Evening to Honor a Jazzman

It’s his piano playing that has brought Jimmy Rowles fame in the music world in general, and the jazz world in particular.

The Rowles sound--produced via a medium-hard touch and based on a keen harmonic and melodic sense that results in a luxuriant sonic luster--has been heard in association with such jazz deities as Billie Holiday, Lester Young, Charlie Parker, Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, Ben Webster and Carmen McRae.

But there’s another, much less public side of Rowles: his considerable ability as a songwriter, and, now and then, as a lyricist. Rowles has been composing since the late ‘40s. Among the artists who have recorded his compositions are Vaughan, McRae, Wayne Shorter, Jack Jones, his brass-playing daughter Stacy and himself.

A newer fan of the Rowles songbook is pianist, composer and arranger Tom Garvin. In visits to Rowles’ home, Garvin urged the renowned pianist to dig out his material, and there was a lot.

“The music was everywhere, and he showed me songs that I had never heard,” said Garvin by phone from his home in Arleta. “These were wonderful tunes.”

Garvin was so enthralled with Rowles’ songs that two months ago he contacted his friend, singer Ruth Price, who runs the Jazz Bakery, and suggested she present an evening of the pianist’s music.

On Saturday, Garvin, Price, singer Mike Campbell, Stacy Rowles, reed man Gary Foster and others, including Rowles himself, will offer “The Music of Jimmy Rowles.”

The honoree expressed suitable pleasure at having a tribute. “I never thought anybody would ever do something like this,” said Rowles, 74, who lives in Burbank. “It kind of makes me feel good. It’s a knockout.”

Some of Rowles’ better known pieces, such as “The Ballad of Thelonious Monk” and “The Peacocks” will be presented at the Bakery along with unfamiliar ones, such as “Miriam,” which has never been performed.” Rowles wrote it at the request of a French film executive who had been associated with Bertrand Tavernier’s “Round Midnight.”

Rowles’ “Peacocks” was used as the closing theme of the film in a six-minute treatment by Shorter, Herbie Hancock and others. (The tune also served as the title track for an album by Stan Getz on Columbia Records.)

“The executive was enamored with Jimmy’s music and was flying him to Europe to make an album,” Garvin said. “He then told Jimmy about this beautiful woman that worked in his office named Miriam and asked Rowles to write a tune for her. He wrote it on the plane to France. It’s a lovely ballad.”

Campbell will sing that number as well as two for which Rowles wrote the lyrics as well as the music: “The Ballad of Thelonious Monk” and “Music’s the Only Thing That’s on My Mind.” The former, a tongue-in-cheek, country-Westernish homage to the great pianist, was recorded by McRae on her classic “Great American Songbook” album on Atlantic Records, which was made live at the now-defunct Donte’s jazz room in North Hollywood in 1972.

“The idea to do that kind of song just came into my head, and as I was writing the lyrics, my wife, Dorothy, would just laugh,” Rowles recalled.

“Music’s the Only Thing,” recorded on a 1981 album of the same name on Progressive Records, reveals Rowles’ propensity--not often called upon--to deliver a meaningful lyric. One passage goes:

“It could be sad, and my heart would start aching.

“It could be glad, turn me on, make me glow.

“It always runs through my head when I’m sleeping.

“And when I awake, there’s no escape, no place to go.”

At the tribute, Price will sing “Little Ingenue,” which is one of several Rowles numbers with lyrics by Oscar winner Johnny Mercer, who wrote the words to such timeless songs as “Laura,” “Autumn Leaves,” “Blues in the Night,” “Moon River,” “The Days of Wine and Roses,” “Come Rain or Come Shine” and countless others.

Working with Mercer was definitely one of the highlights of Rowles’ career, he said. The two met when Rowles was playing piano on a job at Paramount studios in the early ‘50s. Later, he received a card from Mercer that read: “May Santa, like all merry souls, include a song by Jimmy Rowles.”

“So I called him up, and he said, ‘Send me something,’ ” Rowles said. “So I sent him a bunch. I only had the first phrase on the tune that became ‘Baby, Don’t Quit Now,’ but he liked that. It took me a while to find more middle parts he liked.” Mercer wrote three sets of lyrics to that song; it was recorded under the original title by Jack Jones, and also became “Little Ingenue.”

Rowles marveled at Mercer’s speed and facility. “He was amazing,” he said. “He was creative in an instant. You couldn’t believe what you were hearing. Once he had me write a verse to ‘Morning Star,’ ” which Sarah Vaughan recorded. “I went to his studio and played it for him. I stopped, and he wrote. Then he had me play it again. Then he’d write some more. Then he said, ‘OK, play it again, and I’ll sing it for you.’ ” The lines Mercer had written in those few minutes were the words that Vaughan used on the record.

The pianist has written several works that have no lyrics, most prominently “The Peacocks” and “502 Blues (Drinking and Driving),” which Shorter included on his classic Blue Note album “Adam’s Apple,” made in the late ‘60s.

“Bill Holman and I had gone to hear Art Blakey’s band, and afterward, both Wayne and Cedar Walton came back to the house and we stayed up all night,” Rowles said. “I played the piece, and he took the sheet music with him. I was so glad to see he recorded it.”

Rowles, who continues to write songs, will play a few tunes at the tribute, but not too many. “I’m just going to sit there and enjoy it,” he said.

Jimmy Rowles, Stacy Rowles, Mike Campbell, Ruth Price, Tom Garvin and others perform “The Music of Jimmy Rowles” at 8 p.m. Friday at the Jazz Bakery, 3221 Hutchison Ave., Culver City. $15, refreshments included. Information: (310) 271-9039.