Playing to Win : Trumpeter Darrell Leonard has played on two albums that received Grammy awards. Now he brings his talents to B.B. King’s.

UNIVERSAL CITY —  Darrell Leonard is on a roll when it comes to Grammy-winning blues records. He played trumpet on Stevie Ray Vaughan’s 1990 Grammy-winning “In Step” album, on Buddy Guy’s 1993 winner, “Feels Like Rain,” and he’s on the Otis Rush “Ain’t Enough Comin’ In” album, a 1995 Grammy nominee.

It’s a long way to the Grammy Awards from Fairfax, Iowa (pop. 780), where Leonard was born and raised and performed on trumpet in church in the late 1950s.

By the late 1960s, he was touring with Delaney & Bonnie Bramlett, whose Southern back-roads brew of rhythm and blues, gospel and rock had drawn some of pre-disco rock’s biggest names as sidemen: Eric Clapton, Dave Mason, Duane Allman, Leon Russell and George Harrison.

Next, Leonard joined the band of Mac Rebennack, also known as Dr. John, the gravel-voiced wizard of New Orleans piano who helped give rock a Creole accent.

Leonard came to Hollywood with a degree from North Texas State University, where he had studied harmony, theory and composition. His scoring and arranging skills landed him in front of the “Tonight Show” orchestra seven times, conducting his own scores to accompany Billy Vera and the Beaters.

Leonard has also played as a studio musician on the network television shows “Into the Night” and “Rags to Riches,” as well as on the soundtrack of the movie “Indecent Proposal.”

Most of his current work, though, calls less for his Big Band scoring and conducting expertise than the soul sound of Wilson Pickett, Sam & Dave and Bobby Blue Bland that he played on the Oklahoma-Texas rhythm and blues circuit after college in 1967.

“I developed my arranging and musical vocabulary by listening to work by the Memphis Horns, and to early B.B. King records,” says Leonard, 48, now a resident of Woodland Hills.

The punchy, syncopated brass sound of the Memphis Horns, an indelible part of ‘60s hits such as Pickett’s “In the Midnight Hour” and Sam & Dave’s “Hold On, I’m Comin’,” is what Leonard is most often asked for.

As half of the horn section (with tenor saxophonist Joe Sublett) at B.B. King’s in Universal City, Leonard plays the familiar R&B; horn parts several nights a week.

Leonard’s other recent credits include arrangements for the January, 1995, Artists’ Rights Foundation Benefit Concert at the House of Blues, and the upcoming Pioneer Awards presentation by the Rhythm and Blues Foundation, which will honor Fats Domino, Lloyd Price and Junior Walker, among others.

For that event, the band in which Leonard will play to accompany the honorees includes star instrumentalists James Gadson, Steve Cropper, Ry Cooder and Billy Preston.

Out of the thousands of hopeful musicians who come to Hollywood, Leonard is one of the few who has achieved major success. His work is divided between live performances and studio recordings.

In January, he accompanied Maria Muldaur on stage at B.B. King’s, playing arrangements he had written and recorded on her recent album “Meet Me at Midnight.”

“Darrell has a beautiful tone,” says John Porter, producer of “Meet Me at Midnight,” “Ain’t Enough Comin’ In” and “Feels Like Rain.”

“He has the right sensibilities for the music,” says Porter, “and he generally knows what I want as an arrangement without my having to specify much.”

One of the first producers to hire Leonard as an arranger was Daniel Moore of Malibu, who used Leonard on the Kim Carnes album, “St. Vincent’s Court,” a 1979 EMI release.

“Kim wanted a trumpet solo on that album, and I had Darrell play it. It was a sweet song, and Kim loved what Darrell played.”

For Leonard, being so sought after has not come without a price.

“I got wherever I am now through a lot of years of doing really small-time stuff,” Leonard says. During the disco years of the late 1970s, which he and many of his peers consider musical plague years, Leonard resorted to working as a country-western bass player.

“I played bass in country music bands, rather than play disco, which I hated,” says Leonard. Still, the relative simplicity of blues and rhythm and blues, soulful as they are, only satisfies part of Leonard’s musical taste.

“I love sophisticated, jazz-style arrangements which are much too subtle and modern-sounding for R&B;,” Leonard says. In the ‘80s, he led his own big band, the Lineup, to produce the sound he wanted, and in 1991 and 1992, he worked as the leader-conductor of the Disneyland Big Band.

After the Disneyland band he joined Eagles star Glenn Frey to tour Europe and Asia. Then it was back to Hollywood to play more rhythm and blues.

“Most of my work is the R&B; stuff,” says Leonard. “What people know you for is what you get to do. There’s an old saying: Don’t get too good at something,” he adds, semi-ironically, “or people will make you keep doin’ it forever.

“If you’re lucky.”

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WHERE AND WHEN

What: Trumpeter Darrell Leonard with the Arthur Adams Band. Location: B. B. King’s Blues Club, CityWalk, 100 Universal City Plaza, Universal City. Hours: 8 p.m. Wednesday and 9 p.m. Thursday. Price: $6 Wednesday; $8 Thursday. Call: (818) 622-5464.