Pop Perspective

Sometime in the past two dozen years, singer-songwriter Michael Franks slipped from the fringes to the middle of the pop-culture index.

His success began as a fluke, when the aspiring songwriter scored a surprise hit, “Popsicle Toes,” the innuendo-laden quirk of a tune reminiscent of the songs of Mose Allison. That song launched a slow, solid career that has found Franks reworking his signature blend of pop, jazz, R&B; and Brazilian touches on a dozen albums.

For perspective on the Franks saga, check out his first official album in four years, and his first retrospective album, “A Backward Glance.” His tour promoting the album brings him to the Ventura Theatre on Wednesday.

The compilation opens, logically enough, with “Popsicle Toes,” but includes one of his finest songs, “The Lady Wants to Know,” and Antonio Jobim-oriented tunes such as “Antonio’s Song” and “Hourglass.”

Overall, the album gives a sense of Franks’ smooth, but not glib musical palette, his handy wordplay and his love of a fetching tune--signs of a good songsmith at work.

“This album is an attempt to let people know I’m still here,” he said in a phone interview from upstate New York. “I have enjoyed spending more time between projects and feeling like it’s great to be able to live. Much of what I do, if it isn’t literally autobiographical, is at least germinated by my life experience. So it’s great to just slow down and be able to take more time with that.”

From a career standpoint, Franks enjoys those rarest of qualities in the music industry: shelf life and fidelity to a single label. He was signed to Warner Brothers 23 years ago, at a time when the label was known for nurturing such oddballs as Randy Newman, Ry Cooder, Bonnie Raitt and Van Dyke Parks, with more clout in critical and musical circles than commercial power.

It helped that he emerged during the decade when FM radio was much more eclectic, and programming niches hadn’t narrowed the focus of what listeners were likely to hear. The radio scene has evolved away from jazz.

According to Franks, “Some of the commercially generated zeal, which has driven radio into such a confined, insane quest for format, and the demographics of who listens to what format and what products are sold, has had an unfortunate effect on what we all get to hear.”

Part of the winning charm of Franks’ music has always had to do with the company he’s kept. Keyboardist Joe Sample and guitarist Larry Carlton gave his Warner Bros. debut, “Art of Tea,” its jazz-tinged suavity. On the advice of his producer, Franks called on the best studio players around.

With those musicians, Franks said: “The chemistry was just so right. It still worked a year later when we recorded stuff for ‘Sleeping Gypsy,’ although some of that was recorded in Brazil with Brazilian players. I don’t know what it was. I think they appreciated the material, and it was very different from most of the music they played as studio players. They made important contributions to it, just on the fly.”

Throughout his career, Franks has maintained at least a tangential link to jazz, one of his abiding loves as a listener. He has been known, for instance, to perform his version of Thelonious Monk’s classic ballad “Ruby, My Dear,” with lyrics penned in the ‘70s.

“Around the time I was writing material for “Sleeping Gypsy,” [drummer] John Guerin was living with Joni Mitchell and I was spending some time with them,” he said. “We were up at Joni’s house and listening to ‘Ruby, My Dear.’ I had heard that song many times before, but not this way--maybe it was a solo Monk recording. I went away thinking, ‘Wow, what a great song.’ I wrote lyrics for it right away.

“The next time I saw those two, I brought my guitar and played it for them. John Guerin had played with Monk and he said: ‘This is great. I’m going to call Nellie [Monk’s wife] and tell her.’ At that time, Monk was not working and he was reclusive. Nothing much happened.

“But I always played this tune just for fun. Then, Carmen McRae came out with a record of Monk’s tunes with lyrics, including that one. So I felt like I should have tried to do something with it earlier. It’s just one of those things.”

Franks has always put together fine groups of musicians in the studio and on tour--his road band features keyboardist Charles Blenzig, saxophonist Chris Hunter and percussionist Manolo Badrena. But he never entertained the dream of being a bandleader.

“I never wanted to be a leader. Just going on the road and working that way, that’s plenty. I love it and I have no complaints, but it’s a big distraction--for me, at least. I really need to barricade myself in to be creative and get on the right side of my brain or whatever.”

For the past 20 years, he has barricaded himself on his property in Woodstock, N.Y., when it’s time to write, conceptualize and plot next moves. Songwriting is still Franks’ primary creative effort, but he’s been working in the longer form of a novel of late.

“It has an effect on songwriting,” he said. “A song is such a small amount of space to occupy and everything has to be distilled down to its essence. Writing fiction, it’s just the opposite. You need a much bigger lens. You have to observe things in more detail and you have the space to do it.”

BE THERE

Michael Franks, 8:30 p.m. Wednesday at Ventura Theater, 26 S. Chestnut St. 653-0118.