Saxophonist Wilber Makes a Timely Visit From Jazz’s Past

Bob Wilber’s got one foot in tomorrow and the other in yesterday. Fast approaching his 65th birthday (March 15), the busy saxophonist and composer has always seemed a little out of sync with his generation. Given the opportunity to make a quantum leap through time, he probably would elect to re-emerge in the late ‘20s as a member of Louis Armstrong’s classic Hot Five.

“To me,” said Wilber, “the great things that have happened in jazz are the things that have been based on Louis Armstrong’s inspiration. I really feel that he was the inventor of jazz as we know it. He was the one who took the music from a ragtime-influenced art and transformed it into what it eventually became.”

The preppy-styled, youthful-looking Wilber makes one of his rare Southland appearances Friday and Saturday at the Jazz Bakery, performing with pianist Johnny Varro, bassist Isla Eckinger and drummer Gene Estes. Part of the receipts from his concert will be donated to the Jazz Photographers Assn. of Southern California for the creation of a Milt Hinton Award for Excellence in Jazz Photography--to be sculpted by artist and bassist John Heard.

Wilber’s program, which also celebrates his 50th anniversary as a professional musician, will reflect his strong belief in melodic improvisation--a method he attributes to influences from Armstrong, Benny Goodman and Sidney Bechet.

“I’ll play some standards, and I’ll do a few of my own tunes,” he said. “But most of what I play will be songs that I can use as a basis for melodic improvisation. I don’t like to just blow on chord changes; improvising off the melody is still, to me, a timeless approach that will never go out of date.”

Mainstream jazz observer and magazine columnist Floyd Levin, a longtime fan, describes Wilber as “a wonderful player; Bob’s music always sounds fresh and alive, no matter what he’s playing.”

Wilber, who grew up in New York, became a professional at the age of 15. Because of World War II, “so many of the older players had been drafted that there was a lot of work around,” he recalled. “In a sense, it was the tail end of an era, but nobody knew it was the tail end. The big bands were playing at the theaters and the hotels, and there was jazz on 52nd Street and at Nick’s in Greenwich Village, and uptown at the Apollo Theatre. It was a real happening time.”

Like virtually every other young clarinetist in the country, Wilber started out with Goodman clearly in mind. But it didn’t take him long to look back past the Swing years.

“What happened,” he said, “was that the companies began to reissue recordings of Louis Armstrong and the Hot Five, and I found them totally fascinating. I found myself becoming more and more immersed in traditional music, because it felt so close to my own feelings.”

Wilber’s choice of pre-Swing jazz as a model was especially unusual at a time when the jazz world was in a state of vigorous ferment. The arrival of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie had created a new and radical movement--one that caused acrimonious confrontations with adherents of traditional jazz.

“I found the whole thing very unsettling,” he said. “Because when I came into jazz, there was the feeling that it was one music. There were different styles, and people had different ways of playing, but everybody could play together. My first time I remember listening to live jazz was the Sunday afternoon jam session that Milt Gabler had at Jimmy Ryan’s on 52nd Street in New York City, where there were musicians from every kind of background getting together to make music--with no problems.

“But the split that happened in the mid-’40s between the established, mainstream players and the young be-boppers was the worst thing that ever happened to jazz. I was listening to Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie right from the beginning, and buying their records. And I was also intensely interested in the revival of New Orleans music, and excited about (New Orleans trumpeter) Bunk Johnson when he came to New York.”

Wilber’s solution was to envelop himself in the jazz styles he loved--”everything that was based on Louis Armstrong’s inspiration.”

When he was 18, he first studied with, and eventually became a close associate of the renowned New Orleans soprano saxophonist Bechet.

“Sidney wasn’t doing that much at the time,” said Wilber. “He was living in Brooklyn, doing an occasional Eddie Condon Town Hall Concert and a date here and there, sort of sliding into semi-retirement. So he decided to open a school of music. He had a sign painter make a sign and tacked it up in front of his house in Brooklyn. When Mezz Mezzrow told me about it, I headed straight out to Brooklyn and became Bechet’s first student. And, as it turned out, there really weren’t many more.

“I studied with Sidney for a month, and then I moved over and lived in the front parlor of his house. When he went to work at Jimmy Ryan’s, he would take me along. Every night around midnight, he’d say, ‘Come on up.’ And I’d play the rest of the night with him. It was quite an experience.”

If Wilber learned the values of melodic improvisation from Armstrong, he absorbed Bechet’s philosophical approach.

“Sidney was a very articulate man, with a real sense of the importance of what he was doing, and of the necessity to pass it on. He discussed the whole artistic idea of what you do as a player--the idea of telling a story, of how to approach theme and variations, and how important it was to convey a feeling.

“Sidney didn’t think in terms of chords. He had a marvelous ear, and he could read--although not particularly well--but he was one of the handful of jazz improvisers who could compose on their instruments at the same time they were improvising, instead of just playing a string of hot licks. And his overall approach to music had a profound effect on me.”

Wilber has lived in England’s Cotswalds with his English-born, blues-singer wife, Joanne Horton, for nearly a decade. In addition to touring as a single and leading such imaginative groups as the Bechet Legacy, Saxophone Summit and the Smithsonian Jazz Repertory Ensemble, Wilber orchestrated the music for the film, “The Cotton Club,” and has, in his words, “a parallel career in classical music.” He has performed the clarinet solo passages on recordings of the Mozart Clarinet Concerto in A, the Mozart Clarinet Quintet, the Beethoven Trios and--to be released later this year--the Brahms Quintet.

But his heart belongs to jazz--although, he said, “at the moment, I’m not too optimistic” about its future. “I’m beginning to think that the best thing we can do to save it is to celebrate the great things of the past by re-creating them--not in a slavish imitative way, of course, but in a creative way.

“I still see the ‘30s and the ‘40s--with all the great musicians who came on the scene in those years--as a golden era, musically.”

Wilber said he feels that the American tendency to view culture and classical music as products of Europe has resulted in a devaluation of the importance of jazz as an artistic expression.

“I’m trying to bring about a better understanding of this music--in all its shapes and forms--to a wider audience, all the time. Hopefully, it will have some effect, however small.

“In terms of my own playing, the basic inspiration of Bechet is still with me when I play the soprano saxophone. And Armstrong and Goodman are basic inspirations on whatever instrument I play.

“I hope my improvising has become more refined over the years,” concluded Wilber. “I try to play less now, but to think it out more carefully. I try to simplify, and not play too many notes. Most of all, I try to share with my listeners the great beauty that is possible with melodic improvisation. That’s something I’ll never get tired of doing.”

Bob Wilber appears with pianist Johnny Varro, bassist Isla Eckinger and drummer Gene Estes 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday at the Jazz Bakery, 3221 Hutchison Ave., Culver City . Admission: $20. Call (310) 271-9039.