He Gave Jazz Greats a Place to Play in L.A. : Jazz Bakery offers birthday salute Thursday night to bassist Pat (Pasquale) Senatore and his now-defunct beachside club

Nostalgic notes will flow from the bandstand Thursday at the Jazz Bakery in Culver City. Produced by singer Ruth Price, the evening will be at once a 57th birthday tribute to bassist Pat (Pasquale) Senatore and a reunion celebration recalling Pasquale’s, the now legendary beachside club that he ran from 1978 to 1983.

Alumni of the club expected to perform include Price, pianist George Cables and drummer Billy Higgins.

“Hardly a day goes by,” Senatore says, “when someone doesn’t remind me of what great times we had there. I sure miss it.”

Now a free-lance musician living in Studio City, Senatore was a veteran of the Stan Kenton and Les Brown bands, and of five years with Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass, when he conceived the idea of starting his own room.

“I’d seen how bad conditions were for jazz, how poorly the musicians were treated, and I wanted to correct all the problems I’d encountered.

“One day I went to the beach with my two sons and saw this beach spot in Malibu. I envisioned it as a fantastic jazz club; I met the owner of the property. It took a year, but he finally agreed to let me take over the place.

“We opened in February, 1978, with just me on bass, George Cables on piano--he’ll be there with me Thursday--and Roy McCurdy on drums. My wife, Barbara, worked in the room taking care of business details. Pretty soon we began using bigger groups.”

What made Pasquale’s unique was the mix of music and ambience. Windowed along two walls, the room enabled patrons to look (or walk) past a sliding glass door 20 feet from the bandstand onto an open deck, from which you could watch the Pacific Ocean lapping virtually at your feet. Here was a comfortable setting not just for concerts by the sea but almost literally on the sea.

Ruth Price, a frequent performer at the club, recalls: “I never knew any place like this except the Trident in Sausalito, which also overlooked the water. How often could I sing ‘The Shining Sea’ and actually look at the ocean while I sang it?”

Trumpeter Freddie Hubbard has other recollections. “We were working for a musician who knew our needs, who kept the piano in tune. We played whatever we felt like playing--we didn’t have to plug our latest album. And we had people like Richard Pryor and Goldie Hawn in the audience.”

The real turning point, a few months after the club opened, was the arrival of Joe Farrell, who had won several Down Beat awards on sax and flute.

“Joe had just come to town from New York,” recalls Pasquale, “nobody had seen him yet, and he wanted to put in an 18-piece band. I told him, ‘You’re crazy! The whole room seats 100, maybe 130 in a pinch.’ But he did it on a Monday night, and the room was mobbed. For eight Mondays you could hardly get near the place.”

Within a year, everyone wanted to play Pasquale’s, and almost everyone did: Manhattan Transfer, Chick Corea, Pat Metheny, Joe Henderson, Ernie Watts, Toots Thielemans, Anita O’Day, Nat Adderley, Tom Scott, Art Pepper, James Newton.

Sunday afternoons were special: big bands played on the outside deck in the sunshine--the Akiyoshi-Tabackin Orchestra, Bill Holman, Capp-Pierce Juggernaut, and frequently Latin ensembles--Poncho Sanchez (“We launched his band there,” Pasquale says), Baya, Moacir Santos.

“The club would be packed and we’d have 200 more people sitting on the beach and dancing. It was unbelievable,” Pasquale says.

Johnny Carson dropped by to see Carmen McRae. So did Sarah Vaughan, who wound up singing duets with her and hanging out in the room until dawn. Cybill Shepherd came to catch her guitar idol, Joe Pass. When Jon Hendricks brought in Bobby McFerrin as an unknown sideman, Al Jarreau jumped out of the audience to join them for an unforgettable vocal riot.

“One night I can’t forget,” Pasquale says, “was when Bobby Hutcherson was playing vibraphone. The ocean had a way of changing things. . . . Some nights it would coat the underneath of the club with pebbles and rocks, and when that happened, the water going over them, gurgling over those pebbles, sounded like a waterfall. Well, Bobby put on the sustaining pedal on the vibes, did an arpeggio and just let it sustain, and you’d hear the water sprinkling--people were just mesmerized as he played this duet with the ocean.”

Michel Petrucciani, the diminutive French pianist (barely more than three feet tall, 50 pounds--he suffered from a rare bone disease) made his West Coast debut here at age 20. His manager or his wife would carry him to the piano stool, where a special extension enabled him to reach the foot pedals.

Pat Metheny came in to listen to fellow guitarist John Abercrombie, then asked Pasquale for a date at the room. He played straight-ahead jazz, no fusion, with Charlie Haden and Billy Higgins on bass and drums.

Pasquale’s, in short, was the in place. Until things began to go wrong.

Many jazzmen have complained about how their careers were hurt by rock. It happened to Pat Senatore too, but in his case literally--in the form of rockslides on the Pacific Coast Highway.

“Malibu and Topanga canyons would be closed by rockslides, and unless you lived right in Malibu you couldn’t reach the club. We had to close for days, sometimes weeks at a time.”

Pasquale wouldn’t give in. The club closed, reopened, and for a while continued to flourish.

The last straw was a hassle with the city of Malibu. “There was a septic tank leaking all over the beach. The landlord didn’t want to pay to repair it, and I was just a tenant there--I didn’t even have a lease, we were there on a month-to-month basis. Well, I decided we had reached a point of no return. It was heartbreaking, but on Oct. 23, 1983, we had an all-star farewell jam session, and that was it.”

Could something like Pasquale’s ever happen again?

“Well,” Senatore says, “it’s not impossible. I talked to Herb Alpert the other day, and if I could present him with the right location, he might be interested in making a deal with me to back it. But as far as finding commercial oceanfront property, it’s almost out of the question.

“Whether or not it ever happens again, I’m happy for those years we did have. I still like to look back on it as a dream that did come true, for a little while.”

Pasquale’s reunion concert begins at 8 p.m. Thursday at the Jazz Bakery, 3221 Hutchison Ave., Culver City. Tickets: $15. Call (310) 271-9039.