Craig Handy back on his turf to play North Beach’s newest jazz club

With the weather growing increasingly bitter as the fall of 1986 slouched into winter, tenor saxophonist Craig Handy decided to take a break from busking on the streets of Manhattan, hightailing it back to Oakland for warmth and familial comfort. But within weeks the Berkeley High graduate received an urgent summons from fellow saxophonist Ralph Moore that drum legend Roy Haynes was looking for him and that he should to return to New York pronto.

“How does Roy Haynes even know I exist?” Handy asked his friend. Despite his skepticism he flew back east and nailed the audition. A few days later, Handy ran into another friend, drummer Winard Harper, who insisted on introducing him to South African piano giant Abdullah Ibrahim, “and within a week I was playing in his band too,” Handy recalled.

Around the same time, Sue Mingus, in the thick of building a roster of ensembles dedicated to the capaciously innovative music of her late husband, bassist/composer Charles Mingus, got word of the hot new tenor player and made a point of catching Handy playing with Haynes.

“Within a week I got three gigs and it spiraled from there,” he said, still sounding awed at his sudden ascendance. “That was the scene. It was jazz heaven and I thought that would never end.”

Handy, who returns to the Bay Area for a four-night run at the new North Beach club Keys Jazz Bistro Dec. 21-24, has been at the center of the New York scene ever since, collaborating prolifically with era-defining masters such as Freddie Hubbard, Bobby Hutcherson, Herbie Hancock, and Betty Carter. He spent some three decades in the Mingus fold touring and recording with Mingus Dynasty, Mingus Orchestra, and Mingus Big Band, in which he played lead alto and long served as music director.

The Mingus connection led to his most widely heard playing, as Bill Cosby recruited him for some studio work after seeing the big band. “The Cosby Show” featured Handy’s version of the Junior Walker R&B hit “Shotgun” as the opening theme on Seasons 6 and 7, a connection that continued with him scoring NBC’s short-lived 1994-95 forensics show “The Cosby Mysteries.”

Despite his prodigious credits, Handy has attracted less attention than he might have because he hasn’t recorded much under his own name. Looking back at the course of his career, he regrets not taking matters into his own hands earlier.

“I was humble kid,” said Handy, 60. “I didn’t want to come off as being arrogant and I didn’t pursue opportunities as aggressively as I should have.”

His commanding musicianship and prowess as an improviser meant that he’s never lacked for work. Rather than focusing on bandleading and developing original material he poured his creative energy fully inhabiting the music of older composers like pianist George Cables, trumpeter Eddie Henderson and drummer Billy Hart (who he went on to play with as a founding member of the all-star combo The Cookers).

“Part of the reason I wasn’t recording and writing so much was there was so much great material to learn and master from the generations before,” he said. “It’s a bit of a cop out when I think about it now, but back then it seemed like there was so much great stuff to lean into.”

In a twist that has caught him by surprise, he’s opened up a new chapter in recent years as a bandleader and late-blooming composer, introducing his sousaphone-powered band 2nd Line Smith on an eponymous 2014 album for OKey/Sony. The project reimagines the music of organist Jimmy Smith set to New Orleans grooves, and has turned into a vehicle for his writing with a 2019 Chamber Music America grant.

He’s always maintained close ties to the Bay Area, but since the first wave of the pandemic eased he’s worked here more than ever before, often collaborating with the formidable rhythm section tandem of bassist Essiet Essiet and San Jose-reared drummer Sylvia Cuenca. They were on hand when he played an organ gig with Simon Rowe, the former Brubeck Institute executive director and founding executive director of San Francisco Conservatory’s Roots, Jazz, and American Music program who launched Keys Jazz Bistro last month.

“That was our first formal meeting and it was a joyful thing right out of the gate,” said Rowe, who’s leading the piano trio backing Handy at Keys. “Before eight measures you could tell he’s got a beautiful command of the language and an incredibly fluid way with his improvising. He’s the kind of player who has a lot of confidence that he’ll be able to respond in the moment.”

Contact Andrew Gilbert at jazzscribe@aol.com.