In honor of Sammy

During the late 1960s, when he still was struggling to make it as an actor-singer-dancer, Ben Vereen figured he’d try tagging along with Sammy Davis Jr. to pick up some pointers. He recalls asking Davis’ assistant to take him on the road.

“He said, ‘This man’s been in the business all his life. Go out and find your own. Become your own.’ And from that, I went out and found my own.”

Now Vereen, at 58, is doing his own tribute to Davis, who died in 1990. His series of periodic “Ben Does Sammy” performances since November culminates Friday and Saturday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center. He’ll be backed by the Pacific Symphony, fulfilling his vision of paying a fully orchestral homage to an entertainer who inspired and befriended him -- although Vereen says they never had the nuts-and-bolts talks about performance technique that he hoped to soak up when he asked Davis’ factotum to take him along on tour.

Before they became friendly, Vereen says, he’d had a notion to elbow Davis aside. Bob Fosse recruited him for the 1969 film version of the musical “Sweet Charity.” Vereen had played Big Daddy in a touring stage production and hoped to repeat the part on screen.

“Word was Sammy was ill and unable to do the role in the movie. So I knew I was in. All of a sudden, Sammy shows up, so I was pouting.” Vereen settled for a smaller part. “Sammy started watching me, and I guess he liked the way I worked, my passion.”

From that, Vereen got a job understudying Davis in a touring production of “Golden Boy.” Later, his talk with Davis’ assistant made him realize it was time to branch off. He soon became a star: originating the Broadway role of Judas in “Jesus Christ Superstar”; winning a 1973 best actor Tony for his turn in the musical “Pippin”; earning an Emmy playing the resourceful Chicken George in the 1977 TV miniseries “Roots”; and presiding over the astonishing, phantasmagorical death-scene-as-Broadway-production-number at the end of “All That Jazz” -- Fosse’s autobiographical and ultimately prophetic 1979 film.

Then came bad times, times three. In 1987, Vereen’s daughter, Naja, was killed in a freak highway accident in New Jersey. Intense drug use became his way of coping. He stopped the substance abuse, but nearly died in June 1992 after a car struck him during a 2 a.m. walk on Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, leaving him with a broken leg and injuries to his brain and assorted internal organs. But within a year, Vereen was back on Broadway, in “Jelly’s Last Jam.” Dramatic and musical stage roles have followed steadily, including a demanding turn in 2001 in “Fosse,” the dance tribute to the great director-choreographer.

Vereen’s recent acting, teaching and spiritually directed public speaking endeavors are too numerous to recount briefly; starting May 31, the Brooklyn-bred performer will begin a seven-month run playing the Wizard of Oz in the Broadway production of “Wicked.”

He first conceived his Sammy Davis tribute after listening to a boxed set of Davis’ music -- it gave him a yen to re-create those big, brassy arrangements. He doesn’t try to re-create Davis’ stage persona.

“No, I’m not doing Sammy Davis Jr. Nobody can do Sammy Davis Jr. But I can do his music and say, ‘Thank you, Sam, for coming this way.’ ”

In 1981, Vereen found himself walking uncomfortably in Davis’ footsteps -- not on stage, but as a target for political commentary. Much as Davis was criticized after he was photographed hugging Richard Nixon at the 1972 Republican National Convention, Vereen took heat after a televised show that was part of Ronald Reagan’s first inaugural celebration. In it, he paid tribute to Bert Williams, the black vaudevillian of the early 1900s who performed in blackface.

“That was amazing, the parallel. Sammy hugged Nixon, and Sammy was a guy who just hugged everybody. People forgot that this is a man who opened up doors for many people, who loved all people. What I went through was a reminder that we have not been taught our history. I was doing an African American who was put under the injustice of an ignorant time in our country, when black people had to wear blackface in order to stand on stage. It amazed me that people thought I was doing Al Jolson. No, I was saying ‘This actually happened in our country.’ ”

Vereen says bad television editing robbed his performance of needed context. “People saw what they thought was the buffoonery. They didn’t see the setup, they didn’t see the resolve.”

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Ben Vereen

Where: Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa

When: 8 p.m., Friday-Saturday

Ends: Saturday

Price: $26-$125

Contact: (714) 755-5799