Preston Love doesn't use the term "jazz" to describe the music on his new CD, Omaha Blues. He'll tell you he's a saxophone player, a side man, a band leader, musician and composer. But jazzman, that's a phrase he's reluctant to bestow upon himself, though the folks from his hometown know him almost exclusively by the term.

"When I was young, whites applied that word to black people's music," he said from behind the kitchen table in his North Omaha home. "It's used kind of demeaningly, like the word 'ragtime.' It's not a respectful word. We used it only peripherally and jokingly. Duke Ellington despised the word. When I was with Lloyd Hunter, we'd go to little towns in Nebraska and they'd ask, 'Are you gonna play that jazz?'"

It's noon on Sunday, and Love is still in his pajamas, robe and slippers. He likes to stay up late and sleep in late -- the by-product of a lifetime of late-night gigs and late-morning wake-up calls to pack up and drive to the next town on the tour. At 79, Love can do whatever he wants, including an interview in his robe from his kitchen while his two cats, Sonny and Cher (a duo he's worked with), walk gingerly atop the refrigerator, cupboards and Love's lap. They stop in their tracks when his voice grows louder, when he makes a point that at times is accentuated by a slap on the glasstop table that sends coffee spilling onto the saucer.

Love is opinionated. He makes no apologies for his beliefs and knows that people take his perspective as egotism. Fact is, his viewpoint comes from being a part of the nation's jazz scene since before World War II.

Love's history is renowned well beyond the Omaha city limits. It's impossible here to recount his life and its effects in a way that wouldn't shortchange his achievements. To put it simply, he's played on stage and in the studio with just about every important jazz, swing and R&B legend from the past 50 years. A partial list includes Count Basie, Fats Waller, Lucky Millinder, Dizzy Gillespie, Lena Horne, Ethel Waters, Billie Holiday, Dickie Wells, Snooky Young, Buddy Tate, Jimmy Rushing, Buddy Rich, Johnny Otis, Diana Ross and The Supremes, Marvin Gaye, Tammi Terrell, Stevie Wonder, The Temptations, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, T-Bone Walker, Little Esther Phillips, Frank Zappa, Sonny and Cher, Janis Joplin, Buddy Miles, Smokey Robinson, Gladys Knight and more, more, more.

Despite those credits, however, rarely has Love been allowed to do things his way in the studio. Now for the first time, his sound has been captured the way he wants it on Omaha Blues, a just-released 10-track CD recorded at Warehouse Studios featuring his current combo and some special guests on vocals.

"Gary Foster (Love's drummer and the CD's producer), was anxious that I do a CD that reflects this stage in my career," Love said. "A lot of older musicians played into their 90s and toured. Trumpeter Doc Cheatham was in his 90s when he died. He played gigs until the very end."

Though he doesn't consider his latest recording a jazz CD (and he's quick to correct those who would), Love's sound embodies the world's definition of the art form.

So what exactly is jazz?

"No. 1, it's improvisational, impromptu, unplanned. There's no blueprint laying it out," Love said. "No. 2, all great jazz players are inventive. They're doing something original, on their own. You can't teach a great jazz player, just like you couldn't teach Picasso to paint."

But for the past 25 years, Love said, the term "jazz" has become used as a catch-all phrase to describe almost any type of instrumental-based music with saxophones and horns. "In this day, the term is especially abused in the commercial world. Everyone says 'they're jazz.' We'd never say that. We'd say we we're musicians.

"Jazz was black music. It was improvisational because we never had formal training or reading. Blacks had a music that came from our experience in this country. That extra degree of pathos -- that's what made it different from other music."

As he made his point, Love's voice began to rise. "Kenny G? Chuck Mangione? Tony Bennett? Tony is good, but not good enough to win jazz polls. Linda Ronstadt?"

It's a theme that was laced throughout our entire 3-hour interview. Love says that if he speaks his mind about jazz, blues, the Omaha music scene and music in general, his comments are viewed as petty, jealous or egotistical. "Mine is a professional opinion and endorsed by people in the East and West," he said. "They'll be putting me in a grave soon enough, and I want this behind me and on the record. I'll let time be the judge."

He has little time for today's jazz and blues, especially the Omaha variety. Recently asked by an Omaha World-Herald reporter about his opinion of "the resurgence of blues in Omaha, as highlighted by the strength of the Omaha Blues Society," Love explained that he didn't recognize their blues as authentic.

"It's like the Alamo, someone has to be the last bastion against what's happening to our music," Love said. "Blacks gave up on jazz, but the blues, that's our music. You see these white boys playing the harmonica and they're enjoying the greatest popularity. We must treat this new blues as a bastardization, a mutation. Why treat it as an art form? It's a commercial idiom to make some bucks. In no way could you confuse Joe Turner, B.B. King and Charles Brown with what these guys are doing around here and calling the blues. That's what it amounts to."

And it's not only in Omaha. Love recalled being invited to play the Quad-Cities Blues Festival in Davenport, Iowa. "They had Stevie Ray Vaughn on the program. What does he have to do with the blues?," Love asked. "They paid me to do a workshop and play a set. When I got through, they asked me to do another hour. Afterward, the head of festival said, 'Unfortunately, you're the only one who was doing blues today. You made the festival for us.' We might have been playing bad blues, but it was the blues.

"Whites just can't do blues like blacks. It's our expression. It requires something special."

Controversial? It's nothing new to Love. He speaks as strongly about music as he plays his sax. That same candid quality was the trademark of his book, "A Thousand Honey Creeks Later: My Life in Music from Basie to Motown." Published by University Press of New England in 1997, the book recalled Love's career from his school days through his return to Omaha in 1971 and beyond.

"I completed the book in 1965 and sold it to a major publisher, who made certain conditions that I declined," Love said. "I spent the next years rewriting and adding to it. If I would have given it to them then, it would have been a disaster."

He said there were 19 major reviews of the book, including mentions by Jazz Times, The New York Times and Publishers Weekly. "They said the last chapter didn't do me justice because it was bitter," Love said. "Every European magazine who reviewed it, though, said I had a right to be an egoist.

"Most guys are cautious and told me not to criticize the icons; Benny Goodman, Harry James, their jazz ain't shit to me. I didn't knock them directly -- jazz and blues must strike you at your heart, you don't have to analyze it."

When he asked what I thought of his new CD, I wasn't able to analyze it, either. I’m no jazz expert, but I know what I like, and Omaha Blues is an enjoyable, relaxed set of classic standards perfect with a big martini and a smoking jacket.

From the laid-back, sax-driven opener -- a Love composition called "Omaha Blues" -- through the old reliables like Ellington's "Satin Doll" (swinging vocals by Preston's daughter, Portia), "Stormy Weather" (Preston ably on vocals) and "When Sunny Gets Blue" (featuring smooth-voiced Ansar Muhammad), the songs create a mood you can get lost in, like a black velvet Kansas City midnight circa 1940.

Preston's "Big Time" began right here in river city. Love recalled how Omaha used to be a hub for black jazz musicians, "the triple-A league" where national bands would go to find a player to fill out their ensemble. "We had a plethora of musicians here," he said. "The great names in jazz came from all over the country. We were the suppliers of the big bands."

In the 1940s, the Midwest was the largest dance territory in the world, Love said. It was a time before television, when there were thousands of ballrooms and hundreds of bands, both white and black.

"Minnesota is the land of 10,000 lakes, and each one had a ballroom around it," Love said. "Every little Nebraska town had a dance hall and we played all of them. The black bands were treated differently than whites. We played black music and that's what they wanted to hear. They didn't expect any other band to play like we played. My band was the last of the touring territory bands. The onset of television and fast cars killed off that era."

As the years went on, Love played with big name bands and began a long, storied recording career. "In Europe, I enjoy star status," he said. "Pirated recordings made me famous there. Though the pirate recordings were completely illegal, they still listed the personnel on the sleeve, and there was Basie and I together in the picture. I'm not as big as Dizzie or Charlie Parker in Europe, but they know me."

Love played a number of European tours and every time got the star treatment. "This was exotic music to them. We we're a curio, a novelty. They viewed blacks as interesting instead of inferior. They'd break your arm before they'd let you pay for a drink and stock your dressing room with the best wine. I was getting paid $1,000 a week at a time when I was making $900 a month selling advertising for the Omaha World-Herald."

But though Love was loved in Europe and on the West Coast, he says he found things chillier back home in Nebraska. If there's one aspect of his career he's disenchanted with, it's how he's perceived in his home town.

"No man is a prophet in his own town. But I certainly deserve credit for what I've done. No Omahan has as many musical credits as I have. When you give someone your resume, you highlight the best parts. I don't exaggerate or lie about mine. I'm so careful not to exaggerate. Hometown jealousies are fatal."

A particular thorn in his side is his relationship with Joslyn Art Museum and its Jazz on the Green program. It's promoted as a "six-week outdoor concert series that spotlights a variety of jazz sounds from mainstream and fusion to swing, bebop, big band and Latin-influenced music by featuring some of the region's best jazz bands."

"I used to be the star of it back when Jan Braden ran it," Love said. "I played the last one in '89, then Jan left. When I called for my date the next year, they said they wanted me to audition. I told them they were insultingly ignorant of jazz."

Despite Joslyn, Love and his ensemble have remained busy, recently playing regularly at L&J Seafood at One Pacific Place. The new gig replaces the band's old weekend haunt, The Destiny Café, 1217 Howard St., which closed at the beginning of November. The band is still looking for a place to host its CD release party, though Preston says they've managed to land a gig for New Year's Eve, a night he insists on working.

Love also keeps busy off the stage. He's the top advertising representative for The Omaha Star and also writes a column on an irregular basis for the Omaha World Herald cleverly called "Love Notes." Why doesn't he write about jazz in the Star, a predominant North Omaha newspaper? "Blacks are not into what I do that much," Love said. "And they're not interested in history. They're into newness. It's got to be about Prince or the new hit artist or rap. If I said what I thought about rap, they'd shoot me. My writing has more credibility with whites."

His take on modern popular music is bleak. "Rap is novelty," Love said. "No music, no melody. Some of it is an insult to our integrity."

As someone who recorded with a Who's Who of R&B artists throughout the '60s and '70s, Love says the current R&B offerings are antiseptic. "Everything today is created to pander to the dollar," he said. "It has nothing to do with expression or creativity. They add tricks and gimmicks to sell records. The Motown thing, though it had lots of gimmicks too, was the last important music that will be remembered.

"The average young black in the ghetto today has a job, makes money, is educated. They don't relate to the music, to the blues. The blues and jazz has become mainly a white thing and will take on an entirely different form than the original days."

Other than his son, Norman, and a couple of other young sax players, including War Ensemble tenor saxophonist Jeremy Carter, Love says there aren't any up-and-coming jazzmen in Omaha. "Why would they be here? They're young and in their prime. I came back to Omaha with money when I was 50, and since then have played every major European jazz festival. Why stay in Omaha? There's no money or stardom to be found around here."

Omaha's dwindling jazz scene hasn't stopped Love, who has no plans for slowing down. "Running out of energy is my biggest concern," he said about getting old. "We played three gigs in a day last summer -- at Countryside Village, Council Bluffs and then at the Destiny. I told the crowd, 'This is a long day for us. It'll be 11 hours when we're through. All the young guys are very tired.' Then I fell over," he said, laughing. "Everybody got up to see if I was all right, but I was just joking around."

Losing his memory is another concern. Though it hasn't been a problem, Love says his mind "is becoming very crowded with names," and is beginning another book before he forgets any of his long, important history.

"The biggest problem about getting older is you don't have the credibility you once had," he said. "You're supposed to be an antique at 79, but I play my instrument better than ever because I wouldn't let it drop. I never will."