Harold Danko was playing in an Army band with musicians from the esteemed Juilliard and Eastman schools of music when he asked himself, "Why do I still suck?"

For whatever the jazz pianist accomplished during his days at Youngstown State University and with the Army band, he was more cognizant of his deficiencies.

During a career playing with people such as Woody Herman, Gerry Mulligan Mel Torme and Chet Baker, in live performance and on recordings, Danko, 54, has continually asked himself a form of that question.

The Brookfield native said he has never felt entirely comfortable with his skills, and hopes he never does. Not wanting to "stylize" himself to a certain genre of jazz or way of playing, he's open to other ideas.

"You're never really satisfied," said the 1965 graduate of Brookfield High School. "That's the artistic thing. It's not to mean you're miserable, hopefully. You have a realistic appreciation of your talents, and I'm thankful and glad that people hire me."

Danko admitted to bouts of laziness at times, but his love of the piano has never wavered.

Parents Michael and Susan Danko, who have both since died, did not force him to play the piano, but expected him to try it.

"I did take lessons, I would say, with moderate success as a youngster," he said. "I was certainly more interested in baseball, riding my bike and getting into trouble. I wouldn't always practice."

But after his parents sold the family piano, he felt a gap in his life.

"I didn't want to practice this thing, but I kind of liked having it there," he said. "I begged them to get a piano."

His parents compromised by renting one.

Danko was already interested in jazz and teacher Gene Rush got him trying to pull piano parts off records. Rush also steered him to Dolores Fitzer for classical training, which was needed to get into YSU, from which he graduated in 1969.

While he planned to attend graduate school, the Army got him first. He was able to pick where he would be based, so he chose New York.

The work wasn't strenuous -- generals' parties and parades -- and allowed Danko not only to ask himself why he sucked, but to do something about it. He learned how to play chords all over the piano, scales in every key, invert chords and other piano tricks.

He called the Army "a good graduate school" and it allowed him to survey the New York jazz scene. Upon discharge, he planned to return to grad school.

"A few days before I was getting out of the Army I got this call from Woody Herman," Danko said. "I said, 'How do you know about me? I'm sitting in the Army.' He said, 'Joe LaBarbara's our drummer.'"

LaBarbara was an Army buddy.

Although Danko thought of Herman, who was about 60 at the time, as "the oldest guy in the world," Herman taught him plenty about professionalism, mentally preparing for a gig and overcoming fatigue and other negative factors when it came time to hit the stage.

"Woody started out in Vaudeville," said Danko, who toured and recorded with Herman in 1972. "He just knew about show business. He was such a pro. I look back on that and think, 'Wow, what an opportunity.'"

Although grateful for the gig, Danko didn't feel that he was up to the task of playing with someone as renowned as Herman, who could attract top-notch players. Danko practiced all the harder to try to feel that he belonged in the band.

Herman eased the transition in a subtle way.

"His real genius was how to use guys in the band," said Danko, of Pittsford, N.Y. "It still sounded like his band, but from different new guys. Whatever perspective I added for the energy of the way I played the piano, he'd mold the band a little more to that. You find out, 'Wow, I belong to this.'"

After leaving Herman, Danko settled in New York and was able to find work pretty easily. Telephone numbers got passed around at gigs and Danko's performances drew new interest.

"The merchandising and marketing was what you did on the bandstand," he said. "I also was available. I worked pretty cheap, I think. I'd just take the next gig, whatever it was. I was very happy to be playing, very happy to be on the road, very happy to be on a bus. Whatever it took to play the next gig, I did that for a lot of years."

Some of the greats of jazz were among the callers. He played with Chet Baker in the mid-'70s, and just before Baker's death in 1987.

"Chet was just amazing, the spell he could create," Danko said. "He had a wonderful thing with his audience, very intimate."

He called Lee Konitz the eternal searcher.

"He's trying to look for the next experience that will get him to play something he hasn't thought of before," said Danko, who met Konitz when they ran into each other while walking their dogs.

Hooking up with the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra spawned a confidence that Danko hadn't felt before.

"I wanted to play music whenever he played the trumpet," Danko said of Jones. "There was something that made me want to accompany him and do whatever. He would encourage the solos. That was really important."

As Danko's career progressed as a sideman, he pursued his own live and recording projects as a solo player and band leader.

"What I was finding out, like a lot of guys found out, is that when I was doing my own gigs, I was either breaking even or losing money," he said. "My profile as a sideman was such that I could certainly make more money being a sideman, and travel better."

At times, playing for others hurt the airing of his own music.

Danko, who has written columns for magazines such as Keyboard and books on technique, was playing with Liza Minnelli in Toronto and tried to score an on-air interview with a jazz station.

"'Oh, you're here with your band?'" the disc jockey asked. "I said, 'No, I'm here with Liza Minnelli.' They canceled me out."

The implication was that Danko was a show group player instead of a serious jazz artist, he said.

"You attempt to keep doing your own thing. To earn a living sometimes, you're side-stepping some of your own progress."

But that diversity in being able to play jazz and more showy types of music is becoming more common and demanded, and has proven fruitful in what has become his main job: teaching at Eastman in Rochester, N.Y., where he has been associate professor in jazz and contemporary media since 1998.

"Over the course of the last 15, 20 years, jazz has taken on kind of a legitimacy. It's very important. It's really central to the study of all kinds of music. Classical violinists might find themselves playing in a show. Classical pianists might find themselves doing something that's not classical. Jazz has, unbelievably enough, become part of conservatory training."

While he still performs live and records with the Harold Danko Quartet for SteepleChase Records, Danko is finding satisfaction from monitoring young players who are looking to achieve some of the things that he has. He seeks out the "maniacs" at Eastman and relishes his time with them.

"I want to leave a rehearsal on a Thursday and I want to see those guys in the room when I come back on Monday, but they've been there the whole time," said the father of an 8-year-old son and husband of a concert pianist.

Teaching reminds him of certain aspects of playing that he wants to remember when he sits down at the piano. If he wasn't teaching his students about improvisation techniques and the importance of learning scales, "I might not do them myself."

You can e-mail Herald Staff Writer Joe Pinchot at jpinchot@sharon-herald.com