No one can accuse Berkeley saxophonist Hal Stein of rushing into the recording studio.

Last year, at the age of 77, he released "Spirit!," his first album as a leader in five decades, and it's the work of an artist who hasn't lost a step. Brawny and bruising on uptempo pieces, sensual and insinuating on ballads, Stein's imposing sound is still huge and pliant. While there's no mistaking his roots in the early days of bebop, the New Jersey-native is always looking for new ideas.

Rather than sticking to tried and true standards, Stein announces his intentions to wander far afield with the opening track, "Shuffle Montgomery," a swaggering piece by Herbie Nichols, the brilliant but obscure pianist and composer who became a cult figure after his death in 1963. "He's played the body of standards that all jazz musicians need to know for 55 or 60 years, and yet he's not content to sit with that," says pianist Lee Bloom during a recent interview with Stein at The Jazzschool in downtown Berkeley. "He's always looking for new material."

In addition to Bloom, who co-produced "Spirit!" with Todd Phillips, the session features the sterling bassist John Wiitala and drummer Danny Spencer, who have played with Stein for the past decade. Bloom is also working on a documentary about the saxophonist, a film that looks to explore the post-World War II scene the nurtured him as a young player, when New York City was overflowing with brilliant jazz musicians.

From Weehawken to New York's Fabled 52nd Street

Something of a prodigy, the saxophonist came of age during the tail end of the big band era, playing with a string of top orchestras, including bands led by Gene Krupa, Artie Shaw, Buddy Morrow, Benny Carter and Claude Thornhill. With many top musicians serving in the military, there were plenty of opportunities for young players, especially if they could read music. And Stein was more daring than most teenagers, making his way from Weehawken, New Jersey to Manhattan's fabled 52nd Street, where he sat in with pianist Errol Garner and tenor saxophone giant Don Byas.

"It was open to young musicians but maybe people were intimidated, so every week I was just about the only one to sit in," Stein says. "Don Byas was very friendly, and he gave me tips. I didn't know much at all. But word about me started to spread and before long I was featured at my own concert at Town Hall with Teddy Wilson playing piano for me. That was 1945, and I was billed as the 16-year-old wonder, but actually I was 17."

Known by his friends as "Bull Moose" for his formidable sound, Stein went on to study at Julliard, where he cemented his friendship with Phil Woods, another budding altoist drawn to 52nd Street. While Woods is the one who went on to worldwide fame, he says that back then it was Stein who was the leader.

"One of the Real Soldiers of Jazz... An Unsung Hero"

"Hal Stein was my first guru," says Woods, 75. "He's one of the real soldiers of jazz. Sometimes people don't realize how important Hal Stein is, but he was there, at the center of the storm, at the heart of the kilm as it were. We were in Juilliard together, and we saw John Cage lecture and heard Charles Ives. He was the first bebop saxophone player I really got a chance to hang out with up close. He had a year or two on me, and at that age a couple of years can make all the difference. He was more exposed to the New York scene. I learned a lot with him, and I'm still learning from Hal Stein. He's one of the great unsung heroes of the music business, from my point of view."

Drafted into the Army in the early 1950s, Stein served in Japan, where he played every night with an unknown Japanese pianist named Toshiko Akiyoshi in the house band of a merchant seamen's club called The Porthole. When he got out of the service he attended the Manhattan School of Music on the GI Bill, and by the mid-50s he was working with vibraphonist Teddy Charles and legendary bassist/composer Charles Mingus, an experience that was as challenging personally as it was musically.

"The band was very good, and although Mingus was a wonderful musician, he picked on the piano player and destroyed his self-confidence," Stein says. "He made a mistake the first night and Mingus yelled at him in front of the audience, humiliated him and made it worse. Every night at the same place, he not only made a mistake there, he made it other places. If I had stayed with Mingus I could have made some records with him, but I had to quit."

An Enduring Passion for Music

Stein did make a number of highly respected recordings, including a session with tenor saxophonist Al Cohn and "Four Altos" on Prestige, featuring Woods, Gene Quill and Sahib Shihab, a 1957 album that's still in print. When the jazz scene started slowing down, Stein became an educator, taking a position in Harlem. He first moved to the Bay Area in 1971, and quickly found a job teaching in the Berkeley public school system.

His teaching career jumped to the next level in the mid-80s, after he won a grant to teach jazz in three Danville-area high schools. The visibility helped him land a job at Stanford University, where he still works.

All the while he's continued to develop as a musician, playing every day and exploring new material. He can't really explain why he hasn't recorded since then, except to say that no one's been knocking on his door. One sign of his enduring passion for music is that he's returned to his original horn over the past few years, playing alto as well as tenor.

"Each saxophone has its own problems," Stein says. "Some days I just practice the alto, some days just the tenor. Music is what I do. I don't have any great vacation plans."

Andrew Gilbert, a writer based in the Berkeley area, covers jazz for several outlets, including the San Jose Mercury News, San Diego Union-Tribune, Boston Globe, JazzTimes, and KQED's California Report.