Michael Wolff: A commanding jazz presence

Michael Wolff isn’t a geek, but he plays one convincingly on TV.

In real life, he’s one of the hippest cats around, a commanding jazz pianist who made his recording debut at 20 with alto sax star Cannonball Adderley.

He’s toured the world accompanying Nancy Wilson; collaborated with his good friend, the late Warren Zevon; and led the house band on “The Arsenio Hall Show.”

But these days Wolff is far better known as the dorky accordion-playing dad on “The Naked Brothers Band,” a hit Nickelodeon show aimed at preteens.

Wife’s revenge

“My wife is getting revenge; she gets to make me look stupid,” says Wolff, who performs with his trio featuring bassist Rich Goods and veteran drummer Victor Jones at Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society on Sunday and Kuumbwa Jazz Center on Monday.

Wolff met his wife, Polly Draper, the actress best known for playing Ellyn Warren on the popular 1980s television drama “thirtysomething,” when she was an Arsenio Hall guest.

“The Naked Brothers Band,” a faux documentary series about a superstar kid rock band, grew out of the musical inclinations of their two young sons, songwriter/keyboardist Nat Wolff and drummer Alex Wolff.

Draper is the “Naked Brothers” creator, director, writer and executive producer, and she cast her husband as the immature dad raising his sons as a single parent.

“She was going to make me a piano player, but accordions are funnier,” Wolff says from his Manhattan studio.

“The dad is really kind of childish, and Nat functions as a parental influence. It’s been fun and a challenge. I tell the kids, you’ve got it easy, you get to be yourselves. They write all the songs, and they’re fantastic musicians.

“It started as a total lark, and now it’s our family shoe store. It’s ‘Spinal Tap’ meets ‘The Little Rascals.’ ”

Years before Wolff started playing a goofier version of himself on television, his life inspired the 1999 film “The Tic Code” starring Gregory Hines and Draper, who wrote the screenplay.

Jazz as a refuge

Loosely based on his experience as a child growing up with Tourette syndrome, a condition that wasn’t diagnosed until his late 30s, the film conveys the way the jazz world can serve as a refuge.

“In jazz, you could be a junkie, or an eccentric, so I felt accepted,” Wolff says. “There weren’t too many white guys, but it wasn’t about color. If you proved yourself, you could play.”

Raised from the age of 9 in Berkeley, Wolff displayed prodigious talent as a young teenager. He studied with tenor sax legend Lester Young’s niece, pianist Martha Young, who mentored many aspiring East Bay jazz musicians.

By 17 he was working as the house pianist at San Francisco’s Both/And Club. At 19, he talked himself into an onstage audition with Cal Tjader when he ran into the vibraphonist at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley.

“He said to come by and sit in with the band at El Matador,” Wolff recalls. “I wasn’t old enough to get in, but a waitress finally sneaked me in the back. Cal just happened to need somebody for a two-week gig in Tucson.

“I guess he liked my playing, because the next gig was a Latin jazz jam at the Monterey Jazz Festival with Dizzy Gillespie, Clark Terry and Armando Peraza.

“I had just turned 20, and I was thinking they were lucky.”

Taught by the greats

Despite his youthful arrogance, Wolff was essentially learning on the bandstand, being tested every night by some of jazz’s greatest artists. (Last year, Monterey Jazz Festival Records released “The Best of Cal Tjader: Live at the Monterey Jazz 1958-1980,” which features Wolff on a 12-minute version of “Manteca” from 1972.)

“You don’t get those experiences today,” Wolff says. “With Cannonball, Sarah Vaughan would come sit in. Everyone would sit in with Tjader. It was really trial by fire every night.”

For the past decade or so, Wolff’s music has mostly reflected his aggressive side with his world-jazz band Impure Thoughts, featuring Badal Roy on tablas and Alex Foster on reeds.

But his latest album, “Joe’s Strut” (Wrong Records), is a hard-swinging straight-ahead session divided between a quintet and a trio with Goods and Jones, a deeply funky drummer with more than 100 recordings to his credit (including albums with Lou Donaldson, Stan Getz and Woody Shaw).

Wolff has worked with Jones ever since they met on the pianist’s first New York gig, and he recruited Goods for the trio about three years ago. The band focuses on Wolff’s original pieces, often drawn from the Impure Thoughts repertoire but arranged for trio.

“As much as I love Impure Thoughts, that band was loud,” Wolff says. “I really want to hear what I’m doing. I really want to hear the dynamics and harmonies.”