‘Just Follow the Bouncing Ball’ : Jazz: After a series of ups and downs, singer Carol Sloane’s career is holding steady at the top again.

Reading the liner notes with Carol Sloane’s new album, “Sweet & Slow,” you would get the impression that the vocalist has had more comebacks that Sugar Ray Leonard.

“That’s right,” Sloane said about her up-and-down career earlier this week by phone from her home in Stoneham, Mass. “Just follow the bouncing ball.”

Currently, things are up again for Sloane. She has had two recordings on the Concord label in as many years and a gaggle of upcoming performances including the Concord Jazz Festival, a week’s stint at Fat Tuesday’s in New York City and Sculler’s in Boston (with fellow singer Andy Bey) as well as one-nighters in Lisbon and Sarasota.

She makes a rare Southern California appearance tonight in Newport Beach, at KLON-FM and the Hyatt Newporter’s Jazz Live at the Hyatt Series.

Born in Providence, R.I., Sloane began singing with a local dance band at age 14 and spent two years with Les and Larry Elgart’s Orchestra in the late ‘50s.

Her career took a big bounce in 1960 when Jon Hendricks, of the vocal trio Lambert, Hendricks and Ross, heard her perform in Philadelphia and asked her to substitute for Annie Ross.

During the two years she subbed for the often-absent Ross, the exposure with the trio opened a few doors.

“It was always my dream to sing at (New York’s) Village Vanguard,” she recalled, “and one day (Vanguard owner) Max Gordon heard me sing with Jon Hendricks and asked me if I’d like to open at the club for Oscar Peterson. Now that was a special thrill for me because Oscar was the first jazz musician I ever saw perform live back when I was 14 years old.

“Well, every musician in town came in to see the show. I’d go on and there’d be Miles (Davis) sitting in the corner. One night both Bill and Gil Evans were there. I kept hoping I wouldn’t go on stage and fall down.”

That same year, Sloane made what some have called a triumphant appearance at the Newport (R.I.) Jazz Festival, a performance that led to even bigger things. Sloane put out two albums for Columbia in the early ‘60s and began to travel the nightclub circuit.

Comedians including Richard Pryor, Godfrey Cambridge and Jackie Mason opened for her at the eclectic San Francisco club, the Hungry i. In turn, she opened for Lenny Bruce at the Vanguard in New York.

“Those were great days,” she recalled. “The club scene was such that one could work a regular circuit. You could start in New York and travel around the country.”

But, as the burgeoning pop and rock ‘n’ roll scene began to take over the clubs and the recording contracts in the late ‘60s, her situation changed.

“It was an awful time. Why would Columbia want to record some jazz singer when they had Barbra Streisand on the label? And as far as New York was concerned, I might as well of retired and dropped off the face of the earth.”

She moved to Raleigh, N.C., where she worked in a law office and made regular appearances at the city’s Frog and Nightgown club.

“I was a big fish in a little pond,” she said. “It was a great place, very fun and relaxing. And I was really singing well. But I couldn’t figure out to tell people that. I’m not one to go out and shout, ‘Hey, look at me. I’m really doing something here.’ ”

She moved back to New York in 1977, where she hung out with respected pianist Jimmy Rowles.

“I learned a lot from Jimmy,” she said. “He’s a great character and a great inspiration for any singer. He really knows how to play for vocalists. Everybody is fascinated by the way he plays because no one else plays like him. And he knows every tune ever written.”

But things were still slow in New York and she returned to North Carolina a few years later. Beginning in 1985, she began to make appearances again, and, in 1988, while appearing at San Francisco’s Milestones club, she signed with Contemporary Records at the recommendation of vocalist Helen Keane.

Sloane recorded two albums for the label, including “Love You Madly” (1988) with fluegelhornist Art Farmer and guitarist Kenny Burrell, and “The Real Thing” (1990) with saxophonist Phil Woods.

While appearing at Japan’s Fujitsu-Concord Jazz Festival in 1990, Carl Jefferson of Concord asked her to jump to his label.

“I felt like I was coming home to the place I should have been all along,” she said. Her two recordings for Concord--the first is entitled “Heart’s Desire”--find her at the top of her craft.

Sloane performs with a minimum of scat and embellishment. Her focus, she said, is the lyric.

“Singers have the responsibility to make you feel moved in some way when you hear us sing. You should feel pain, if there’s pain in the song, or happiness or joy or whatever there is. And the singer should let you hear that they know something of this experience were singing about and convey it with sincerity.”

She said listening to Carmen McRae convinced her how critical the lyric is. “Carmen is the champion at interpreting a lyric and nobody can touch her. That’s what singing is all about: the lyric and the melody, contrary to what Betty Carter tells us on her (latest) record,” which is entitled “It’s Not About the Melody.”

“Betty has such improvisational skills, with her its really not about the melody, Sloane said. “The rest of us have the responsibility of singing simply with careful attention to the melody while interpreting the lyric the best way we can.”

* Carol Sloane appears tonight at 7:30 at the Hyatt Newporter, 1107 Jamboree Road, Newport Beach. $15. (714) 722-9264.