Tom Rigney and Flambeau play zydeco, blues, folk, boogie-woogie and none of that traditional jazz.

Yet Rigney, of Berkeley, will take the spotlight at today's opening parade for the 38th Sacramento Jazz Festival and Jubilee.

He will be the guy who looks like Clint Eastwood, wearing the sash proclaiming him 2011 Emperor of the Festival.

"No one noticed the one thing I don't play is traditional jazz," joked Rigney, 63, a fiddler, bandleader and composer playing for the seventh year at the Sacramento festival, which this year is expected to draw 65,000 people over four days.

A departure from the jazz musicians usually named emperor, Rigney embodies the festival's musical diversification over the past several years.

"Having Tom as emperor represents the fact that it's not your grandfather's jazz festival anymore," said Greg Willett, executive director of the Sacramento Traditional Jazz Society, which puts on the festival. "We have everything from rock 'n' roll to zydeco to blues to Latin. It is pretty open-ended."

Rigney, an advocate for crossing musical boundaries, likes that the festival introduces blues and zydeco to fans of traditional jazz and vice versa. Those straw-hatted grandfathers who still come primarily for Dixieland jazz rank among Rigney's favorite audience members.

"They are hard-core music lovers," Rigney said. "They have been going to see live music for 60 years, and they are still open to new experiences."

Though clearly a festival favorite, Rigney still was touched, and surprised, to be named emperor.

"They are about to find out what happens when you confer absolute power on a person like me," he said with a laugh.

Rigney's whole musical career was unexpected. A one-time Harvard Ph.D. student in fine arts, Rigney was forced away from his studies by his conscientious-objector status during the Vietnam War. He took up an instrument for the first time, at age 24, while at home in California fulfilling his civilian-service commitment at a local hospital.

"I bought a $50 violin and started scratching away at it," he said. "It just took hold of my consciousness."

He gave up Ph.D. work for the informal study of bluegrass and Western swing. A music career seemed a long shot, but Rigney was raised with an in-house expert in following unlikely dreams.

His late father, Bill Rigney, was a major-league ballplayer, the Giants' first manager when they came to San Francisco from New York, and later, an executive with the A's.

"My dad's example instilled in me very clearly: Find something you love to do, then don't let anybody talk you out of the possibility you might be able to do it," said Rigney, whose 23-year-old daughter, Annie, combines Rigney athleticism and artistry as a modern dancer in Tel Aviv. "How many people become major-league baseball players and then become managers?"

Like baseball, music requires abundant time on the road. Tom Rigney toured first with his Western swing band Back in the Saddle, then behind the accordionist and bandleader Queen Ida. That gig awakened Rigney to the joys of Louisiana dance music.

"I just kind of got hooked on those infectious rhythms," Rigney said.

Those rhythms underscored the Sundogs, the "swamp-beat boogie" band in which Rigney shared frontman duties with best friend Joe Paquin, who died in 2009 after a long battle with cancer. Flambeau's latest CD is dedicated to Paquin, who played in Flambeau for a bit.

"We were too mixed up in each other's music for him not to do that," Rigney said.

Rigney is the clear focus of Flambeau, writing music, singing some songs and letting his electric fiddle sing on others.

"He just has a great stage presence," said Dave Fleming, manager of the Palms Playhouse in Winters, where Flambeau has performed the past two New Year's Eves. "He is a great fiddler, and he can compose in Cajun and other traditional styles that are really beautiful and energizing."

His sideman experience makes him a benevolent leader, Flambeau pianist Caroline Dahl said.

"He doesn't ask you to do anything he wouldn't do himself – he knows what it is like to work in someone else's band," Dahl said. "He also brings good wine" to gigs, she added with a laugh.

Rigney's roots-music mash-up creates a sound like no other. His physical resemblance to another performer cannot be helped.

Rigney has been told he looks like Eastwood, a musician and composer himself, "about every day for the past 25 years," he said.

He met Eastwood at a flood-relief benefit in Monterey, after an event organizer, excited by the resemblance, rushed Rigney over to meet the actor and director.

"He was in a conversation, and she sort of thrust me into his line of vision," Rigney said. Eastwood responded with signature laconic charm, Rigney recalled.

"He said, 'Geez, the family is bigger than I thought!' "

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