50 Years Fly By for Sadao Watanabe

Sadao Watanabe had his first jazz experience in 1945, when he saw Bing Crosby playing the role of a jazz clarinetist in the film “Birth of the Blues.” Only 12 years old at the time, Watanabe saw the picture in a canteen at a base of the occupying U.S. Army in his hometown near Tokyo.

It didn’t take long for Watanabe to realize that Crosby hadn’t really been playing the instrument, and that there was, in any case, a far better-known jazz clarinetist named Benny Goodman. Persuading his father to buy him a clarinet, Watanabe assiduously began to copy Goodman--from radio broadcasts, because the family had no recordings.

Another musical epiphany took place shortly thereafter, when Watanabe first heard Charlie Parker, and again persuaded his compliant father to buy him another instrument--an alto saxophone.

“I don’t think that anybody in my hometown--Utsunomiya, north of Tokyo--knew what a saxophone was. But that was it. Jazz became my life.”

Saturday night at the Japan America Theatre in L.A., Watanabe celebrates that life in jazz with a 50th-anniversary concert, his only U.S. appearance on a tour that already has stopped in eight Japanese cities. His band is an all-star assemblage of players from Southern California: Alan Pasqua, piano; Robben Ford, guitar; Abraham Laboriel, bass; Dave Carpenter, bass; Steve Thornton, percussion; and Peter Erskine, drums.

“They’re a wonderful group of players,” Watanabe says, “and they understand the focus of what I want. It’s gotten better every night as, little by little, new things begin to happen, and we’re having a great time.”

Deciding what to play--on the tour, and on an upcoming 50th-anniversary album, “My Dear Life”--has been the only real problem for Watanabe. His career has ranged through so many different stylistic episodes, including the release of a number of tunes that hit the top of the Japanese pop charts, that he could easily have put together dozens of different programs.

“I basically started as a bebopper,” he says. “That’s where my roots are. But in 1965 I was in the States and Gary McFarland opened my eyes to Brazilian music. At that time, I was on tour. I felt pretty lonely on the road, staying in hotels alone, and [Antonio Carlos] Jobim’s melodies very much calmed down the lonely feelings I was having.”

Watanabe’s love of Brazilian music never lessened, but he supplemented it with fusion and crossover in the ‘70s, and in recent years has been drawn to African rhythms.

“It was important to me to realize that there was more to music, more to jazz, than bebop,” he says. “And when I heard Brazilian music and African music and different approaches to jazz, I realized that what really matters is feeling. The best music is the music that comes from life. I don’t think anybody is impressed, even with very good playing, if there’s no real feeling, no life, to it.”

Watanabe’s concert Saturday night will make a large nod to his bebop roots in the first half via originals from his early career. The second half will reach across more recent musical ventures, including--at the request, he says, of the concert staff--a few of his more popular items from Japan.

How does Watanabe feel, now that he is wrapping up a tour celebrating 50 years as a professional artist?

“It seems,” he says, “as though I just graduated high school, went to Tokyo to play, and suddenly 50 years went by. It’s nice for me to have the chance to look at my life. But what I really feel is happiness, now that my new life has started.”

Sadao Watanabe at the Japan America Theatre, Saturday at 8 p.m. Tickets: $35 and $32. (213) 680-3700.

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One Last Christmas CD: This one almost got lost in the rush of holiday releases, and it’s far too good for that to happen. But the title, “Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker,” and the ensemble--the Classical Jazz Quartet--don’t necessarily grab one’s attention. The perspective shifts instantly when a closer look reveals that the Classical Jazz Quartet consists of Kenny Barron, Ron Carter, Stefon Harris and Lewis Nash. That’s an all-star lineup by any definition--one that reaches comfortably and creatively across several jazz generations.

There have been numerous other jazz variations on “The Nutcracker,” of course, with the Ellington-Strayhorn transformation at the top of the list. When producer Bob Belden wrote the arrangements for the Classical Jazz Quartet, however, he wisely chose the similarly instrumented Modern Jazz Quartet as a model. Using many of the familiar “Nutcracker” themes as starting points, and structuring the pieces over a variety of rhythmic foundations, he turned his gifted players loose. And the result, interestingly, sounds a lot like the MJQ might sound if it were to be a newly revived ensemble.

It’s a lovely recording, filled with gorgeous soloing, and worthy of one’s attention long past the holiday season. The album is on the Vertical Jazz label, and may be a bit hard to track down, but I found it on the Web site www.cdnow.com.

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Passings: Last week, trumpeter Conte Candoli’s name was added to a devastatingly long list of nearly 70 jazz artists who died in 2001. It’s not a West Coast exaggeration to suggest that, had he spent his career in the media center of New York City, Candoli’s playing surely would have received far more of the recognition that it so richly deserved.

From the beginning, he demonstrated the capacity to deliver in a creative fashion, regardless of the setting. Whether it was in a big, roaring jazz ensemble such as the Woody Herman band, a smaller group--of almost any size--or if he simply had a 16-bar solo in a studio orchestra, the Count (as he was affectionately called) always made the most of every note he played.

Last March, I heard Conte working with his older, trumpet-playing brother, Pete, at Charlie O’s in Valley Glen. What was most engaging about the gig--aside from the first-rate jazz playing--was the sheer sense of joy in making music that was ever-present. And the truth is that if you go back and survey his recordings over the past 55 years, you’ll find the same feeling of elation, the utter bliss of making music, in everything that Conte Candoli ever played.

There will be a service for Candoli today at 2 p.m. in the Prayer Chapel at the Church on the Way, 14344 Sherman Way, Van Nuys.

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Riffs: Joshua Redman will once again serve as creative director for the SFJAZZ spring season of concerts in San Francisco. The new schedule will be announced in mid-January.... RCA/Bluebird is dipping into its catalog for some unusually interesting items in 2002. One of the most intriguing is scheduled to arrive in February: 1974’s “Gil Evans’ Orchestra Plays the Music of Jimi Hendrix.” ...

Michael Fagien, publisher of JazzIz Magazine, has produced a unique audio compilation titled “Homeland”--dedicated to the victims and families of the Sept. 11 attacks--for inclusion in the periodical’s January issue. Proceeds from the CD, which features Pat Metheny, Charlie Haden, Dave Douglas, Leni Stern, Richard Leo Johnson and others, will go to the American Red Cross....

The New England Jazz Alliance has announced the first 10 jazz artists elected to the newly established New England Jazz Hall of Fame. The honorees, all with New England associations, are saxophonists Johnny Hodges, Harry Carney and Paul Gonsalves from the Duke Ellington Orchestra; drummers Tony Williams and Alan Dawson; saxophonists Serge Chaloff and Sonny Stitt; trumpeter Bobby Hackett; pianist Jaki Byard; and pianist-bandleader Sabby Lewis. The alliance also announced that, for next year’s voting, it would revisit its policy of not including living jazz artists in the nominations.