JAZZ : Bluesy Piano and Curveball Wit Make for a Keyboard Wizard : Mose Allison’s claims to fame are hepcat wordplay, a kinetic approach to phrasing and a loopy beatnik sense of cool.

Because jazz is a living art form, not subject to the age-driven considerations of pop music, the shelf life of a jazz career is a relative issue.

Still, it’s hard to believe that jazz song man Mose Allison has been twisting phrases and pushing around blues-bop piano licks for some 40 years. When Allison returns to Wheeler Hot Springs this Sunday for a concert, it will be in the shoes of a raconteur who qualifies as a living legend.

Allison was born in Tippo, Miss., in 1927, and found a place as a pianist in the New York jazz scene of the ‘50s, playing behind such jazz greats as Al Cohn, Zoot Sims and Stan Getz.

But Allison retains strong links to his Southern heritage--for example, a wry and unpretentious literacy, and the proud presence of a drawl. His piano playing, too, melds urbanity with a rough-hewn, down-home bluesiness. In a typical Allison solo, modern chordal voicings are interspersed with quirky Thelonious Monk-ish chromatic runs.

Of course, what has made Allison an American hero, accessible to listeners beyond the realm of jazz, is not his piano style. His claims to fame are hepcat wordplay, a kinetic approach to phrasing, a loopy beatnik sense of cool, and songs like “Your Mind Is on Vacation”--the punch line of which is “but your mouth is working overtime.”

According to the liner notes on his recently reissued album, “I Don’t Worry About a Thing,” the signature tune was written not for a verbose lover but in honor of chattering club patrons.

While Allison’s curveball wit is legendary, his songs can also convey unexpected emotional or philosophical depth. There is, for instance, a poignancy in the lining of the lovely tune “Was,” from Allison’s last album in 1990, “My Back Yard.”

Over a loose waltz, he sings “When I become was and we became were, will there be any sign or a trace of the lovely contours of your face? And will there be someone around with essentially my kind of sound? When am becomes was and now is back when, will someone have moments like this, moments of unspoken bliss, and will there be heroes and saints, or just a dark new age of complaints?”

Like many jazz veterans in the age of CD reissues, Allison is watching his past parade before him. Rhino records is in the process of reissuing his Atlantic albums.

Early next year, Allison will also release his latest album, “The Earth Wants You,” on Blue Note. For the occasion, he hired an expanded all-star line-up, including horn players Randy Brecker, Joe Lovano and Bob Mallick, drummer Paul Motian and guitarist John Scofield.

In a phone interview, Allison talked about the continuing saga of his life as a jazz song man.

You’ve been touring since the ‘50s. That’s been your life, hasn’t it?

Pretty much, yeah. Starting out in the ‘50s, when I first started playing in clubs, I used to go from town to town, try to get a job there and stay as long as I could. My wife went with me. If I knew we were going to be there for awhile, she’d go and get some kind of day job, go get a furnished apartment and stay as long as it held up.

Then when I got to New York, after the first year or so of getting known around, there were jazz clubs everywhere and a lot of work.

When rock ‘n’ roll started taking over, jazz clubs started closing, and racial riots closed a lot of the clubs in ghettos. The whole thing changed. Then I had to start doing more one-nighters in order to survive. During some of those years, I was working 225 nights a year, a lot of them one-nighters.

Now, I’m working about 125 nights a year, which is comfortable for me. That’s enough.

Does the Rhino reissue deal and the flow of archival stuff make you at all nostalgic?

I’ve been avoiding nostalgia now for about 30 years.

They’re probably going to reissue a lot of tunes that I haven’t done for 25 years, and won’t be doing. I still get requests for “Parchman Farm” and “Eyesight of the Blind” and “One Room Country Shack,” and I haven’t been doing any of those in 20 years or so.

I’ve been doing the stuff that I thought was relevant. The songs I do now are more universal.

For a songwriter, is there a danger in wallowing in nostalgia?

Nostalgia is a waste of time. It’s a form of sentimentality. I don’t bother with that. I don’t feel romantic about the old days, so I’ve never had that problem.

There’s a great market for nostalgia, man. All the money songs are nostalgic. What could be more nostalgic than “I’m Gonna Love You Forever?” That song’s been making a fortune for a hundred years, in different forms. It was the biggest hit of last year.

When did you know you were a songwriter?

I started writing songs in grade school. I wrote a song in grade school called “The 14-day Palmolive Plan.” I used to play that thing around at parties. It was the sensation around Tallahassee County there. It was done in a sort of Louis Jordan style. He was one of my heroes. I heard him on the local jukeboxes.

It’s true that most of your songs aren’t specific in terms of time and place or specific characters. They’re open to interpretation, aren’t they?

That’s the idea. That’s how I work. With a lot of them, they can be appreciated on different levels.

Thinking of musicians like yourself and Bob Dorough and Dave Frishberg, you all use jazz as a vehicle for playing with language and melody.

Oh yeah, that’s part of it. We’ve all known each other for a long time.

We get lumped together a lot because of our similar backgrounds. We all play jazz piano and try to work it in with the lyrics and so forth. We have that much in common. But when you start looking at the songs we do and the material, it’s completely different.

One common bond is that you all insert ideas from other elements of American music, don’t you?

I’ve been doing that all along. I do some country stuff. I did a couple of new things on the new album that might be a surprise.

Anything you want to elaborate on?

No. (Laugh) I’d like to keep it a surprise.

Details

* WHO: Mose Allison.

* WHEN: Dinner and concert start at 6 p.m. on Sunday.

* WHERE: Wheeler Hot Springs, 16825 Maricopa Highway in Ojai.

* COST: Dinner/concert package runs $45, and concert tickets only run $20.

* FYI: For tickets or more information, call 646-8131.