Blue Notes Sound Free to Jazz Pianist Unmoved by Opportunities to Cash In

Frank Strazzeri has played piano with a lot of people. His list of cohorts and employees is impressive and includes such jazzmen as trumpeters Chet Baker and Kenny Dorham, saxophonists Art Pepper and Bud Shank and drummer/bandleader Louie Bellson, as well as some names from the show business side of the musical fence--Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and Les Brown, among them.

But at 58, Strazzeri says he would much rather play a jazz trio date for a party at the Los Angeles Tennis Club and make a couple of hundred dollars, as he did a few Saturdays ago, than accompany someone like Presley before a throng at Madison Square Garden, as he did with the pop music idol in the early 1970s.

“I’ve made myself a jazz piano player, man,” he said during a relaxed conversation in the Sun Valley home he shares with his wife, JoAnn, a jazz singer.

“I’ve made my own bed,” said Strazzeri, who moved here in 1961. “I could have cashed in. That thing with Elvis, I could have used that to go to many areas. If I have to suffer the consequences of not making as much money as another pianist or arranger or whatever, so be it.”

Strazzeri--who has made 20 LPs as a leader and has been a sideman “on another 100”--said what he really likes about being a jazz pianist is the freedom: “I can explore the entirety of me.” He will play tomorrow night at Jax in Glendale, and Wednesday with Bill Reichenbach’s quartet, at Amagi in Hollywood.

Jazz has been in Strazzeri’s blood since he was a kid in Rochester, N.Y. “We used to go to my grandfather’s for Sunday dinner, and my Uncle Joe would play jazz piano like Teddy Wilson. He was good, too. That rubbed off on me. But piano looked difficult, so I took sax lessons. But then I contracted rheumatic fever, and the doctor recommended piano instead of horn. And so I learned.”

“I hoped someday that I could play pretty good jazz. I never thought of being a rhythm and blues or rock or country player. I heard the jazz greats and found that kind of piano was the only music that was. I never felt it for any other kind.”

The ‘60s were Strazzeri’s halcyon days--”I worked with just about everybody in Los Angeles.” He remains active but doesn’t work a steady job.

“I have gigs here and there. Some weeks, I have nothing for the weekend, but it seems like something always turns up. I’ve gotten so that I don’t worry about it.

“I’m much happier this way,” he said. “I say, do what you believe in. Jazz, that’s me. I’m there, because I’m like a horse with blinders. I can’t see the other side. It’s not that I can’t do it, it’s that I can’t give 100% of myself to work in rock or country.”

Strazzeri’s ability in the mainstream arena earns him kudos from many of his colleagues. “He’s a great player and a great writer and very underrated,” said sax man/composer Don Menza, who’s been playing with the pianist in everything from co-op bands to Louie Bellson’s Orchestra off and on for 20 years. Pat Britt, a saxophonist and record executive who produced two Strazzeri LPs for Catalyst Records, said: “Frank’s an asset on any record date or club gig, and it would be almost impossible to call a tune he didn’t know.”

To augment his live gigs, Strazzeri made quite a few recordings this year. His latest Discovery label trio session, “Moon and Sand,” is just out. In addition, three LPs he recorded earlier this year in Spain for the Fresh Sound label--”Make Me Rainbows,” with his quintet; “Ballads,” a duo performance with sax man Don Menza, and “Presenting JoAnn Strazzeri,” where he leads a quartet accompanying his wife--are now available.

The trips to Europe had been intermittent until 3 years ago, when, after touring Italy and Switzerland with a sextet led by Menza, he went to Spain to record. Since then, he has returned to the Continent once a year.

“Europe is very important to me,” he said, growing suddenly serious, “because what I make there in 3 weeks, I won’t make here in 3 months.”

He also plays a central musical role in “Let’s Get Lost,” a soon-to-be-released Bruce Weber documentary about the late Chet Baker. Off and on for 20 years, beginning in the early 1960s, Strazzeri was one of the renowned trumpeter/singer’s regular keyboard partners.

When the pianist moved to Los Angeles, he and Baker worked together often. “Chet and I got along extremely well, musically,” Strazzeri said. “But he used to kiss me on the bandstand. Put his arms around me and kiss me on the cheek. That would always embarrass me, but that’s the way he was.”

Another trumpeter who made a strong impression was Dorham, who had served lengthy tenures with Charlie Parker, Art Blakey and Max Roach by the time Strazzeri played with him locally in the early 1960s.

“The job lasted only a few months, but it was the best jazz job I’ve ever had in my life,” he said, smiling. “I had never played fast like that. Kenny was one of the most inspirational players. He’d draw the best out of you.”

Strazzeri, who was hired to back Presley on two tours in the early 1970s, found him easy to work with. “When I first started, he’d slap me on the shoulders when he got on stage, which was his way of acknowledging that I was new,” he said.

The pianist recalled chatting with Presley at length at a tour’s end party, held in a huge Presley suite atop a hotel in Tulsa, Okla. “He came up to me, and I didn’t know what to say, so I said, ‘My wife tells me you’re into karate,’ and he said, ‘Wait here,’ and he went and changed into his karate outfit, and brought out a bunch of books on karate. We sat on the couch, talking about karate and everything, and everybody else was bugged because he was hanging out with me.

“Then next day, I woke up and there was an envelope under my door with $300 in it. Just a little bonus from him. He was the nicest big superstar I ever ran across.”

There was one jazz superstar Strazzeri could have met, but didn’t. “I was about 23, living back in Rochester after I was out of the Air Force, playing a local job, and I got this phone call.

“The voice says, ‘This is Charlie Parker, I need a piano player,’ ” Strazzeri said. “I said, ‘ Charlie Parker? Are you kidding? ‘ and hung up the phone. I wouldn’t even talk to the cat. Just hearing his voice scared me.”

Today, Strazzeri would have a different response. “Oh, I’d play with him and play very assuredly,” he said, breaking into a grin. “Not that I am his equal, I just know a little more now and could do more of an adequate job. But I’d still be just as scared. Charlie Parker?! “