More Than a Piano Man : Jazz Artist Frank Strazzeri, Known for His Accompaniment, Is Also a Skilled Composer

Most fans know Frank Strazzeri only as a pianist, a guy whose many trio recordings and appearances around the Southland find him mixing it up with be-bop, stride and swing rhythms all delivered in a cool, no-pressure style.

As a sideman, the 62-year-old Los Angeles keyboardist has been seen with the bands of Charlie Ventura, Les Brown, Woody Herman and Cal Tjader. As an accompanist, he’s backed singers including Billie Holiday, Joe Williams and Elvis Presley. His long association with Chet Baker earned him a central role in Bruce Weber’s documentary on the late trumpeter, “Let’s Get Lost.”

It may surprise some that Strazzeri is also an accomplished composer. “I’ve been writing pieces for my own albums for a number of years,” he explained recently in a phone conversation from his Sun Valley home. “And I’ve been lucky enough to have had about 45 of them recorded by other people.”

Strazzeri’s latest album, “WoodWinds West,” puts the spotlight firmly on his composing skills. It’s a sextet date that finds the front line--Bill Perkins, Bob Cooper and Jack Nimitz--alternating between flutes, clarinets and saxophones to produce an especially warm, tastefully orchestrated sound. The group, with the same illustrious horn section, plays Maxwell’s in Huntington Beach tonight through Sunday. Bassist Dave Stone and drummer Paul Kreibich round out the ensemble.

As Strazzeri tells it, the project didn’t start out to be a showcase for his writing talents. He says producer Bill Craig, after hearing the charts he wrote for a big-band date led by Perkins (the Woody Herman tribute, “Our Man Woody”) asked him to write material for three saxophones.

“In all truthfulness, I think he had something different in mind than how it turned out,” he said, “more of a Lester Young-style thing with three saxophones playing standards and more traditional music.”

But the pianist couldn’t leave well enough alone.

“I started writing the thing and changing it, installing my own tunes and so forth, and just completely turned the thing around. You start writing for three saxophones, three guys who play a lot of different instruments, and you begin to think, ‘How many combinations can you come up with?’ ”

The result is a sophisticated outing that, in places, recalls the “Birth of the Cool,” Miles Davis sessions with a nine-piece combo; at others, the intriguing horn combinations that Gil Evans wrote in the late ‘50s for Davis and orchestra. The first tune he penned for “WoodWinds West,” the sultry “Warm Valencia Nights” with its Spanish airs that recall the Evans-Davis collaboration “Sketches of Spain,” developed from a trip he and his wife of 40 years, Jo Ann, took to the European city.

“We played there for two weeks and the place was like an oven the whole time,” he said. “But it was so beautiful. The Mediterranean was right below my hotel window. Now how are you going to write a tune about that kind of a place with just three saxophones?”

So Strazzeri created the appropriate atmospheric sound with Perkins playing alto flute, Cooper on clarinet and Nimitz on bass clarinet. The piece set the tone for the rest of the album. “When (Craig) heard it, he didn’t know what to think. He hadn’t expected this thing with flutes and clarinets.”

Strazzeri says he can’t pinpoint where the inspiration for this sound came from. “I didn’t really have anyone that I looked to. I suppose the Gil Evans thing is close because, I admit, it does sound like that. But I’m self-taught as a composer.”

His ear for orchestration, he says, comes from the fact that he plays so many instruments. “I’m a frustrated horn player. I’ve played trumpet, baritone horn, started out on saxophone and clarinet. And I’ve also played flute, trombone and vibes.”

During his career he’s also worked with Louie Bellson, Tal Farlow and Cal Tjader, for whom he wrote most of the music heard on Tjader’s 1975 release “Last Night When We Were Young.”

He’s also put out a slew of his own recordings, most on smaller labels. In addition to “WoodWinds West,” the last several months have seen the release of “Little Giant,” a trio date on Fresh Sound, and “Frank’s Blues,” a sextet date on Night Life. He estimates that he’s recorded more than 120 albums as a sideman.

Born in Rochester, N.Y., York Strazzeri studied piano, but not composing, at the Eastman School of Music there. He cut his teeth working in the house band of a Rochester club, playing behind such notables as trumpeter Roy Elridge, trombonist J.J. Johnson and singer Holiday.

It was while he was living in Las Vegas working for saxophonist Charlie Ventura in the late ‘50s that he first met Chet Baker, the soft-touch trumpeter who had lifelong battles with addiction.

“Believe it or not, he showed up at my door one day looking for dope. He must have found my address in the union book and heard that I was a jazz piano player and figured it was worth a try. He didn’t even call.

“I invited him in the house and we talked a little while. I told him, ‘Man, I don’t know anything about that kind of thing.’ And that was the last I saw of him until I came to L.A.”

Strazzeri moved to Los Angeles after his boss at the time, Woody Herman, told him that if he wanted to be a jazz musician, he had to live in New York or L.A. “So that’s how I ended up out here, with a little kick from Woody Herman.”

Baker and Strazzeri worked together frequently on the West Coast. “I never really hung out with him. You just don’t get tight with a guy like that. They have another world they live in. I was straight and he wasn’t.”

But when filmmaker Weber began to make his documentary, Baker wanted Strazzeri to handle the music. Strazzeri also offered several on-screen anecdotes and opinions about the late trumpeter.

“I was extremely surprised when I was asked to do the film. (Baker) played with hundreds of piano players. But I think he felt an alignment with me, a buddy thing, that made him feel comfortable. I used to break him up quite a bit. He lived on the sad side of life, you know, the doom-and-gloom thing. So I’d crack jokes and make him smile.”

Another musician that Strazzeri struck up a friendship with was the King himself, Elvis Presley. Strazzeri spent a couple of years in the early ‘70s touring with Presley’s band.

“He was such a big star that it was like cracking a military secret just to see the guy. But one time he was coming around meeting people at one of the parties we had and I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t even want to meet the guy,” he said.

“So he comes over, and I’d heard from my wife that he was interested in karate. When I brought it up, he said ‘Wait here.’ He came back in his karate outfit, and we spent the whole night talking about it. He showed me how he could kill me. And when I got up the next day, there was an envelope with $300 in it tucked under my door. Every time I talked with him he’d give me money.”

* Frank Strazzeri’s WoodWinds West appears at Maxwell’s, 317 Pacific Coast Highway, Huntington Beach, tonight and Saturday, 8:30 and 10:30 p.m., and Sunday, 4 and 6 p.m. $5 cover, $7 minimum. (714) 536-2555.