Watrous Calls the Tune : Trombonist Makes Sure His Music Fits Into His Plan

Trombonist Bill Watrous has a big, spurting-juice sound and a stunning technique that allows him to command the oft-cumbersome instrument. He can deliver improvised lines that zip and zag like a cottontail bounding over a desert landscape or offer melodic ideas that leap up and down like a pole-vaulter approaching, clearing the bar and then tumbling into the pit--only at double speed.

The 53-year-old Connecticut native, who has been a jazz player for more than three decades and who performs Sunday at Maxwell’s in Huntington Beach, acknowledges he has a little something going on the dexterity side.

“I try to play the trombone the way Stan Getz played the saxophone: smooth, flowing, very literate,” he said in a recent conversation. “Rather than being dictated to by the whims of the instrument, my idea is that if I hear something, go ahead and play it.”

Still, Watrous--whose latest album, “Bona-fide,” will be released in January on the GNP Crescendo label--would like it known that improvisational virtuosity doesn’t hold a bell or a candle to melody in his book.

“I try to be a composer when I solo, rather than a mathematician,” said Watrous, who moved to Southern California in 1976 and now lives in Shadow Hills in northern San Fernando Valley. “Lines that have an interesting quality are what I want, not just strings of notes.”

The son of big-band era trombonist Ralph Watrous who started playing at age 7, Watrous takes a similarly music-versus-mathematics tack in selecting his performance material.

“I like a tune with a nice melody, nice chord changes,” said the musician, who spent 1960-76 in New York City, working with such ensembles as Kai Winding’s septet, the American Symphony, under Leopold Stokowski, and Mort Lindsey’s band on “The Merv Griffin Show.”

“Tunes I play have to fit into my plan, which is basically to play music that has a purpose,” he said. “I want music that means something to me, something that I would put on the stereo and listen to.”

Among the tunes that Watrous favors are such pop standards as “Day In, Day Out,” “Just in Time,” “Change Partners” and “Unforgettable,” all of which appear on “Bona-fide,” a quartet date that features pianist Shelly Berg, bassist Lou Fischer and drummer Randy Drake. (At Maxwell’s, Watrous appears with pianist Frankie Randall’s trio.)

These days, the trombonist is happily active. He’s traveling with the quartet, which appeared for two weeks at Keystone Korner club in Tokyo in November, and earlier this year played nightclubs in Los Angeles, Denver and Houston, and he’s working as a free-lance single, having returned a few days ago from a series of engagements in London with Shorty Rogers’ Giants.

Watrous also conducts clinics on big-band jazz and trombone at high schools and colleges, and makes occasional appearances with community orchestras, such as the one he did in September with the Elkhart (Ind.) Community Symphony.

There he performed in two areas. He played classical pieces with the orchestra, including an assemblage of works by Debussy arranged by Patrick Williams, and played jazz works with a quartet.

These pops-style collaborations, of the type that “Tonight Show” bandleader Doc Severinsen has been involved in for many years, are proving to be a new and necessary financial resource for community orchestras.

“Local symphonies are always trying to raise money, and since it’s hard these days through the conventional means of strictly drawing on the classical audience, they’re taking a softer look at jazz artists and including them in the picture more,” Watrous says.

The trombonist said he looks forward to these orchestral dates--he has another with the Glendale Symphony in early 1992.

“First off, an orchestra is lovely sounding,” he said, “and it’s really quite nice, that feeling of soaring over the top of such an ensemble.”

Self-taught except for some lessons from his father, Watrous was playing jazz almost from the moment he picked up a trombone. “I used to play Dixieland tunes with my father,” he said. “He’d play the melody and I’d make up little phrases, then I’d play the melody, and he’d improvise.”

Jack Teagarden, the great Texas trombonist renowned for his work as a leader and with Louis Armstrong, was Watrous’ first inspiration. “I heard his records and I remember the attitude,” Watrous said. “He was all over that horn, and swinging.”

Jazz has remained Watrous’ first musical love, and it was leading his Manhattan Wildlife Refuge big band, which made two albums for the Columbia label in the late ‘70s--now out of print--that earned him substantial notoriety as a jazzman.

But Watrous believes that his move to Los Angeles eroded much of that acclaim. “You don’t get taken seriously by Eastern jazz clubs if you live here,” he said. And while single dates, studio work and clinics keep the larder stocked, they don’t do much for the jazz reputation.

Watrous is counting on “Bona-fide,” work with his quartet and appearances dates such as Maxwell’s to return the luster his jazz career once possessed. “It’s almost there,” he said. “I’m just going to keep on trying. Longevity is my long-term goal.”

Bill Watrous will play Sunday at 2 p.m. at Maxwell’s, 317 Pacific Coast Highway, Huntington Beach. Admission: free. Information: (714) 536-2555.