JAZZ REVIEW : Gene Harris: He Aims to Entertain--and He Succeeds : The pianist’s quartet delivers engagingly melodic songs in an evening at Orange Coast College that’s intended strictly for pleasure.

“You’re gonna leave with a smile on your face and you’ll tell everyone, ‘Gene Harris put it there!’ ”

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That was the promise pianist Harris made Saturday to the crowd of about 700 at Orange Coast College’s Robert B. Moore Theatre, where the former Los Alamitos resident made his first Orange County appearance as a bandleader in about 20 years.

Harris, who now lives in Boise, Idaho, pretty much made good on his offer. For years, as leader of the Three Sounds, as a member of bassist Ray Brown’s trio and as the head of his own quartet, the pianist has boasted one of the most ingratiating approaches in modern instrumental music.

Saturday night was no exception: He made it very hard not to like what he played.

Harris’ attractive style reveals numerous influences. There’s the rolling boogie-woogie surge of his early idols Albert Ammons and Pete Johnson; the deft, delicate touch of Erroll Garner; an elegance that one might find in the work of Duke Ellington; and a down-home bluesiness that recalls Ray Charles.

Distinctively packaging these elements, the pianist built his presentation around numbers that ranged from Stevie Wonder’s “Another Star” to George Gershwin’s “Summertime.”

These songs were engagingly melodic, were outfitted with an invigorating, foot-tapping rhythmic clout and were delivered with precision. They also had a disarming similarity to one another.

The selections invariably sported solos by Harris that were crafted to be both listenable, and magnetic. This latter quality was achieved mainly through his liberal doses of flashy, bluesy phrases, such as rapidly, and extensively, repeating a funky, four-note idea until it gleamed.

In other words, Harris provided jazz as entertainment, music that was intended strictly for pleasure. Providing jazz as an art form, that reaches beyond entertainment to achieve a deep level of contemplation, and perhaps even self-revelation, is not Harris’ raison d’etre.

“Summertime” was typical of the tunes played by Harris, who fronted the same quartet on Saturday that he led in the late ‘70s at the now-defunct Hungry Joe’s in Huntington Beach. His colleagues were Ron Eschete (guitar), Luther Hughes (bass) and Paul Humphrey (drums).

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The Gershwin classic, from the 1935 musical, “Porgy and Bess,” was played slowly and was overflowing with bluesy suggestions--two-, three- and four-note ideas issued over and over at such a pace that they glistened. Fortunately, he interspersed his indigo statements with lines filled with pretty notes, and each time when he built to a crescendo, he quickly dropped the rendition’s volume to a bare murmur, then he and his men would dig in again.

Another slow tune, Leon Russell’s “This Masquerade,” began the concert; Harris also played faster numbers--”Will You Still Be Mine?” and “No Greater Love”--in which he was able to string some longer phrases together and avoid his dependence on blues ideas for effect.

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Not enough can be said about Eschete, Hughes and Humphrey, who throughout the nearly three-hour set supplied the kind of on-your-toes support of which leaders dream.

Eschete’s solos were sometimes similar to Harris’, as he played his share of brief, catchy ideas, his tone bright and clear on high tones, elastic and fat on the lower ones. But the guitarist also played long, loping lines comprising notes that careened here and there.

Humphrey, like a watchdog, followed the pianist’s every move, and delivered exactly the accompaniment required. Hughes’ walking lines were springy and muscular, while his solos, as always, revealed a sound gift for inventing ear-pleasing melodies.