Trombonist Returns to Standards : Jazz: Bill Watrous finds that it’s essential to blend original compositions with music people recognize and love.

During its golden years of the 1940s and 1950s, jazz meant spontaneity. Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie and others jammed many nights away in after-hours clubs, producing volumes of music more electrifying than what they played in the studio.

“Jamming is the essence of the jazz tradition,” said Bill Watrous, the internationally known trombonist who will front this Sunday afternoon’s jazz jam at the Jazz Note in Pacific Beach. “Jamming puts people together, and nothing is really set up. It just happens, the music just occurs. A lot of things can happen.”

Watrous’ fellow-jammers will be pianist Forrest Westbrook, bassist Marshall Hawkins, drummer Tim Shea and vibraphonist J. J. McBop.

“These guys all know a lot of standards,” Watrous said. “Since I love doing them, it should be great.”

He isn’t just paying lip service to standards. Although Watrous began his career during the early 1960s with aspirations of attaining greatness through original works, he has since radically changed his tune.

“I used to argue with Willard Alexander, who booked Basie’s band,” Watrous recalled. “For years, I was very interested in my career, but one of his admonishments to me was, ‘Herman--I don’t know why he called me that, but he did--Herman, you’ve got to stop with these originals and play music people know and recognize, ‘Stardust,’ Ellington tunes, that’s their heritage.

“ ‘You want to create new stuff, you’ll please your friends and fellow musicians, but the public as a whole won’t give a hoot.’ And I argued with the man, I said, ‘Willard, you’re wrong.’

“But a lot of musicians have realized that, unless we sprinkle in some standards, we basically are like the tree that falls in the forest and there’s no one around to hear it. There’s a question as to whether it makes any noise or not. The nice thing is, I’ve come to love them. They’re the stuff of which dreams are made.”

Watrous’ awakening to the power of standards is in evidence on his brand new recording, “Bone-ified,” released in January. It includes only two Watrous originals alongside traditional favorites including “Unforgettable,” “Indian Summer” and Irving Berlin’s “Change Partners.”

It’s an album of mostly ballads, which Watrous practically sings on his horn.

“What I’m trying to do is use the trombone to treat the melody the way a vocalist would,” Watrous said. “I get up and play the music, the song, like a song, rather than a trombonistic exercise.”

Watrous, 52, is overjoyed to have a new recording out on the Los Angeles-based Crescendo label. He toured Japan with his group last fall, and has several dates lined up across the country this spring.

“God, my last album, officially speaking, was 1986. I’ve been in semi-obscurity!” he laughed. “There was a period where no recording companies were taking a chance on jazz at all. Now we’re entering into a time that looks much more favorable. There is getting to be a unified interest in honest-to-God jazz, and I’m not talking about quasi jazz or pseudo rock jazz.

“I’m beginning to see heavier crowds wherever I play, and they seem to be honestly interested in what I’m doing. It used to be that I’d finish the gig and ride off through a sea of blazing indifference.

“What I think is happening, and I don’t have any figures on this, but for years and years, Clark Terry, myself, Dizzy, Wynton Marsalis, Phil Woods, we’ve been traveling to schools and colleges, giving clinics and working with young players. There’s a good possibility these young players want to hear some of this music.”

Watrous has made nearly 20 albums as a leader since his first in 1963, and well over 100 as a sideman since he went to New York to seek his musical fortune during the early 1960s. He has played with several top big bands, including Duke Ellington’s, Count Basie’s and Woody Herman’s. He has also been a part of TV bands for Ed Sullivan, Arthur Godfrey and Dick Cavett.

He settled on music as a career after a process of elimination that was speeded by his youthful priorities and patriotic duty.

“I never went to college,” he said. “The day of the SATs (college entrance exams), I had a Dixie gig in the afternoon, so like an idiot, I screwed off, I guessed at the answers without looking and didn’t qualify for college, which was a source of chagrin to both of my parents. As I look back, it was one of my grave mistakes.

“Also, the Yankees were looking at me, I was a center fielder who could hit from both sides of the plate with power, and I was fast. Mickey Mantle was my role model. He had bone cancer, which was arrested, but he taped his knees before every game. When you think of some of these crybabies that play baseball today, they get a bruise on their pinky and they won’t play.”

But, as baseball beckoned, Watrous’ military obligation called him away. So he enlisted and spent four years in Navy bands. When he got out, baseball teams were still interested, but Watrous’ athletic skills had rusted while his music had blossomed, and he moved to New York to pursue a jazz career.

“I still have my glove. I’ve kept it all these years,” he said. “A few years ago, I went out to a jazz party in Midland, Tex., and the guy who ran it owned the AAA Cubs, and I prevailed on him to let us go to the field, get out the batting cage and take some cuts.

“In the process of breaking around 30 bats, I hit about 19 balls a long way out of the field, both left- and right-handed. And the general manager offered me the designated hitter role for the summer. I politely declined. I figured I was too old and had a family.”

Watrous now lives in Los Angeles with his wife and 8-year-old son. He’s a devoted fisherman who says he will cast a line anywhere, “even a mud puddle.”

Jamming live this Sunday, he can be expected to hoist all manner of old warm fuzzies from his deep musical bag.

“What needs to be understood is the players who have been around for years, who paid their dues, have a backlog of 1,000 to 2,000 tunes,” Watrous said. “I’m known for an extensive repertoire. I drive my groups crazy!”

Obviously, he’s in love with jazz, but he never abandoned his baseball fantasies.

“I still have dreams that I’m in the batter’s box hitting a tremendous shot to right field, as deep as the scoreboard,” he said.

Sunday’s jams begin at 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. Admission is $5. The Jazz Note is at 860 Garnet Ave. in Pacific Beach.