Traylor Travels His Own Road Through Jazz : Music: Singer gets some inspiration from Nat King Cole, but he does things his way, touching up standards and performing new material.

Darvy Traylor didn’t waste any time calling up the ghost of Nat King Cole during a recent performance at the Hyatt Newporter’s outdoor amphitheater. Backed by a big band, Traylor opened with the late singer’s “Straighten Up and Fly Right,” bringing some of Cole’s enthusiasm, not to mention tonal quality, to the humorous lyric.

Later, he sang a medley of tunes associated with Cole, including “Unforgettable,” which Cole’s daughter Natalie has lately kept in the public eye. The event, the sixth of Traylor’s semiannual concert appearances, marks the release of his new album, “Bridging the Gap,” on the Sierra Digital Productions label.

But Traylor, probably best known for his four-year-plus stint at Bob Burns Restaurant in Newport Beach’s Fashion Island, isn’t copping Cole’s act by any means. Though he cites the respected vocalist as an inspiration, he’s going his own way, bringing modern touches to his book of standards as well as adding other material that attracts him.

“I had the idea of doing the old standards” for the new recording, Traylor said in a phone conversation a few days after the Hyatt Newporter concert, “but wanted to do it in a different way so that the young people would enjoy the tunes. But, at the same time, I didn’t want to offend the old fans. That’s why I went with the big band. It gives enough sound and rhythm for the younger listeners. And the experienced fans all love the big-band sound.”

“It took a year and a half to put the recording together,” says Joe Massimino, who arranged all the tunes and played for the album. “When Darvy came to me and said he wanted to do the tunes on the recording live, I had to go back and arrange all the parts for instruments because we had originally done them on machines. But it worked out great. It was a great high working with him that night.”

Said Traylor: “I needed an arranger who would understand big-band arrangements but could also give the charts a modern, up-tempo sound. And Joe fit the bill. He’s a genius at arranging. All I had to do was come up with the ideas, and he came up with the rest.” In addition to standards, Traylor also performs a number of pop tunes, including “Coming in and Out of Your Life,” associated with Barbra Streisand, and the dramatic “The Impossible Dream.”

“I fell in love with ‘Impossible Dream,’ ” he said. “It just kind of tells the way I am, the way I look at things.”

That his fans associate him with Nat Cole is no problem for Traylor. “People connect me with Nat Cole because I do a lot of his songs,” he says. “They know I’m into him--I love him because his delivery was so smooth.”

But there were other influences in his development. “Along with Nat, Aretha Franklin and Sam Cooke were my favorites. Aretha had that soulfulness about her. Cooke knew about phrasing--he was a master at it. That’s why I sound the way I do, a combination of the three people I look up to.”

Traylor, born in Pittsburg, Calif., in 1940, began singing in Oakland church choirs at age of 12. By the time he was 20, he was singing with the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi (even though Traylor is not blind) while they toured with such gospel groups as the Mighty Clouds of Joy. “I didn’t hear a lot of ‘60s music,” he said, “because I was busy traveling on the gospel circuit.”

In 1968, interested in pursuing his own direction, Traylor formed Touch of Class, an organ-based band that featured his vocals. The group played such now-defunct locations as Black Beard’s in Newport Beach and Captain Jack’s in Anaheim. Traylor also made four appearances on “The Gong Show” in the ‘70s and taught himself to play drums.

“It was economics,” he said. “After quitting my day job, I was forced to cut down on the size of the group. But I felt uncomfortable going up front to sing after playing drums a while. But I still shock people sometimes by getting behind the drums.”

Traylor had a 1988 live concert at Orange Coast College recorded and released as “Darvy Traylor: Live.” Other concerts have been held at the Grand Dinner Theatre and the Grand Hotel, both in Anaheim. He appeared last November for a week at the main showroom in Harrah’s in Las Vegas with Massimino.

But his bread and butter now is the Bob Burns engagement. “I call it my romantic room, where people can come with a husband or wife or friends and really enjoy themselves. It’s a great place to do love songs; I love doing love songs there.”

Darvy Traylor plays Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 6 p.m., Thursdays at 6:30 p.m. and Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. at Bob Burns Restaurant, 37 Fashion Island, Newport Beach. Free. (714) 644-2030.