GOOD OLD DAYS:

He played with Frank Sinatra in 1946, his popular trio played in Doris Day’s first starring movie, and in the 1940s and 1950s he packed nightclubs around Los Angeles. Even in the last decade, he was playing gigs at the Balboa Bay Club to a group of devoted regulars.

But in December, jazz pianist and singer Page Cavanaugh fell silent forever. He died at 86 of kidney failure, said his bassist, Phil Mallory.

Cavanaugh spent a decade playing in Newport Beach up through last summer with his Page Cavanaugh Trio, bringing back the old times, said Henry Schielein, president of the club and a friend of Cavanaugh’s since 1957.

“I met Page for the first time 52 years ago,” he said. “I worked in the Statler Hilton [now the Wilshire Grand Hotel] in Los Angeles at the same time he was a piano player there, and I brought him down to Newport Beach.”

In addition to being a personal friend who got him a signed package from Doris Day as a gift, Schielein said Cavanaugh had been a favorite of the star-studded crowd who made the Bay Club such a hot spot in the 1950s.

“It was far more elegant than it is now,” he said. “I was very fortunate to catch the final part of those elegant days, at places like the Cocoanut Grove and Ambassador Hotel. People really dressed up and wined and dined and enjoyed good music, and the service was first-class.”

Though the two fell out of touch after that heady time, a chance connection got Cavanaugh got back in touch with Schielein: Mallory said his mother lives in Corona Del Mar, and word leaked back through her that Cavanaugh was still playing.

“He heard about us and booked us,” Mallory said. “We did a concert there first, Henry was just blown away, and he gave us a regular night. It was great, except the traffic got worse every year. One of Page’s lines was, ‘I’m gonna sue the 405.’”

Up until he took a bad fall in 2007, Cavanaugh was still playing away with the Page Cavanaugh Trio, even celebrating his 85th birthday at the Balboa Bay Club.

To the last, friends said, he tried to entertain his audience — not just with tunes, but with stories and a lifetime of knowledge about his music.

“He was a freak about who wrote the tunes and how they were connected to all the other tunes: what movie they were in, or what show they were in,” Mallory said.

“He knew how to personalize it. He could go, ‘Oh you want Gershwin? Here’s an hour worth of Gershwin.’ Or he could do an hour worth of Cole Porter. We could really weave a spell.”

MICHAEL ALEXANDER may be reached at (714) 966-4618 or at michael.alexander@latimes. com.