Sliding Into Verse

Bill Watrous is a virtuoso trombonist whose tone, technique and passion for the music have placed him among the true trombone greats. Still, during the past 10 years, he’s been honing another skill . . . as a singer.

Watrous, 59, isn’t putting away his horn. But he is preparing to cut an album he’ll shop around, one on which he plays the slide and sings. He promises to take his singing public with a few tunes when he leads a quartet tonight at Steamers Cafe in Fullerton.

“I’ve been researching Chet Baker material,” Watrous explained by phone from his home in Shadow Hills, north of Burbank. “I want to do an album like his albums--sing and play and the whole nine yards.

“I’m not Sinatra by any means, but I do fall into the same slot that Baker created,” he said. “I’ve found my voice falls into the same range as Baker’s, and we have a similar sound. And Baker was religious about singing a tune correctly, the way the composer wrote it.

“I’m not a stylist. Like Baker, I don’t need to take all these hippy-dippy movements with my voice to make the song about myself. I’m with the composer all the way.”

That’s an attitude he picked up early from his father, Ralph Watrous, also a trombonist.

“My father always impressed on me that an attractive way to play the instrument was to use it like a singer uses his voice. ‘You have no right playing a tune you don’t know the lyrics to,’ he would say. The lyric gives you the clue how to play the song. Invoking thoughts of the lyric brings out the emotional aspects, something that I’ve seen borne out over the years.”

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In the early ‘60s, while in the Navy and stationed off Japan, Watrous sung briefly in Japanese clubs, fronting a band of American servicemen.

After returning to the States and launching his professional career, Watrous says pride got the better of him. “I wouldn’t do a thing like [singing]. I was a bebop trombone player. In retrospect, it was the wrong attitude.”

In fellow-trombonist Kai Winding’s multi-trombone group, Watrous quickly established his reputation as an instrumentalist. He moved on to the mid-’60s bands of Maynard Ferguson, Quincy Jones and Woody Herman. Watrous became a fixture in television studio orchestras, playing for everyone from Merv Griffin to Ed Sullivan and Arthur Godfrey.

The veteran isn’t shy about naming the greats he’s played with. “I’ve been so lucky: Clark Terry, Dizzy [Gillespie], [Duke] Ellington, Count Basie, Thad Jones, Al Grey, Kai, Carl Fontana, I can’t remember them all.”

A first-call session man in the ‘60s and early ‘70s who does little studio work today, Watrous is an outspoken critic of the commercial aspects of the music business and what he sees as a general deterioration in arts culture.

“You talk to any jazz musician, and I mean ‘musician’ in the highest sense of the word, and this is not a happy time,” he said. “The record companies and the press have turned a cold shoulder [to jazz] and only the people pulling the gravy train are getting the attention.”

He cites such performers as David Sanborn, Kenny G and Wynton Marsalis for stealing the spotlight. “They’re presenting something that’s fraudulent, but that’s what’s happening in jazz. If Charlie Parker were alive today he’d be getting a horselaugh.”

On the other hand, Watrous has great respect for musicians who struggled yet remained true to their craft. Watrous studied with one such musician, cult-legend pianist Herbie Nichols, who died in 1963 at age 43.

“In my last year of [naval] service, I used to hang out in Herbie’s loft with [trombonist] Roswell Rudd just to hear what [Nichols] had to say. If you look at Herbie’s playing chronologically, he falls in between Ellington and Monk. He had these little turns and clusters he would play, and although I’m not sure that Herbie was more esoteric than Monk, he certainly had more technique.”

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Watrous retains his own formidable technique by practicing one or two hours a day. “I love to go up Los Angeles Crest Highway and take my horn, walk into the woods and play in some canyon. I like to be by myself when I practice.”

And he’s looking forward to further development as a vocalist. “Singing is a rush. I should have been doing it all these years.”

* The Bill Watrous Quartet, with pianist Shelly Berg, bassist John Leitham and drummer Randy Drake, plays tonight at Steamers Cafe, 138 W. Commonwealth Ave., Fullerton. 8:30 p.m. No cover. (714) 871-8800.