Flory’s Romance With Crowd Hasn’t Died : Jazz: The saxophonist, who plays with Jim DeJulio Trio Saturday in Huntington Beach, is still wooing audiences with the music that was his first love.

Almost any Wednesday night, you can find saxophonist Med Flory blowing be-bop on the bandstand at Jax, the Glendale tavern-steakhouse that serves up jazz seven nights a week. This past Wednesday, Flory was there with fellow alto player Lanny Morgan, keyboardist Tom Ranier, bassist Bob Maize and drummer Frank Capp, whirling through the kind of program Charlie Parker himself might have chosen, such tunes as “Au Privave” and “Salt Peanuts.”

But it was on the less frantic tempo of “Lover Man” that Flory showed his mettle, adding involved variations on the familiar theme, accelerating through his solo without losing warmth, wit or melodicism. At the end of the number, those in the narrow, crowded room turned away from their drinks and their dinners to give the saxophonist and his band a long, well-deserved ovation.

Even if you’ve never seen Flory onstage--say with his Grammy-winning, brass-heavy Supersax ensemble, or maybe in years past with the bands of Woody Herman, Stan Kenton, Terry Gibbs or Ray Anthony--you still might recognize his face when he performs Saturday night with the Jim DeJulio Trio at Maxwell’s by the Sea in Huntington Beach. Beginning in the ‘60s, the big guy acted in any number of television series and movies, mostly Westerns, including “Gunsmoke, “Bonanza,” “Lassie,” “Daniel Boone” and the 1963 film, “Spencer’s Mountain.” At 6 foot 4, he was always easy to spot.

“Unless it was with Clint Walker, or Jim Arness,” Flory cautioned earlier this week by phone from his home in the Hollywood Hills. “Arness was taller than anybody.”

While acting paid the bills during the dry days when jazz took a back seat to rock ‘n’ roll in the ‘60s, music was always Flory’s first love. The 65-year-old saxophonist, who was born in Logansport, Ind., began playing clarinet in fifth grade. After a short stint with the Army Air Corps in the mid-’40s, he attended Indiana University and formed a band there. “We were playing be-bop on the campus from ’48 to ‘50, all Dizzy Gillespie’s things. It was a real hip band, and everybody loved it. They’d be just climbing all over themselves to see us.”

On his graduation day in 1950, he joined respected bandleader Claude Thornhill’s ensemble as a tenor player.

Flory remembers the tryout. “It was cut or pack,” he said. “If you cut the book (could read and play the music), you stay. If you can’t, you pack and go.”

Thornhill’s orchestra, the inspiration for Miles Davis’ “Birth of the Cool” octet sessions, had been breaking new ground for years with innovative tonal combinations and the variety of musical styles it embraced. “Gerry Mulligan and Gil Evans were writing for the band,” Flory recalled. “It was a great book.”

But he didn’t last long as a tenor player with the band. After sitting in on clarinet one night, he was given the lead chair immediately. “The clarinet was my real ax,” he explained, “the one I felt most confident on. And as soon as they heard me, the seat was mine.”

It was also during this period that Flory began running into the man who would later become the inspiration for the Supersax band: Charlie (Bird) Parker. “I remember Gil Evans was rehearsing one of his new charts with the (Thornhill) band at (defunct New York nightspot) Nola’s, and Bird was sitting in the back listening. Gil had put the tune in a difficult key for clarinet. But he wanted it to sound like real be-bop, so we were dealing with these ridiculous changes and really struggling. Then it would start to fall together and you could just see Bird smile.”

He saw Parker play a number of times while in New York, including the premiere night of Charlie Parker and strings at Birdland. But one encounter with the great saxophonist sticks in Flory’s mind: He was walking down East Broadway in New York with his wife, singer Joanie Durelle, when “this guy came up and said, ‘Hey man, can you give me some bread?’ So I gave him five bucks, which was a lot of money in those days, then watched him walk into Birdland. And Joanie said, ‘You only had $10. Why did you give that man five?’ I told her, ‘That was Charlie Parker. If Bird asks for something, you give it to him.’ He was always treated like royalty. He was royalty to us.”

Flory’s best-known project, Supersax, is an ensemble of five saxes, trumpet and rhythm section that plays arrangements of Parker’s tunes and improvisations. Contrary to what some jazz texts claim, Art Pepper had nothing to do with the idea for the band, according to Flory, who added: “I can’t stand the way that guy plays. I heard that sound of saxes playing Bird’s choruses on Woody (Herman’s) ‘I Got News for You’--that four-brothers sound.”

The group has toured the United States, as well as Europe and Japan, but hasn’t been seen locally since last summer’s appearance at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. “There’s just no money out there,” Flory said, referring to the wages that clubs are able to pay the band. Their last release, “Stone Bird” came in 1988.

Flory is now looking at an even more ambitious project, a big band that includes Supersax, the L.A. Voices and a host of Los Angeles’ best musicians. “I want it to be the best band in town. It’s OK to play these casuals (small dates without Supersax),” he explained, “but they have no impact on the music. I want to make a statement with this band. We’ve rehearsed ‘Flight of the Bumblebee’ and it’s hilarious. We play it at such a ridiculous tempo that it sounds like an explosion in a beehive.”

Until this new project goes public, Flory will stay busy booking summer dates for Supersax and playing gigs such as his weekly workout at Jax. “Playing (at Jax) is giving me some chops I haven’t had in a while,” he said. If we’re lucky, that means more meaty renditions of “Lover Man” are in the offing.

Med Flory plays with the Jim DeJulio Trio on Saturday at Maxwell’s by the Sea, 317 Pacific Coast Highway, Huntington Beach. Shows at 8, 9:30 and 11 p.m. $4 cover, $7 minimum per show. (714) 536-2555.