A Blondie Enters the World of Jazz : Pop music: For Deborah Harry, collaborating with the Jazz Passengers means many things including a new way to count.

Deborah Harry, jazz singer?

Yes, the blonde of the rock group Blondie is trying her hand at jazz--and not the familiar standards style that pop singers usually stick to when crossing over, but the complex, arty style of the New York group, the Jazz Passengers.

And, yes, she knows it’s a stretch.

“I told them, ‘For 20 years I’ve been counting (the beat) to four and now you want me to count to six,” Harry, 49, joked, speaking by phone from her New York home.

“I would love to sing with them in the future, but we haven’t even done one show yet,” she said. “Who knows? They might fire me.”

At the time of the conversation, in fact, she’d had just one rehearsal with the group, preparing for the brief concert tour. How’d that go?

She laughed and repeated her first evaluation: “They might fire me.”

Not likely.

Roy Nathanson, the co-leader of the Jazz Passengers, said in a separate phone interview that Harry needn’t worry. She may not be experienced in the kind of music the group performs, but she’s catching on quickly.

“I think she’s going to be great,” Nathanson said, adding that what Harry lacks in jazz experience she makes up in dramatic instinct. “It’s hard stuff for her. . . . (But) I think the really great jazz singers from the ‘40s were really great actresses and it’s hard to find that among jazz singers now. . . . Debbie is bigger than life and that makes these songs work.”

The Jazz Passengers’ music is marked by complex group interplay, sometimes drawing on the circus and art-theater music experience of saxophonist Nathanson and his co-leader, trombonist Curtis Fowlkes. The group grew out of the pair’s late-’80s tenure with the arty jazz group the Lounge Lizards, fronted by saxophonist/film director John Lurie (“Stranger than Paradise,” “Down By Law,” “Mystery Train”).

“The style is new to her,” said Nathanson, 43. “Some of the things come easier, some will be rough.”

“I have a lot to learn,” Harry said. “There are different time signatures and a lot more for me to listen to and pay attention to and be distracted by. But I think I’m ready.”

The collaboration began earlier this year when Harry was asked by record producer Hal Willner--best known for his eclectic tribute collections to the likes of Thelonious Monk, Kurt Weill and the music of Disney--to be one of several guest singers on the band’s new “Love Songs” album. It’s the Passengers’ sixth release, but first with vocals. (Others guesting include gospel-soul singer Mavis Staples, jazz-pop crooner Jimmy Scott, pop-rocker Freedy Johnston and young singer-songwriter Jeff Buckley.)

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Harry, who knew of the band from their common travels in Manhattan’s downtown art scene, jumped at the new challenge. The chemistry on the one song they did together--a playfully angular Nathanson composition, “Dog in Sand”--worked so well that Harry agreed to sign up for a dozen concerts to help promote the album, including Wednesday at the Coash House in San Juan Capostrano and Friday at LunaPark in West Hollywood.

Harry will share the live vocal duties with lsome of the band members, and at Nathanson’s suggestion, they may do a jazz arrangement of “The Tide is High”, the reggae song that was one of Blondie’s four No. 1 pop singles.

The teaming is pretty much an even exchange, artistically and otherwise. The group gets a vacallist with character whose pop notoriety can help bring back the music to the attention of the people who might be otherwise unlikely to hear it.

Harry whose last album, 1993’s “Debravation” was not a big seller and is now without a record contract, gets a chance to expand her artistic chops.

“I’m experimenting with freedom and maybe I’ll come up with something fresh,” she say. “Or maybe something stale. Maybe stale will be hip.”

Though having had a sporadic music career since Blondie broke up in 1983, Harry’s remained active, recently doing short concert tours.

And she’s continued her pursuits as an actress, having recently shot “Heavy,” a low-budget drama that also features, among others, Shelly Winters and Evan Dando of the rock band Lemonheads. (Harry’s most visible role in recent years was playing Sonny Bono’s be-wigged wife in the John Waters satire “Hairspray.”)

In terms of name value, the balance is weighted in Harry’s favor, but Nathanson’s not concerned that Harry’s presence will overshadow the Band’s music.

“It’s a different kind of combination,” he said. “These are pretty corny times, so who knows how people will take it. I like it. It’s really honest.”