Notes on Perkins’ Fountain of Youth

Bill Perkins says jazz has been feeding his soul for four decades, and that the process shows no signs of diminishing.

“Jazz keeps me young,” says the 69-year-old tenor saxman from Sherman Oaks. “Even after all these years, it’s still the big, consuming interest of my life, the great joy.” Perkins will play tonight with Woodwinds West at the Hyatt Newporter in Newport Beach.

In the late ‘40s and the ‘50s, with Stan Kenton and Woody Herman’s big bands and with Howard Rumsey’s Lighthouse All-Stars, Perkins was a star of the West Coast jazz scene, renowned for lyrical, soft-toned playing that was deeply influenced by Lester Young and three of Young’s disciples, Stan Getz, Al Cohn and Zoot Sims.

That style was Perkins’ calling card until about 10 years ago, when he felt he had to try something new. “It astounds me how much I have changed,” Perkins said on the phone from a gig in Port Townsend, Wash.

“Through playing with Frank Strazzeri, with whom I have been associated for about 12 years, I suddenly started to break loose,” he said. Pianist Strazzeri will be onstage with Perkins tonight at the Hyatt. “I started to check out what the great modern masters like Joe Lovano, Joe Henderson, Wayne Shorter and John Coltrane were doing, the way they weren’t playing strict patterns, the way they were unpredictable.

“Before, I really wasn’t able to appreciate them. Now I’m able to incorporate the way they play with some of my own ideas.” Though he hopes that “Lester still has some influence,” he thinks his “playing has expanded; there’s greater variety to it. My approach is maybe harder. I know I am enjoying doing it more.”

Perkins said he used to live in fear of playing a wrong note, “but in the last 10 years, I have realized there are no wrong notes, and it’s a great freedom. The doors have opened. Sometimes I step all over myself but that doesn’t matter. You gotta try.”

He realizes that some fans from years ago might feel let down by his shift in style. But “jazz has to keep moving. I don’t take issue with those musicians who want to stay the same but me, I have to move, even if it’s sideways.”

Still, he doesn’t discount his past. Indeed, he believes that if it hadn’t been for people such as Kenton and Herman, he never would have survived as a jazz musician.

“Nobody could have been luckier than to play with those two guys,” he said. “Though they were very different, they were both forward-looking and never told you how to play. Stan especially gave me a feeling of worth, (that) being a jazz musician was something of great value.”