Last of the Hepcats

More than 30 years ago, I would come home from school and find my mother watching the "Merv Griffin Show" on the Motorola while she did the ironing. I loved it when Merv would call on the trumpet player in Mort Lindsey's orchestra, a chubby-faced cut-up named Jack Sheldon, and goof with him the way Johnny Carson later did with Doc Severinsen.

I had no idea the orchestra wise guy was a serious horn player and one of the creators of the so-called West Coast sound, or that he had swung with Art Pepper, Benny Goodman, Zoot Sims and dozens of other jazz greats. Nor did I have any idea, until Merv Griffin told me recently, that Sheldon's buddy Chet Baker was often in the wings, waiting for the show to wrap so that he and Sheldon could go high-balling across Southern California in Baker's hot rod, cruising for cool gigs and hot girls.

Most of the jazz giants Sheldon played with, like Baker, are long gone, many having drunk or mainlined themselves to early graves. But Sheldon is still around at 70, living in a funky Hollywood Hills bungalow and often practicing trumpet while he wades in the backyard swimming pool. By night, he plays small clubs around L.A, keeping a time and a sound alive with his crooning, uninhibited comic riffs and a horn that blows pure, sweet memory. The last of the hepcats.

"Jack is definitely one of a kind," says Clint Eastwood, a Sheldon buddy who has been known to drop in on his shows, only to be gently abused by him between songs. "I took my wife to see him at a club in Toluca Lake, and right away he starts in on me with 'Rawhide' and 'Bridges of Madison County.' 'Rowdy Yates is in the room.' "

'Was it R-rated?' I asked Eastwood. Sheldon, in Rat Pack lounge tradition, needles guests with exaggerated tales of sexual triumphs and misadventures-theirs and his own. Sometimes it gets uncomfortably blunt, if not raunchy.

"Yes," Eastwood said, "and my wife is sitting there with me. But she liked Jack right away. Los Angeles has a lot of great players, but I don't know anyone who can do the comedy, the singing and the playing like Jack. Playing technically well is one thing, but Jack gets a great sound that a lot of players just don't get."