MUSIC : Building on Ellington Legacy : Bill Berry played with Duke in the early ‘60s and has been passionate about the maestro’s music ever since. His L.A. Band blends swing with be-bop.

It must have been quite a picture: little Bill Berry, age 3, wearing his white tuxedo, standing on a bandstand somewhere in the Midwest, conducting his parents’ ensemble.

Perhaps it was early experiences like that that have made Berry, now 65, a natural band leader. After playing with Woody Herman, Maynard Ferguson and Duke Ellington, he organized his first major big band, the New York Band, in 1970.

A year later, he moved from Manhattan to Los Angeles and started the L.A. Band, which he leads (and plays cornet in) Tuesday at the Moonlight Tango Cafe. The show also includes jazz singer Stephanie Haynes.

A desire for creative freedom inspired Berry to start the New York Band.

“If you want to play the material you want at the tempos you like with the guys you want to play with, you have to hire them,” Berry says. “When you’re working for somebody else, then you play what they want. That’s fine, too, but that’s why I’m a leader.”

Ask Berry what music fires him up, and he says Ellington.

The musician, a native of Benton Harbor, Mich., who lives with his wife, Betty, in North Hollywood, played trumpet with the maestro from 1961 to 1963. And his L.A. Band plays many works from the Ellington oeuvre.

But Berry does them his way, not Duke’s.

“To imitate Duke would be totally impossible, seeing that to do that you would literally have to have his men, like (baritone saxophonist) Harry Carney and (alto saxophonist) Johnny Hodges,” he says. “It was their unique sounds that made the band sound like it did. That, and the writing.”

Now, we all know that Ellington wrote music: After all, tunes such as “Sophisticated Ladies,” “Mood Indigo,” “Satin Doll” and “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore” have been published for decades.

But when Berry worked with the band, written arrangements weren’t generally part of the job.

“The first night, I didn’t play anything until Duke pointed to me and told me to play some blues, because there wasn’t any music,” Berry says.

After a while, Berry started figuring out what to play, and he got some help from the renowned lead player Cat Anderson, who later played with him on the L.A. Band.

Berry left Ellington because he wasn’t making enough money--”We were only paid when we worked”--but he feels as if he were still with the band, “because I still play his music,” he says.

At the Moonlight Tango, you might hear familiar works and such seldom-heard Ellington numbers as “Misfit Blues” or the gorgeous “Isfahan,” written by Ellington’s long-time collaborator Billy Strayhorn.

As Ellington did, Berry hand-picks his ensemble, using the players “who are among my favorites in Los Angeles,” he says.

Among those on hand for the Tuesday engagement will be saxophonists Don Menza, Herman Riley and Jack Nimitz, trumpeters Conte Candoli, Steve Huffsteter and Frank Szabo, trombonists Garnett Brown and Thurman Green, pianist Ross Tompkins, bassist Dave Carpenter and drummer Frank Capp.

The leader will play a few solos in an energized style that blends swing with be-bop.

“I love how he plays,” says bassist Jack Prather, who worked with Berry when the band leader lived in Cincinnati in the ‘50s.

Though Berry is working out of town about six months a year these days, he says he doesn’t have trouble gathering his regulars together because they know “that the band is about swinging and having a good time.”

Berry figures he got a lot of this philosophy from working with Ellington.

“There was an attitude, a feeling with that band that I can’t describe with words,” he says. “We played music the way I thought it should be played. And the experience, of being with the band, made me a better human being.”

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WHERE AND WHEN

What: Bill Berry’s L.A. Band, plus singer Stephanie Haynes.

Location: Moonlight Tango Cafe, 13730 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks.

Hours: 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. Tuesday.

Price: $13 cover, two-drink minimum.

Call: (818) 788-2000.