Homecoming for Drummer Hamilton

Drummer Chico Hamilton is one who’ll tell you Thomas Wolfe may have known what he was talking about when he titled his classic “You Can’t Go Home Again.”

Born in Los Angeles 71 years ago, Hamilton, who was a member of the original Gerry Mulligan quartet that also featured the great Chet Baker, hasn’t played his native turf in ages. “I’ve been trying to bring my band out here, but nobody wanted to hire me,” he said.

So Hamilton, who resides in Manhattan, came West as a single, and is appearing with his former bandmate, reedman Buddy Collette, tonight and Saturday at the Jazz Bakery and Sunday at Wheeler Hot Springs in Ojai, (805) 646-8131. Bassist Richard Simon and guitarist Doug MacDonald round out the foursome.

“We’re going to create some moods,” Hamilton said of the performances. “As opposed to playing music, we are going to make some,” he quipped.

Hamilton and Collette go back more than 50 years. They played on the thriving Central Avenue scene here in the 1940s, and both were part of the drummer’s mid-’50s quintet that was one of the most unique, and most popular, jazz bands of its era. The group’s instrumentation included reeds, cello and guitar, the latter two played by Fred Katz and Jim Hall, respectively, and while the ensemble’s tunes were soft and sensuous, the band also had a swinging undercurrent.

Asked why he selected a cellist, Hamilton said it was serendipitous. “I had originally intended to use a French horn and had John Graas in mind, but he died,” Hamilton said. “I had known Fred when I was working with Lena Horne, so I asked him. Buddy was the only reedman who I thought could handle the various instruments.” Jim Hall, one of the most acclaimed guitarists in jazz, was working in a music store when he joined the quintet.

The band’s first engagement was at a somewhat less than savory establishment in Long Beach known as the Strollers. “It was a razzmatazz kind of place that was a hangout for sailors,” said the drummer. “We were supposed to stay two weeks and we stayed eight or nine months.”

Eventually, Hamilton recorded with the group for Pacific Jazz Records and Warner Bros. Records, and appeared with it in the films “The Sweet Smell of Success,” with Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis, and “Jazz on a Summer’s Day,” which was filmed at the 1958 Newport (R.I.) Jazz Festival.

Hamilton, who worked 48 to 50 weeks a year with the group, gradually changed his ensemble’s instrumentation, emerging in 1963 with another all-star unit that featured reedman Charles Lloyd, guitarist Gabor Szabo and trombonist George Bohanon. “Once in a while you get the right guys at the right place at the right time,” Hamilton said of the band that was known for its flavorful version of Lloyd’s “Forest Flower.”

The drummer’s latest ensemble, Euphoria, has an album out on Soul Note Records. The label also released “Reunion,” an album featuring ex-quintet members Collette, Katz, guitarist John Pisano and original bassist Carson Smith.

In the Bins: “Exclusively for My Friends” (Verve) captures several trios led by pianist Oscar Peterson between 1963 and 1968. The mainstream ace plays “Sax No End,” “In a Mellotone” and “Tin Tin Deo,” and among the bandmates are bassist Ray Brown and Sam Jones and drummer Ed Thigpen. . . . Trumpeter Maynard Ferguson’s “Footpath Cafe” (Avion Records) documents his Big Bop Nouveau band live in concert in Belgium. A highlight: a torrid version of the Ari Barrozo standard “Brazil.”