Bandleader Arranges a Great Career : Music: Steve Spiegl, whose band performs in Huntington Beach tonight, sells arrangements of his compositions to schools.

You could call Steve Spiegl a latter day “Music Man.” But unlike Harold Hill, the immortal flimflam artist from Meredith Willson’s Broadway musical, big-band composer/arranger Spiegl is no con man, and he delivers the goods in person.

Spiegl, the 42-year-old resident of Orange who leads his big band at El Matador in Huntington Beach tonight, spends three months a year on the road, selling arrangements of his compositions school to school. “I have a really unusual occupation. I’m almost like a Fuller Brush man,” he says. “I don’t know of anyone else who does what I do.

“I usually fly into an area, rent a car, go to a city, call the band directors and make appointments. I have tapes and conductors’ scores of my current material so they can see what the pieces are like.”

Spiegl says that he charges the high schools and colleges $35 to $40 per arrangement, or chart, and that his average sale is $200. He estimates he has sold more than 10,000 copies of arrangements from a library of more than 100 tunes he has built since starting his own music publishing business in 1976.

His job is one of the few ways to make living these days in the big-band business, Spiegl says. “There’s not a lot you can do with a big band,” he says. “They rarely perform (Spiegl’s date at El Matador is his first in five years); they’re economically unfeasible. One of the few places where there’s a demand is in the schools. They’re really the future of jazz. Where else are we training people to understand this stuff and support it?”

While Spiegl doesn’t get into the public eye often with his ensemble, which tonight features such top names as saxophonist Pete Christlieb and trumpeter Ron King, the group has for many years rehearsed every Monday at the Musicians’ Union building in Hollywood.

Though Spiegl spent three years in general music studies, he is mainly self-taught as an arranger, he says. Asked to describe the style of his works, Spiegl pauses a moment, looking for words, then says, “Well, it swings, but not like Count Basie swings--maybe more in a Buddy Rich vein, a little bit edgy. Of course, I also write Latin pieces and ballads.” He names writers Oliver Nelson, Johnny Richards and Dee Barton as major influences.

Barton is best known for his compositions with the late Stan Kenton--the late big-band leader/composer/arranger renowned for such hits as “Intermission Riff” and “Artistry in Rhythm.” When Barton left Kenton in 1969, the bandleader turned to an unknown--Spiegl--to be his chief arranger.

Spiegl will never forget how he got the Kenton assignment. “I was taking a first-year music theory class at Cerritos College in Norwalk in 1969, and my teacher, Don Erjavec, walked in, handed me note that said, ‘Call Stan Kenton,’ ” he said.

Spiegl thought that perhaps Kenton wanted him to play trumpet with his band, “but when I met with him that afternoon in his Beverly Hills office, he asked me to be his chief arranger.”

Kenton, a man who embraced musical risk-taking, knew Spiegl only from an arrangement Spiegl had written of “Chim-Chim Cheree” (from “Mary Poppins”) that Kenton’s band had played at a student clinic conducted in 1968 at the University of Redlands. He didn’t get any idea from the performance whether Kenton liked his piece or not. That phone call proved he did.

Spiegl, in a stint that lasted only a few months, wrote five arrangements for Kenton, one of which, the Beatles’ “Hey Jude,” was recorded by the bandleader on his “Live at Redlands University” album. But the experience sparked the then-La Mirada resident to pursue composing and arranging. “It whetted my appetite, and I wanted more,” he says.

First, he formed a rehearsal band that played his arrangements (among its members were keyboardist David Paich and drummer Joe Porcaro, both of whom went on to play in Toto). Later, in 1972, under the aegis of his trumpet teacher, Carlton McBeth--who was also a music publisher--Spiegl began selling arrangements. He started his company, Spiegl Music Publications, in 1976. Along the way, he gave up trumpet to focus on writing.

The Santa Monica native says he’s found a great way to survive in the big-band field. “I love it. If you spend time writing for bands, you have to find a way to sell your charts,” he says. “As long as I can, I’ll do this.”

* The Steve Spiegl Big Band plays tonight at 8 p.m. at El Matador, 16903 Algonquin St., Huntington Beach. Admission: $5. Information: (714) 846-5337.