Stout of Heart : With This Jazz Trumpeter (and Irvine Resident), Straight-Ahead Is Made for Melodious Detours

Trumpeter Ron Stout will tell you that his heart is in straight-ahead jazz. And when he performs, you can count on hearing such standards and jazz classics as “Gone With the Wind,” “Summertime” and Sonny Rollins’ “Pent Up House” as well as originals.

Stout likes to put his mark on the evergreens by playing them “not the way everybody else has.”

“Instead of having bookend arrangements--you know, melody, solos, melody--I like to try something different. For example, we might start a tune with a solo,” said Stout, 35, a resident of Irvine who leads his quintet tonight, and Aug. 17 and 31 at Cafe Lido in Newport Beach.

“Or we might add an arranged instrumental section, an interlude in the middle of the selection to break it up,” he said in a recent phone interview.

“When we play Tadd Dameron’s ‘Ladybird,’ we insert the melody of ‘Half Nelson,’ ” he said, referring to the Miles Davis melody written on the same chord progression as Dameron’s be-bop opus.

“Another thing I like to do is play a ‘roundabout,’ where I play only one chorus and then it’s the next guy’s turn. This cycle might go on for the whole tune. I do it when the guys least expect it. It keeps them on their toes. Like, ‘Hey, it’s your turn.’ ”

Stout plays tonight at the Lido with saxophonist Jerry Pinter, pianist Frank Strauss, drummer Tom White and bassist Benjamin May. He said he and his partners revere straight-ahead playing--which he defined as music with a swing feel, built off a walking bass line and a steady beat on the ride cymbal--because it offers fertile musical soil.

“There’s so much you can do, it has an open-ended, infinite quality,” he said. “It’s like there’s so much space for me to infuse my own personality into someone else’s songs. It’s the genre where I feel completely comfortable and I have a chance to fly.”

Fly?

“All of the practicing I do every day to keep in shape as a musician, all the disciplines in my life that are about being a better musician are all consummated when I’m playing straight-ahead jazz,” he said.

“In other words, all the planning and training is like running around with weights on my ankles. Then, on the bandstand, I take off the weights and feel that I’m flying. It’s freedom, but the freedom only comes from the disciplines.”

Stout is a dynamic improviser who utilizes his sterling technique to craft compelling, swinging solos replete with phrases you could call just plain pretty. He said his tendency toward overt melodiousness derives from his desire to be a singer.

“My trumpet is my voice,” he said. “That’s one reason standards are appealing, because there’s a lyric, which helps me play more lyrically. It gives me an insight into the tune, for I hear the lyrics as I’m playing most of the time.

“I try to only play ballads and medium-tempo standards where I know the lyric, because I feel if you don’t know the lyric, you don’t really know the tune,” he said.

Classics such as “Pent Up House” or “Airegin” call for a different interpretation, he said.

“There, you really think back to what has come before you as a starting point. Like ‘Airegin,’ there are several great versions that have been done over the years, and if you keep yourself aware of those, that allows you to maybe tip your cap to the people who made those records while not repeating what they’ve done, solo-wise.”

Stout likes to keep his solos reasonably short, though on occasion he will stretch out.

“As soon as we become self-indulgent and extend our solos beyond our intellectual and even emotional capabilities, then you take the listener right out of the ballgame,” he said. “I believe in the concept of a show. I have problems with some fellow musicians who don’t like the word entertainers, but that’s what we are.”

Stout, born in La Puente, grew up in Tustin, went to Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa and Golden West College in Huntington Beach, and toured with Woody Herman’s band from 1984 to 1990.

He is featured with Bill Holman’s big band, and with large ensembles led by Jack Sheldon and occasionally Tom Kubis, Bob Florence and Roger Neumann. He also appears with Stephanie Haynes and Jack Prather in Bopsicle.

On record, he can be heard on Horace Silver’s recent “It’s Got to Be Funky” and saxophonist Karl Denson’s “Blackened Red Snapper” (Minor Music Records).

These days, Stout plays only jazz--he stopped playing non-jazz casuals two years ago. He said he earns a “meager” living but is doing what he wants.

“It’s been an interesting life so far,” he said. “A lot of fun and a lot of ups and downs.”

*Ron Stout’s quintet appears tonight at 8:30 at Cafe Lido, 501 30th St., Newport Beach. No cover. Also Aug. 17 and 31. (714) 675-2968.