Edwards: for the Record : Veteran Saxophonist Is Finally Getting Respect From a Label

Until Teddy Edwards made his latest album, “Mississippi Lad,” for the Antilles label, the veteran jazzman--who plays Sunday at Maxwell’s by the Sea in Huntington Beach--never had much luck with record companies.

It’s not that the 68-year-old tenor saxophonist hasn’t been able to record. He’s made more than 15 albums in his 45-plus-year career, as well as a number of singles that were released as 78 r.p.m. discs in the ‘40s and ‘50s.

And it’s not that his stuff hasn’t sold. One of his first records was a tasty item called “Blues in Teddy’s Flat” which he waxed for Dial Records in 1947. Edwards says it outsold everything else on the label, whose roster also included Charlie Parker, Dexter Gordon and Wardell Gray. “And it’s still selling,” he added, “on a Spotlite reissue out of England.”

But, Edwards said, his financial rewards for “Blues in Teddy’s Flat” were typical of his experiences with almost every label before his association with Antilles: “I made $41.25 for the date, the day I recorded it. And I haven’t seen another quarter since,” he said matter-of-factly, with no bitterness in his voice.

His fortunes jump-shifted when Tom Waits contacted producer Jean-Philippe Allard, a Parisian who oversees many of the jazz releases for Polygram Records, of which Antilles is now a subsidiary.

Waits, who himself records for Antilles, recommended that Allard sign Edwards. The singer-songwriter-pianist-actor and the saxman had been musical compatriots since the early ‘80s when they performed together at the Troubadour in West Hollywood. (Edwards subsequently toured Europe, Australia and the United States with Waits and was featured on the soundtrack of Francis Ford Coppola’s film “One From the Heart,” for which Waits was musical director.)

Allard agreed that Edwards was long overdue for a major label release (his last U.S. album had been issued in 1976 on the small Xanadu jazz line) and he contacted Edwards, who recalls that he could hardly believe his ears.

“Jean-Philippe gave me a great deal--a large royalty percentage, payment of all fees for recording, plus money up front for making the record. I told him, ‘You make me feel like I am somebody,’ and he said, ‘Well, you are.’ ”

His dealings with Allard brought to mind the one other record producer Edwards feels treated him fairly: the late Lester Koenig, who recorded Edwards for his Los Angeles-based Contemporary Records in the ‘50s and ‘60s (some of these albums, such as “Heart and Soul,” are available as reissues).

“Lester was the only other decent guy I met in the record business, the only one with any compassion for the musician at all,” Edwards said.

“Mississippi Lad” features Edwards’ nimble-fingered, soaked-in-blues horn work and his happy-sad, wailing sound on a variety of straight-ahead originals. He’s helped out by a backing crew that includes such ace Angeleno players as pianist Art Hillery and trombonist Jimmy Cleveland.

Waits makes a cameo, performing two tunes--”Little Man” and “I’m Not Your Fool Anymore”--in his trademark sandpaper-rough-yet-multicolored voice. The latter tune is a slow minor blues; the former is a ballad that Edwards says is a particular favorite of Waits’.

Though the record, released in January, has posted only moderate sales so far, Edwards has already received some substantial benefits as a result of the exposure it has brought. He reports that he has worked some new venues. And he’s finally going to realize a very old dream: Antilles has given him the go-ahead to record his 15-piece Brasstring Ensemble. The band will make an album in Los Angeles next month.

The Brasstring (which was 33 pieces strong when Edwards premiered it in 1977 at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre in Los Angeles) will play new material Edwards has written for five brass, five strings, harp, rhythm section, saxophone and vocals. “I have the brass for excitement, the strings for beauty, and I’m in the middle,” he said.

Edwards, a Jackson, Miss., native who has lived in Southern California since 1945, was an innovative member of the thriving Los Angeles jazz scene in the ‘40s and ‘50s. But since then he has been largely, unfairly overlooked in his adopted hometown. Like numerous other jazz musicians, he has to travel, mainly to Europe, to work steadily. He’s made three trips there in the past year. During one last month with fellow saxmen Von Freeman and Buck Hill, he played the 1,500-seat Chatelet Auditorium in Paris.

“I’m treated like a god over there,” Edwards said. “People ask me why I come back here to sit and watch TV and not work, and I tell them I guess I’m just a Californian at heart.”

He has never been completely inactive in Los Angeles. He’s played with other artists--Benny Goodman, Shelly Manne and Gerald Wilson, among them--he has written arrangements and worked as a leader, albeit inconsistently. He played the first annual Los Angeles Jazz Festival last August at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in downtown Los Angeles and drew two standing ovations. He plays tonight at Lunaria in West Los Angeles and will take part in a KLON-FM (88.1) tribute to jazz in Hollywood on May 23 at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. On June 20, he’ll be at the Jazz Bakery in Culver City.

“I can’t get mad. I don’t,” he said. “I keep on steppin’.”

Teddy Edwards plays with Jim De Julio’s trio Sunday from 2 to 6 p.m. at Maxwell’s by the Sea, 317 Pacific Coast Highway, Huntington Beach. $4 cover charge, $7 minimum -- food or beverage.