In the 1950s, rock music gave jazz an unceremonious shove from the spotlight. Musicians continued to push the boundaries of jazz. But they found fewer listeners, and sometimes perplexed the ones they had. This was never the case with Dave McKenna. “I don’t know if I qualify as a bona-fide jazz guy,” he once said; “I play saloon piano.”

Fans knew which saloon. In the 1980s, Dave McKenna, who died Oct. 18, could be heard spinning out standards in the bar at Boston’s Copley Plaza Hotel. Rhode Islanders often found him at Chan’s, in Woonsocket, his birthplace. And he was a fixture on Cape Cod, to which he moved in the 1960s to raise a family. There, he beguiled audiences at The Columns, in West Dennis, and the East Bay Lodge, in Osterville.

Mr. McKenna grew up in a musical family but had little formal training. He would say later that he tried to imitate records he liked. (Nat King Cole was a favorite.) Typically, he embraced a relaxed, often playful melody line with the right hand and a driving, boogie-woogie-inflected bass with the left. The result was an ensemble sound minus the ensemble. Dave McKenna was jazz piano’s version of a cheap date.

Early in his career, Mr. McKenna played with big bands, including Charlie Ventura’s and Woody Herman’s. Happily for his New England neighbors, his move to the Cape necessitated more solo work. Though he seldom left the East Coast, recordings brought him a wider audience.

Fellow musicians and critics regarded him as one of the best. But he was disarmingly modest; the pianist Marian McPartland recalled going to hear him once at a club in New York. Unnerved by the respectful silence, he leaned over to a mutual friend and pleaded: “For God’s sake talk.”

He was happy to noodle around in the background as people chattered over drinks. Yet it pleased him when a crowd worked out the theme to one of his famous medleys (songs all with the word “spring” in the title, for instance), and smiled or murmured in recognition. The medleys could be corny, but they provoked interesting associations, operating almost like a review course in the Great American Songbook.

Despite his close adherence to melody, jazz standards never became clichéd or dull in Mr. McKenna’s hands. Fluid runs and unusual chords kept things fresh. And he could out-swing Tarzan. Ballads were simple and heartfelt. He told Ms. McPartland that one of his favorite songs was “I See Your Face Before Me.” Recorded in 1986 on the Concord label, it conjures a virtuoso humming a tune to himself, hoping to do half as well onstage.