JAZZ : Bopsicle’s Cool, Sweet Tribute Is Meant to Melt

It may not come on a stick. But it’s certainly sweet--and cool.

It’s Bopsicle, the brainchild of bassist, singer and composer Jack Prather. Prather has written a series of vocal tributes for a host of jazz greats--Billie Holiday, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker--and he performs the tunes with a quintet that includes his fiancee, singer Stephanie Haynes.

“I’ve always loved jazz singers like Bob Dorough, Blossom Dearie, Dave Frishberg,” the San Juan Capistrano resident said recently. “Some of (our work) hearkens back to Lambert, Hendricks and Ross. We’re not just doing standards, but jazz-oriented sounds. Since my girlfriend is one of the best singers around, it made sense to have a group like that.”

“It’s the most challenging and interesting thing I’m doing,” says Haynes, who appears frequently at clubs in Los Angeles, including a weekly engagement with keyboardist Dave Mackay at the Loews’s Hotel in Santa Monica. “With Jack doing a lot of the singing, it’s like being a sideman. I get to do things I don’t normally do, like work with a horn player.”

The group, which appears Sunday at El Matador in Huntington Beach includes keyboardist Karen Hammack, trumpeter Ron Stout and drummer Charlie Landis.

Prather paid dues in his native Cincinnati, backing the likes of saxophonist Coleman Hawkins and trumpeter Buck Clayton while working in the house band at one of the city’s clubs. He’s also backed such singers as Mark Murphy, Shirley Horn and Bobby Vinton. He’s worked in Southern California for about 20 years.

Prather and Haynes combine their voices on the tribute tunes. “It’s more challenging to us to do the completely original pieces,” Prather says. “It’s also a little more challenging for the audience, too, in that most audiences like songs they recognize. It makes it a harder row to hoe.”

In addition to Prather’s tribute pieces, Haynes also sings some lesser known standards that Prather has arranged and, sometimes, written lyrics too; numbers like Sonny Rollins’ “Pent-Up House,” Horace Silver’s “Opus De Funk” and Billy Strayhorn’s “Lotus Blossom.” But the focus of Bopsicle is Prather’s tributes to the giants of jazz.

“I wrote tunes dedicated to the artists I love,” he says. You can bet there was a lot of inspiration.

Who: Bopsicle with Jack Prather and Stephanie Haynes.

When: Sunday, Jan. 12, at 5 and 6:45 p.m.

Where: El Matador, 16903 Algonquin St., Huntington Beach.

Whereabouts: Take the San Diego (405) Freeway to Valley View Street/Bolsa Chica Road exit. Follow Bolsa Chica Road south to Warner Avenue, go right on Warner and then right again on Algonquin Street. El Matador is in the Huntington Harbour mall.

Wherewithal: No cover charge.

Where to Call: (714) 846-5337.