He Hasn’t Missed a Beat : * Don Randi has been playing the piano at his own club, uncovering talent and keeping up with the music for 24 years.

Pianist Don Randi has the honor of holding down what has to be the longest-running jazz job in Southern California: 24 years of performances at least once a week at the Baked Potato. And he doesn’t have to worry about losing his gig--he owns the joint.

The cozy, if not comfy, Baked Potato, a box of a nightclub on Cahuenga Boulevard just west of Lankershim, was first a refuge, then became a bastion, for contemporary jazz. That’s what it’s called when mainstream jazz is peppered with influences primarily from rock but also from blues, R & B and other styles of music.

Randi, a native of New York, was perhaps the first jazzman to play the contemporary mode, when, in 1966, he and his cohorts put out “Rubber Soul Jazz,” covering the Beatles’ smash 1965 album “Rubber Soul.”

“We just approached the album like jazz players, except that we used the rock rhythms and played jazz lines on top of them,” Randi remembers.

The contemporary style suited him, since he’d started out as a blues-based pianist, working Sunset Strip-area clubs such as the Losers, the Winners, the Capri and the Encore in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s. And he still employs it today.

“I’ve always tried to move with what’s current,” says Randi, a resident of Agoura, who leads his quintet, Quest, most Thursdays through Saturdays at the original Baked Potato. (There’s a second Baked Potato now in Pasadena, co-owned by Randi and Bob and Gino Vella.) “Latin, rock, funk-type, I’ve always played those tunes.”

In the ‘50s and ‘60s, Randi made a substantial living as a studio pianist, often working with renowned producer Phil Spector. He’s featured on hundreds of pop tunes, among them the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations,” The Crystals’ “He’s a Rebel,” the Righteous Brothers’ “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’,” Ike and Tina Turner’s “River Deep--Mountain High” and the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby.” His performances, as well as an interview and photo, are included in Spector’s “Back to Mono,” a 4-CD set on ABCO Records.

These days, Randi doesn’t do much studio work, which is fine by him. “I’ve accepted it, and besides, I get a lot of reuse checks from sessions I did years ago,” when a song is used on a current film or TV show.

Even in his halcyon period, Randi looked forward to getting out of the studio and into a club. “I love playing so much,” he says. “Performing for an audience has always been more important to me. I particularly like playing for young kids. They’re very inquisitive.”

His upbeat attitude toward youth goes farther. He supports young artists by hiring them at his establishments. “I don’t have a big ego, and I love to be part of somebody new,” he says. “In the ‘70s, there were Tom Scott, Larry Carlton, Lee Ritenour, Seawind. They all started at the Baked Potato. Now we have Cecilia Noel and the Wild Clams,” a 14-piece band that appears Mondays at the club and recently signed with Epic. “And there’s Robbie Longley. He’s a guitarist with a New Orleans feel. I love to watch him play.”

The open-eared policy demonstrated by Randi and his late partner, Sheldon Slusman, who managed the Baked Potato for two decades before succumbing to cancer, has influenced other clubs.

If there’s one thing Randi stands for, it’s having music reach people, no matter what style it is. “When everybody hated someone like Ornette Coleman,” the adventurous saxophonist who arrived on the jazz scene in the late ‘50s, “I said, ‘Why not? It’s music, and this guy is going where no one else is going,’ ” Randi says. “A lot of people have put down Kenny G. Though I don’t like all of his stuff, he’s sold to an audience that a lot of jazz has never reached. He broke through, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s wonderful.”

WHERE AND WHEN

Who: Don Randi and Quest.

Location: The Baked Potato, 3787 Cahuenga Blvd., North Hollywood.

Hours: 9 p.m. most Thursdays through Saturdays.

Price: $10 cover, two-drink minimum.

Call: (818) 980-1615.