L.A. Jazz Pioneer Collette, Due at Maxwell’s, Uses Music to Sooth Strife

Few musicians are as closely tied to the jazz heritage of Los Angeles as William Marcell (Buddy) Collette. And few are as concerned with its future.

Born in the city in 1921, the woodwind player and composer--who will be at Maxwell’s in Huntington Beach tonight--was a pivotal figure on the Central Avenue scene of the ‘40s and ‘50s. He is revered among jazz devotees as the person who first encouraged his high-school buddy Charles Mingus to pick up the bass, and for introducing him to bassist Red Callender, from whom Mingus got his first lessons.

Collette became the first black accepted into the cliquish Hollywood studio scene when he was hired in 1952 by director Jerry Fielding to play in Groucho Marx’s “You Bet Your Life” show band. He also was instrumental in forging a single musicians’ union from the two segregated unions that existed in Los Angeles until the early ‘50s.

The recent rioting in Los Angeles has left him unsettled.

“I feel like I’m looking at patterns,” he said earlier this week, on the phone from his home in Los Angeles. “I was here when the Watts disturbance happened (in 1965) and could see the reasons behind it--money not coming into the community, the people unable to get loans and no jobs available. Since then, things have been happening, but they haven’t always been done properly.

“But now we’re coming to another period, people are coming together and saying we have to have part of the pie. People are saying we are qualified, for the loans and the jobs, whatever.

“If we say we are a good country and a good city, then we have to hold ourselves accountable to that. Once we get to the point where we’re being truthful and honest and fair (about conditions), then a lot of those problems will go away. It comes down to issues of truth and principle, not just issues of black and white.”

And Collette knows just where to start. “It’s got to begin with the youngsters,” he said. “It’s hard to change adult opinions--we are what we are. But the kids we can reach.”

To that end, Collette soon will visit the 102nd Street Elementary School to try to get the kids excited about music. It’s something he’s been doing over the years, in Los Angeles and elsewhere around the state.

“The teachers (at 102nd Street) know I grew up in the area and can relate to it,” he said. “I come in and give a little talk, demonstrate the instrument. I tell them what shows I’ve done and play the themes that they recognize.”

The kids get to see “someone outside the realm of politics and sports, who has gone into music and made it. We put the music right in their laps; they can hear what we do. It softens them up and lets them express their emotions. Ten or 12 years later you meet some of these kids and they come up to you and say, ‘You don’t remember me but you came to my school and changed my life.’ ”

Collette does remember a time 10 years ago when he was asked to visit L.A.’s Jefferson High School where tempers were flaring. “A friend who taught there asked if I could come over, so I grabbed a group and came over. It was terrible. The kids were fighting and we felt like we were in a war zone. We talked to the kids, did some playing and were able to cool them down. It’s a magical thing that music can do.”

Collette hasn’t confined such visits to the inner cities. In September, he traveled to Redding to conduct clinics in two schools and give a concert. “I went up there and they had no jazz program. At one point, I was out on the football field, playing my alto, with a hundred kids following me, clapping on two and four. They couldn’t do that at first. I played with the local high school band and they were good. They loosened up and in a half-hour they were swinging. I got letters afterward that said, ‘You changed the city.’ “It’s amazing what happens when we reach out to the kids. Even their parents are affected. More people have to realize that building starts from the bottom. Give the kids the values and it spills into the whole group. But you can’t start them when they’re 22. You need to do it early.”

Collette thinks the recent disturbances in Los Angeles will hurt the local music scene “a lot. The musicians will always play--you can’t stop them. But it will hurt the houses, and the amount of money the players will get. Already, some events have been canceled.” He mentioned KLON-FM’s four-day “Jazz in Los Angeles: the 1940s” festival that was to have taken place in Hollywood at the end of this month. Collette was to have lead a group dubbed “The Central Ave. All-Stars” that would have included his one-time boss, Chico Hamilton.

In a previous interview with The Times, Collette has cited a litany of musicians who left Los Angeles to establish their careers: “Mingus left, Dexter Gordon left, Chico Hamilton left, Eric Dolphy left, Charles Lloyd left--they all left and made it big.”

He thinks the young musicians in Los Angeles today may have to do the same thing. “You can get lost here. There’s almost too much happening. People like (keyboardist) Eric Reed and (saxophonist) Rickey Woodard have to keep moving, doing festivals and a lot of different things. No matter what kind of name they have now, they have to grab every gig on their own and with others to make it all come together. When I was coming up, you could have a couple of gigs and afford an apartment. That just won’t do it now.”

Buddy Collette joins Jim DeJulio’s trio tonight at 8, 9:30 and 11 at Maxwell’s By the Sea, 317 Pacific Coast Highway, Huntington Beach; $4 cover, $7 minimum per show. (714) 536-2555.