50 Years and Still Playing : Betty O’Hara, who plays a variety of brass instruments, says she never thought she’d be a professional musician so long.

Betty O’Hara would be the first to tell you how surprised she is that her career as a professional musician has spanned 50 years.

“I thought when I was a kid I’d quit playing when I was 30. Music just didn’t seem like a thing for a woman to do,” said O’Hara, 67, who plays a variety of brass instruments--among them, trumpet, cornet, slide trombone and double-bell euphonium--and sings.

“But now the stigma is off women, and I’m having a good time,” she said. O’Hara toured USO facilities as part of Freddy Shaffer’s Victory Sweethearts all-girl band in the ‘40s, played second trumpet in the Hartford, Conn., symphony in the early ‘50s, and was a studio musician recording the soundtracks to such prime-time television shows as “Hill Street Blues” and “Magnum, P.I.” in the ‘70s and ‘80s. She also managed to raise three children along the way.

A native of Earl Park, Ind., she has lived in Southern California since 1960. These days, she spends her time playing jazz, for which she demonstrates no small affinity. Tonight she appears at Chadney’s in Burbank, co-leading the Jazzbirds, an all-female, modern-leaning quintet, with trumpeter-flugelhornist Stacy Rowles.

O’Hara appears Saturdays at Casey’s Tavern in Reseda with Bill Vogel’s Sunset Society Swing Orchestra, which performs “obscure tunes out of the ‘20s,” she said. Sundays you can find her working with pianist Bob Ringwald’s Great Pacific Jazz Band at LGT Vegas in Mission Hills, where the accent is on ‘20s and ‘30s music.

Disparate though these styles may be, they suit O’Hara just fine. “I pretty much enjoy it all. I like to swing, I like to sing,” she said in a telephone interview from the home in Sunland she shares with her husband, bass trombonist Barrett O’Hara. “I look forward to whatever time I’ve got left playing jazz and nothing else.”

The Jazzbirds, which reveal O’Hara at her most modern, were formed in the early ‘80s, when Rowles and O’Hara were members of the Ann Patterson-Bonnie Janofsky all-female big band--which has since become known as Maiden Voyage. The quintet also spotlights drummer Jeanette Wrate, bassist Mary Ann McSweeney and pianist Liz Kinnon, though Cecilia Coleman, one of Los Angeles’ rising jazz talents, will be sitting in for Kinnon tonight.

Playing originals as well as arrangements of such standards as Dizzy Gillespie’s “A Night in Tunisia” and Kurt Weill’s “Speak Low,” the Jazzbirds focus on mellifluous interpretations. Rowles said one major reason the band sounds good is that she and O’Hara--whom she described as a “sensitive musician who plays beautifully”--have similar approaches.

“We both have a melodic sense of the music, and we like to play the same kinds of tunes,” said Rowles, in a separate interview.

O’Hara came up with the name for the group, but not until she had tried a few titles that were ultimately tossed out. Like “Broadside.”

“I remember that one,” Rowles said, laughing deeply. “We decided inevitably on something more serious, and yet on the lighter side.”

“I thought that women are sometimes called ‘birds,’ and we play jazz, so ‘Jazzbirds’ would be nice,” said O’Hara, whose speaking voice reflects both the lyrical quality of her vocals and the sweet sound she gets on her instruments.

Music became a part of O’Hara’s life when, as a seventh-grader, she wandered into the band room, saw an old battered trumpet, picked it up and made a noise. “God, it was thrilling!” she exclaimed at the memory. “I fell in love.”

O’Hara has never done anything except play music--she joined Shaffer’s Victory Sweethearts right out of high school. Through the years, she’s made one album, “Horns A’ Plenty,” on the local, independent MagnaGraphic label.

The restorative powers of music are no secret to Betty O’Hara. “It’s just amazing to me that that I can still play,” she said. “Music keeps you on your toes, keeps your mind working, and keeps you thinking pretty young, so that when you do look in the mirror, you say, ‘Who’s that? I don’t know her.’ ”

WHERE AND WHEN

What: Betty O’Hara appears with the Jazzbirds at Chadney’s, 3000 W. Olive St., Burbank.

Hours: 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. tonight.

Price: No cover, no minimum.

Call: (818) 843-5333.

What: Betty O’Hara with Bill Vogel at Casey’s Tavern, 22029 Sherman Way, Canoga Park.

Hours: 9 p.m. to 1 a.m Saturdays.

Price: no cover, no minimum.

Call: (818) 992-9362.

What: Betty O’Hara and Bob Ringwald at LGT Vegas, 11000 Sepulveda Blvd., Mission Hills.

Hours: 6 p.m. Sundays.

Price: No cover, no minimum.

Call: (818) 365-9502.