spare time indulging his eclectic tastes in reading material.

“I’ve been reading this book, ‘Conspiracies, Cover-ups and Crimes,’ by Jonathan Vankin,” he said. “For everything questionable that’s happened in history in the 20th Century, such as the Kennedy assassination, there’s always been a conspiracy theory. What he does is examine different conspiracy theories from an objective point of view. I’m also reading Dickens’ ‘A Tale of Two Cities.’ ”

Childs dabbles in writing poetry, but don’t expect a volume any time soon. He is afraid of looking like a dilettante.

“Suzanne Somers came out with a volume of her poetry, and I wanted to puke,” the pianist said.

Although Childs has built a strong base for his career in Los Angeles and has lived there most of his life, he is getting restless.

“I want to get out of here,” he said. “Somewhere with trees. I’m tired of pavement.”

Childs will play Elario’s with his regular band, including Bob Sheppard, but with Peter Donald replacing Mike Baker on drums. Shows are at 8:30 and 10:30 each night. Tickets are $7.50.