JAZZ : Stanley Clarke Forges Into the Multimedia World : The bassist has quietly carved out a second career scoring films

It’s movies, movies, movies for Stanley Clarke these days. The award-winning bassist, a perennial top contender in the jazz instrumentalist polls, has been carving out a new career as a highly productive film composer.

His most recent score can be heard in the new Tina Turner bio-pic “What’s Love Got to Do With It.” And next month John Singleton’s “Poetic Justice,” featuring Janet Jackson, will arrive, also with Clarke’s music. It’s the start of a hectic summer schedule for the 41-year-old musician.

“Seems like I haven’t had much time for anything except work lately,” Clarke said recently in the living room of his sunny Beverly Hills home. “Fortunately, I’ll get a little time to do some playing this summer too. Live gigs, for me, are like a vacation.”

Despite Clarke’s apparent sudden prominence in the film world, success has not come overnight.

“It’s taken awhile, all right,” he said with a somewhat rueful smile. “There’s a great difficulty in being accepted as a film composer when you come to films from some other area. Unless you’re Eric Clapton or Prince or something--where your name up there is going to bring people in the theater--no one’s going to pay you any mind.

“My wife is the one who really got me started by sending my tapes to anyone she could think of,” he added. “I started out seven or eight years ago by doing television-- ‘Pee-wee’s Playhouse,’ some movies of the week, a lot of pilots, things like that. Nobody much knew about it. My name would usually appear in one of those credits that rolled by on the screen in about half a second. But it was good discipline, and I used it as a learning ground to increase my skills, because television is write and go; there’s no time to give it much thought.”

Clarke earned his reputation as a world-class bassist in the early ‘70s, initially via his association with the seminal fusion group Return to Forever and then with a series of eclectic recordings with his own ensembles. His thumb-popping, energetically accented electric bass playing had a powerful effect upon the jazz-funk styles that became increasingly popular later in the decade.

“The Return to Forever years were important for me,” Clarke said. “I know people remember it primarily as a playing group, but RTF was really one of the only times in my playing career that I got to use some of the skills I’d worked on in college--through composition, writing for orchestra and things like that. Because before we did an album, we’d always take off for a month or so to compose music. Of course, what we had to compose with was limited--electric instruments--and there were only four of us. But I think that, considering those limitations, we came up with some strong pieces.”

Clarke’s busy summer enters another phase this week when his bass playing will be stage center with the Jazz Explosion SuperBand on Thursday at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano and Saturday at the Greek Theatre. The ensemble also includes guitarist Larry Carlton, saxophonist Najee and drummer Billy Cobham.

“It’s a nice band,” Clarke said. “It actually sounds better than I thought it would. I’ve known Larry for a long time, but we’ve never played together, and he’s a real sensitive player. The music ranges from jazz and be-bop to some fusion. And we’ll do some individual stuff, some duet stuff. I’m going to do an arrangement I wrote of Charles Mingus’ ‘Goodbye, Pork-Pie Hat,’ and I’ll probably play some solo acoustic bass, which I haven’t done in a long time.”

As if two new films and an all-star band tour aren’t a full enough plate, Clarke will top things off next month with the release of “East River Drive,” his first solo album in five years. Among the players in what is essentially another all-star ensemble are George Duke, Hubert Laws, Jean-Luc Ponty, Poncho Sanchez and Gerald Albright.

“I’m just in the process of finishing it up,” Clarke said. “As it turned out, this was a good time for me to do an album. It’s definitely got more melodic stuff than some of my earlier records. When you do as much film composing as I’ve done lately, you just kind of get oiled as far as writing melodically is concerned, and it really had an impact on what I was doing.”

Clarke is a firm believer in the cross-enrichment of creativity that derives from his various activities. Able to function as a film composer with the same kind of poise and professionalism he brings to his playing and his jazz writing, he sees each form of expression triggering and stimulating positive results in the others.

“The other day I was thinking, ‘Now, what would have happened if I’d just stuck with the acoustic bass and never done anything else?’ ” he said. “And then I thought, ‘Well, what if I’d done that with the electric bass?’ Even though I never took the electric bass very seriously. I still don’t; it’s like such a little toy. Or what if I’d just concentrated on film music, or on writing jazz pieces?

“But if I’d devoted myself to any one of those things, I wouldn’t have been able to experience all the other different kinds of music I’ve been involved with--working with directors like John Singleton, playing with people like Chick Corea and George Duke, experiencing all these different kinds of music. And I’d never want to give up any of those experiences.

“Because the truth is that--with everything I’m doing--I feel much better, and more legitimate as a musician today than I’ve ever felt in my life.”