Jazz Reviews : A Trio in the Nat King Cole Tradition

Members of Triple Treat, who converged on Catalina’s Bar & Grill on Thursday for a four-day run, had not played together in three months, yet from the first two-bar riff of Horace Silver’s “Sister Sadie” it was as if they had never been apart.

The reason was simple: The men are Monty Alexander, Ray Brown and Herb Ellis, mature veterans (at 46 Alexander is the youngest) who, after years of intermittent collaboration, have achieved the precision of a Swiss watch. The metaphor may be a trifle misleading, since there is no semblance of clockworklike rigidity in their uniquely loose, consistently swinging performances.

As is often the case with piano-guitar-bass groups (a jazz tradition that began half a century ago with the Nat King Cole Trio) the pianist seemed to be the de facto leader, yet there was not a tune in which Brown’s bass and Ellis’ guitar failed to contribute significantly.

The blues seemed often to be a centrifugal force that drew them together, even when the 12-bar idiom was not precisely followed, as in an Alexander original, “Think Twice,” routined with tempo changes and a darting solo interlude by the composer; and again in a double-time blues that sounded like a variation on “Hi Heel Sneakers” that brought the set to a gospel-tinged finale.

At a time when so many groups shamelessly plug their albums, it was a surprise to observe that Triple Treat goes to the other extreme; not a word was spoken from start to finish, leaving listeners to wonder whether this or that tune was a standard or an original, and why certain numbers seemed vaguely familiar. The latter speculation may have applied to the delectable waltz “Always,” to which Alexander applied additions and redefinitions far beyond the harmonic imagination of Irving Berlin, who wrote this basically simple melody in 1925.

Other chestnuts in the first set were Ray Noble’s “The Very Thought of You” (1934), with a spellbinding Ray Brown solo; and “I Want to Be Happy,” a Vincent Youmans ditty to which the trio appended one of those repeated-riff tags that seemed to imply a reluctance to stop.

Ellis, for whom this instrumentation is second nature (he and Brown toured together for five years with Oscar Peterson), soloed with his accustomed age-proof, blues-informed ease. In short, Triple Treat lives up to its name and to the illustrious reputations of its components. The gig ends Sunday.