A Personal Take on Jazz

Stephanie Haynes is some singer. Her luxuriant alto is capable of rich tones, she subtly transmits the deepest meaning of a lyric, and she can fool with both rhythm and melody, giving an old song a new look. No wonder her many fans think of her as one of the finest vocalists--not just in Southern California--but anywhere.

Haynes has had a wide range of experience, singing everything from R&B; and Brazilian to what might be called light opera. Still, her heart is in jazz and she says unabashedly that she’s a jazz singer.

Her reasoning is simple: “I can’t leave well enough alone. I want to take a song and personalize it, improvise with it.”

A lot of jazz singers enjoy scatting, where syllables are sung rhythmically, imitating an instrument. That style doesn’t speak to Haynes.

“My way of doing improvisation is to change melodies to make it interesting while still using the lyric and the underlying chord changes,” said Haynes, a Glendale native who has lived in, among other places, North Hollywood, Del Mar and San Juan Capistrano as well as Dayton, Wyo., Rochester, Minn., and Albuquerque, N.M.

Listen to “Two on a Swing,” Haynes’ most recent solo album, and you’ll hear her alluring approach applied to such timeless pieces as Cole Porter’s “Easy to Love,” Johnny Mandel and Alan and Marilyn Bergman’s “Where Do We Start?” and Antonio Carlos Jobim’s and Ray Gilbert’s “Useless Landscape.” On the recording, she’s accompanied by the probing, empathetic pianist, Dave Mackay.

The singer and the pianist, who appear tonight and Jan. 23 at Ca’ Del Sole in North Hollywood, share a mutual admiration pact.

“Dave’s an unsung hero in the jazz piano department. He understands me and supports me, not as an accompanist but as a partner,” said Haynes during a recent interview. She wore a black slacks-sweater-shoes ensemble that accentuated her deep blond hair. Her eyes, “one sort of green, the other sort of brown,” shone behind oval, metal-rimmed glasses.

Mackay, in a separate interview, had this to say about Haynes: “She’s truly got her own thing going, her own style. She’s very dedicated and every song she knows is a great song.”

Haynes was originally a classically trained flutist, who began singing serendipitously. In 1970, seven months after she gave birth to her son, Garth, Haynes was on a brief singing tour with an R&B; band when she had an epiphany.

“I was on stage in Regina, Saskatchewan, and I thought, ‘This is what I was put on Earth to do,’ ” Haynes said.

In the late ‘70s, she moved to Orange County from Albuquerque after her marriage broke up, and began to work with pianist Kent Glenn. She fell in love with jazz.

“It was a turning point,” said Haynes. “Kent saw something in me that was valuable, and made me feel I might go somewhere. I became totally committed. I’d walk around and hear jazz chord changes in my head and I couldn’t wait to get to the job and try out what I was hearing.”

Nowadays, she is remarried--to Latin percussionist Stephen Gutierrez--and has found herself slowing down artistically, going through what she calls an incubation process.

She wants to make a new album, moving away from strictly jazz and emphasizing her R&B; and Latin proclivities. She plans to take tunes done by the likes of Gladys Knight and Luis Miguel and give them a jazz flavor.

“I want to plow another field for a while and see if I can pull it off,” she said. “I think I can.”

* Stephanie Haynes appears from 7-11 tonight and Jan. 23 at Ca’ Del Sole, 4100 N. Cahuenga Blvd., North Hollywood. No cover, no minimum. Call: (818) 985-4669.

Affinity for Strings: Not that bassist Pat Senatore has anything against piano players, but in a trio situation he often finds that a guitar fits in better than a keyboard. “A guitar is not such a dominating force,” he said.

Senatore, who for many years ran the popular Pasquale’s jazz club in Malibu, leads his trio at 6:30 p.m. Sunday at First Lutheran Church in Glendale (1300 E. Colorado St.; free, donations accepted; [818] 240-9000). One cohort will be guitarist Larry Koonse, the other, trumpeter Carl Saunders.

That particular combination reminds the bassist of one of his favorite groups--the quartet led in the ‘60s by guitarist Jim Hall and trumpeter Art Farmer.

“I’ve always loved that sound,” said Senatore, a Studio City resident. “With guitar and trumpet, everybody is a contributing factor and there’s a lot of freedom. It opens up into other areas.”