WOODWINDS MASTER : BOB COOPER: SAX MAN FOR ALL SEASONS

Versatility has always been Bob Cooper’s strong suit.

When he joined the Stan Kenton orchestra in 1945, he was a standout jazz tenor sax soloist, along with some flute and clarinet.

And when he entered the world of studio music in the early ‘50s, he broadened, playing all types of fare. At the same time, his instrument collection grew and grew.

“In the beginning, (the studio contractors) accepted just clarinet and tenor (sax),” the lanky, mild-mannered musician said in the Sherman Oaks home where he lives with his wife of 39 years, former Kenton vocalist June Christy.

“But soon I was playing oboe and English horn and four kinds of flutes, and more,” he said. “It got so that I was practicing all day just to keep up on the instruments.”

Eventually Cooper was dragging along so much sound-altering equipment to studio calls that “he looked like he was leaving home whenever he went to a job,” said Christy, who sat in on the conversation.

Today, things are different for the 60-year-old Cooper: Studio work is down, and when he does get a call, he’ll work on only six woodwinds--tenor sax, clarinet, oboe, English horn and two flutes. To fill in, he has gone back to doing what he likes to do best--play straight-ahead swinging jazz.

“When I was growing up in Pittsburgh (Pa.), I loved the music of Count Basie, Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman,” he said. “Hearing them made me want to play music and be a part of it.

“So when I started getting calls from guys like (trumpeter Harry) ‘Sweets’ (Edison) a few years ago, it was an honor. And that really got me excited about music--again.”

The sandy-haired saxophonist had been one of the mainstays of the Los Angeles jazz scene during the ‘50s and early ‘60s but as the number of jazz rooms declined, Cooper all but disappeared into the studios. Not that he planned it that way.

“It was always in my mind that if a record should break and I could make some money doing (jazz) instead of studio gigs, I would have,” he said.

These days, in addition to assignments from backing Frank Sinatra on a brief recent tour to playing the tenor sax solos on last fall’s CBS production of “Death of a Salesman,” Cooper can be heard in various jazz ensembles. He holds down the solo tenor chair with Bill Holman’s Jazz Orchestra, and co-leads a sextet with trumpeter Snooky Young. The pair have a new album, “In a Mellotone” (Contemporary), that features singer Ernie Andrews. This Thursday(), he fronts a quartet spotlighting pianist Frank Strazzeri at Manhattan Jazz.

If work situations have changed, so has Cooper’s musical style. Originally inspired by such deep-toned tenor players as Coleman Hawkins and Don Byas, he discovered the lilting lightness of Lester Young through such contemporaries as Stan Getz and Zoot Sims. “But my heart was never really in that kind of playing,” he said, “and recently I think I have mellowed even more.”

Cooper’s career got off to a flying start. One evening in the summer of 1945, the then 19-year-old casually attended a Kenton concert at an amusement park near Pittsburgh. On this particular night, the renowned bandleader happened to be short one tenor sax player--the replacement for future great Getz, who had left the band a month earlier, had been fired. Cooper was asked to sit in.

Hired the next day, he embarked on a six-year road tour with one of the most popular bands in jazz.

But by 1951, he had had it with the road. “I got so I couldn’t stand to get on the bus in the morning anymore,” he said.

Realizing “you can’t make a living playing jazz unless you’re on the road,” Cooper moved to Hollywood, because there were great opportunities in the studio music world.

He had instant good luck. His first job was on the last season of “Club 15,” a 15-minute radio show that aired three times a week, and “paid $250 a week, which was fantastic for that time,” Cooper said.

Then he joined the Lighthouse All-Stars, the group of top locals like Bud Shank, Shorty Rogers, Shelly Manne, Art Pepper and Conte Candoli that played under bassist Howard Rumsey’s aegis at the Lighthouse Cafe in Hermosa Beach.

“So it was in the studios by day and at the Lighthouse at night. It was a heavy schedule but when you’re young, you don’t care. You just want to keep playing and playing.” Which is what he’s done.