Woody Allen won't toot his own horn

By Christopher Smith

Dec. 27, 2011 12 AM PT

Talk to Woody Allen and he’ll go out of his way to tell you what a crummy musician he is, and yet, for the past half-century or so, his innumerable live performances likely have introduced New Orleans-style jazz to more audiences in America and Europe than anyone outside of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band.

The renowned filmmaker’s enthusiasm for his hobby animated a recent phone chat that found the 76-year-old passionate in discussing topics as varied as the artist he’d most like to have played with and his dogged determination to practice at all hours.

While Allen continues to make a movie per year, including this year’s Oscar-buzzy “Midnight in Paris,” he also steadfastly plays clarinet in his New Orleans Jazz Band, which comes to town Thursday night to UCLA’s Royce Hall.

How do you rate yourself as a musician?

It’s not a particular talent that I have, but a great love -- I’m strictly like a weekend golfer or something.

I don’t kid myself -- people come and see me because they’ve seen my movies. I am surrounded by good musicians and I do my best, but it’s strictly enthusiasm.

If you could use the time-travel conceit from “Midnight in Paris” and be transported back to the formative years of New Orleans jazz to play with an artist, who would it be?

I would like to play with Bunk Johnson’s band. He played trumpet as early as 1909 or 1910, but we only really know him from the jazz revival of the mid-’40s, the Bunk Johnson-George Lewis [clarinet] Decca recordings. Hear them play “Maryland, My Maryland” and “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” ... these performances are beautiful and rare.

These guys were not schooled or complicated or adventuresome, it just sounds as it should. All those guys who are fancy and complex and full of gimmicks -- it doesn’t mean anything to me.

But the Bunk Johnson band was just so alive, such a crude, primitive and great experience to listen to.

When you grew up in the ‘40s, jazz and swing were American pop music. But New Orleans jazz, by that time, was an older form. How did you first encounter it?

Benny Goodman, Frank Sinatra, Cole Porter and Billie Holiday -- that was my basic pop music growing up. It was a great time to listen to the radio. But when I was around 13 I heard a recorded jazz concert in Paris with Sidney Bechet [the first notable jazz saxophonist] and I thought it was something special.

That got me interested in New Orleans-style music. So like every young kid, when you start to get interested in something, whether it’s baseball batting averages or stamp collecting, you become obsessive with it. So did I with this music -- I bought every jazz record of his I could find and I decided to learn the soprano saxophone because that is what Sidney Bechet played.

How did you start playing to audiences?

I started off just as a hobby, strictly playing with guys my age. Just for fun, once a week, like you might get together for a poker game. After a couple years of this, one of the guys said it would be more fun if we played for people instead of in a living room. I didn’t really care -- I had been a stand-up comedian by then for a couple years, I didn’t really need an audience, but I didn’t mind it.

Then, when I was doing stand-up comedy at the Hungry i in San Francisco, it was a couple blocks away from a little jazz joint called Earthquake Magoo’s that had Turk Murphy, a good New Orleans-style trombonist. I used to go over and listen to his band. He found out I played clarinet and he muscled me into bringing my instrument to sit in with them. I protested I wasn’t that good, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer, and once he got me playing, I began to play more with other people, not just with records on a Victrola.

A group got together and we started playing local cafes in New York once a week. We played at Michael’s Pub for 30 years and we switched to the Carlyle Hotel and we have played there now on Monday nights for many years.

Are you ever nervous, before a show, going out in front of people?

Never for a second. My attitude is: “Look, I’m playing for fun, for my own enjoyment, and if the people want to come and enjoy it, great. If not, then not.”

When people think of this music, they probably think of guys in, I don’t know, striped jackets and straw boater hats doing silly stuff onstage and playing “When the Saints Go Marching In.” We’ve never done that -- we play authentic music, with no eye to crowd-pleasing or commerciality.

It seems people do want to hear you.

Shows what I know about audiences. About 20 years ago or so, someone thought we should go out on a concert tour and I thought that was the silliest thing, nobody would ever come. Our first concert tour in Europe, we were sold out in opera houses and concert halls, playing to audiences of 2,000 to 5,000 night after night, so this hobby started to be a very fulfilling thing.

Did it strike you that if this movie thing didn’t work out you could pay the rent playing music?

I don’t think I could. Again, I don’t say this out of false modesty -- it’s a realistic appraisal. I can’t read music, I don’t have a natural ear, I don’t have great talent. I can tell when I hear a great New Orleans clarinet player, the sound is so full of excitement, and it’s wonderful to listen to even if the guy plays a simple melody.... When I play, I mean, I try, but it’s as dead as a doornail.

You’ve only made one or two jazz albums. Why?

They wouldn’t be worth anything artistically, really. We made a recording once when we played in a church in New York -- it had good, New Orleans-style clean acoustics, reverberation, so we liked the way we sounded. We recorded them with our own tape recorder -- they weren’t made in a music studio. And the songs that were less bad we put on the record.

Do you still practice your clarinet every day?

At least half an hour. You have to practice every day, even in order to play as badly as I do. Your lip is involved, your embouchure [the use of facial muscles and the shaping of the lips to the mouthpiece] -- you just can’t play effectively if you don’t.

Do you need to practice at a certain time or a certain place?

I’ve practiced many different times in many places when I am out shooting. I have practiced out in the snow. I’ve come back to my hotel room at 11 o’clock at night out of town when I was making films and put the quilt over my head on the bed so I wouldn’t wake anybody up at that hour.

I’ve practiced in churches in Europe when I couldn’t find any other spot. In automobiles where I would have the driver find a secluded street. Or I’d get in the car by myself and lock the doors when it was too cold outside.

After 50 years of this, do you feel guilty if you miss a day of practice?

Yes.

If there is to be an epitaph written for you as a musician, what should it say?

He was a terrible musician, but he really loved doing it.

calendar@latimes.com

Woody Allen and His New Orleans Jazz Band

When: 8 p.m. Thursday

Where: UCLA Royce Hall, 340 Royce Blvd., Westwood

Tickets: $85-$115

Info: www.uclalive.org/calendar/events