Jazzman was there at ‘birth of the cool’

By the time you’ve hit 90, there’s the chance that the major sounds of your life will be muted, distant echoes. In Howard Rumsey’s case, such a fate would be cruel indeed, because the man was there when sound was everything.

He was there when jazz legend Stan Kenton put together his first orchestra. He was there, either in person or spirit, in every ballroom or saloon of the last half-century where guys thrummed a bass, tickled a keyboard or worked a drum kit.

And he was there when West Coast jazz took hold in the 1950s and 1960s, competing for the first time with the East Coast guys. In fact, whoever writes the Howard Rumsey obituary will refer to the cool sound of West Coast jazz in the first paragraph.

But, to circle back, Rumsey still can conjure up the sounds. He’s battling a medical condition known as dysphagia that makes swallowing difficult, but his hearing is plenty good. And so is his memory. Sometimes, he says with a laugh, he remembers too much, leaving me to wonder whether he’s got some things he doesn’t want to talk about.

I wanted to meet Rumsey, partly out of a star-struck thing I have about music people and partly because he’s a bit of a historical figure -- although he balks at the latter characterization repeatedly during our conversation in his Newport Beach apartment.

To anyone else, however, Rumsey is the former face of the Lighthouse Cafe in Hermosa Beach. Starting in 1949, he put in 22 years there, first as a bass player in the band and later as the frontman who introduced and lined up acts -- known collectively as the Lighthouse All-Stars -- that popularized the West Coast “cool” sound.

After that, he buttressed his reputation by running the show for another 10 years or so at the Concerts by the Sea club in Redondo Beach.

Last fall at a restaurant in Los Angeles, a sold-out crowd threw him a 90th birthday party that featured performances by some of the later-vintage acts he helped get started.

“Howard is just very important in getting jazz into the West Coast and forming the music that came to be known as cool jazz,” says Scott Janow, the author of nine books on jazz.

OK, Mr. Rumsey, please confirm your place in local jazz history. “It’s West Coast jazz,” he agrees. “It’s being part of the birth of the cool.”

He’ll have none of this “legend” business. “When I was on the stand at the Lighthouse,” he says, “I played and presented these individuals with the idea of selling them. And that was by putting myself and my playing in a backup role. I was fortunate enough to accomplish that.”

If only to tweak him a bit, I ask if, back then, he was just a guy making his way through life. “Boy, there’s no more true story than that,” he says.

The people at the birthday bash had a different take. They gave him a huge framed photograph, with a montage of his life. It includes him as a boy in Brawley in a suit and bow tie. It shows him as an original member of Kenton’s orchestra. A quick tour of his home includes at least two lifetime achievement awards from organizations and a gallery of photos of jazz greats.

I ask for a definition of West Coast jazz. “It’s just jazz played on the West Coast,” he says. “That’s all it was. The tag was put on by independent record labels to sell some stuff.

“The distinction alone is that when these good players started living out here, they found a more relaxed life and that was reflected in their playing. That’s the only difference between West Coast and East Coast. The California guys got away from -- how do I want to describe it? -- that biting sound the East Coast guys had.”

Rumsey started piano lessons at 4. By the time he was 18, he was playing bass in local saloons that didn’t worry about birth certificates. When Kenton put together his first orchestra in 1941, Rumsey was in it. An Internet reference indicates the band had 15 members. Rumsey is its sole survivor.

I tell him I know he has tons of stories. He says he goes to a nearby senior center and listens as others relive their past. He never swaps stories, he says. “I wouldn’t think of it, because it would spoil their fun completely.”

He leaves it there, but I sense he means that he knows his stories would trump theirs.

And he’s got them. He dips into the story of the bass player in bandleader Charlie Barnet’s orchestra who inadvertently dropped his resin bag on a spotlight during intermission “and the next thing you know, the Palomar ballroom was on fire and burned down.”

When Rumsey finishes, he bursts into sustained, wide-eyed laughter.

So why not tell me one after another?

I left with a theory. It isn’t that Rumsey couldn’t fill my notebook with tales both true and apocryphal. He could, but the stories are too rich, too textured, to condense. I think he refuses to minimize them with passing references.

When I press for tales of the glory days, he knows that when he starts telling one, it’ll morph into another and then another. It would be like an endless jazz improv session, and if I or anyone else really wanted to get it, we’d have had to be there.

At one point, he concedes that “I’m not trying to forget. The thing is, I attach quite a bit of importance to my memories.” But in the next breath he says they wouldn’t mean that much to other people or, in fact, amount to all that much.

I know he’s wrong, but when I tell him he’s off the interview seat, he thanks me. He never had kids, and got a deferment for World War II that kept him out of action. If only for those reasons, he says, he’s no celebrity. And beyond that, he insists, “I was not cool about anything.”

A bit more modesty, I presume, because he says he had a great life, including being married for 47 years until his wife died in 1998. His apartment is defined by jazz references, both with photos of jazz greats and with books.

He has a floor-to-ceiling living room photo of the Lighthouse taken in the late 1950s. He’s got a bass in the room and his mother’s mandolin, beautifully restored.

You bet he cares about the life he’s lived. He just won’t turn it into sound bites.

As a hipster might have said, I can dig it. I thank him genuinely for his time, because his condition requires that he occasionally stop talking and take a breath to swallow properly. But I make one more try at asking why he’s so modest.

“I don’t know why. I don’t know why,” he says softly. “I found out one thing: It’s better than being a real cocky guy, because you’re going to get knocked on your ass sooner or later.”

And then, when I’ve shut the notebook and turned off the tape after nearly two hours, he says, “I feel remiss that I haven’t asked you more about your life.”

Dana Parsons’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.