Ventura County Weekend : SOUNDS : Bassist Combines Jazz Tradition With Skillful Immediacy : Ray Brown will bring his broad experience and his trio to Wheeler Hot Springs.

At present, the jazz field is rich with genre-defining veterans and dazzling up-and-comers. But where do you turn to find the source, where historical roots and current swing mastery meet?

One such place is in the playing of Ray Brown, the acclaimed 68-year-old bassist who is bringing his trio to Wheeler Hot Springs on Sunday. Brown is a humble-yet-mighty sort who embodies a living jazz legacy, referring to an estimable past even as he makes each present-tense, real-time note count.

Matters of swing and panache aside, it’s easy to be wowed by Brown’s resume, which includes work with Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald--to whom he was married from 1948 to 1952--Oscar Peterson’s trio, Jazz at the Philharmonic, the Modern Jazz Quartet and countless others. He headed out west in the ‘60s, working in film and television, while always maintaining some jazz activity.

In the last several years, though, Brown has been working with a celebrated trio that includes the brilliant young pianist Benny Green. That trio, with drummer Greg Hutchinson, will hit Wheeler Hot Springs on Sunday, before starting a six-night stint at Catalina Bar and Grill in Hollywood on Tuesday.

There was only a hint of road-fatigue in his voice when Brown did an interview from his home in Los Angeles, just after returning from an Asian tour. With Brown’s increased presence, through gigging and his recordings for Telarc, the latest of which is “7 Steps to Heaven,” it seems that the bassist-leader’s star is rising. Is he working more these days?

“I don’t know if I’m working more,” he said. “It’s more quality work, I think. When you get my age, you can’t lay off that bass for too long. It will whip you. You can’t just say ‘I’m going to work two weeks and lay off three weeks ‘cause I don’t wanna’ work.’ ”

His current trio is a model of cross-generational sympatico , between the tradition-versed, thirty-something pianist Green and the venerable bassist. Brown, always bending an ear to young talent, remembers going to hear Green for the first time when the pianist was playing in a duo with Christian McBride (the young bassist with whom Brown has played on special occasions, such as the 1994 Monterey Jazz Festival).

“They had finished, but I came in, and they played for me for about a half-hour, which was great. I really enjoyed [Green]. When you hear a young player who has talent, you make mental notes for yourself, thinking ‘if I ever need somebody, I’ll hook this guy up.’ ”

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Green, said Brown, “has what you need to have a good trio. He’s got the ingredients. He can play ballads, blues; he can play fast; he can play in all the keys. He’s got good ears. He’s got good imagination. That’s quite a ball of wax there.”

Having now played with Green for three years, Brown feels that their rapport has reached a high level. “I think it’s kind of automatic. The longer you play together, the more things come together,” he said. “You started feeling where a guy is going, besides just hearing it. It’s a familiarity thing, and it works well.”

Did Brown develop his taste for working in piano trios while working with Oscar Peterson? “First, we have to clear something up,” he said. “We bass players, especially those of us who are leaders, don’t like you to call them piano trios. So you fix that.” Brown laughed, but obviously was a bit riled by the issue. “Any band that has a tuba in it can be a tuba band. As long as there’s a piano there, it’s a piano trio. It doesn’t work like that. Why is that term used? You hear this all the time.”

The journalist rephrases the question: How does Brown feel about that particular combination of instruments? “It’s my favorite instrumentation to work in, and I’ve worked in a lot of sizes and styles of groups. I think that’s my favorite. Piano, bass and guitar would be a close second,” he said.

“In a group of that size, first of all, the bass can assume many roles. If you’re in a big band, you’re backup. In a trio, you get to do a lot of things. You can play time, you can play accompaniment, you can play solos, you can play the melody. There are a lot of things you can do, and you’re not relegated to any one thing.”

As a young bassist, Brown hit an impressive stride from the get go, with a professional career that began in the be-bop hothouse of New York in the mid-’40s. Brown had gone there fresh out of high school from his hometown of Pittsburgh and was hired by Dizzy Gillespie to join the ranks of bop icons that included Charlie Parker and Max Roach.

“Going to a rehearsal and listening to Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie play is a wonderful, frightening experience,” Brown said. “There were no deadheads in that band. It was Bud Powell on piano, Max Roach on drums, and then we picked up Milt Jackson a few weeks later.”

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Working with Gillespie, Brown said, “put me in an echelon that was nice to get into. Once you get in there and you can survive, musically, it’s a plus.”

One of Brown’s recent albums is the first in a series he has launched under the umbrella title “Some of My Best Friends Are . . .,” befitting a musician who has, over the years, amassed many friends, old and young. The first project is dedicated to pianists, including some dazzling tracks with Ahmad Jamal, Benny Green, the Italian pianist Dado Moroni, the young Geoff Keezer and Oscar Peterson.

The album works as a fascinating study in contrast, between the various stylists within a straight-ahead milieu. “Nobody plays like the other guy. They’re all their own thing.”

If Brown’s trio is a career foundation at this point, a source of regular work, he continues to stretch out into other projects, including orchestral projects with Lalo Schifrin. Music is a many-hatted thing for him.

“It keeps you interested,” he said. “I think it’s good for anybody.”

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DETAILS

* WHAT: Ray Brown Trio in a dinner-concert.

* WHEN: Sunday, prix fixe dinner starts at 5:30 p.m., with the concert starting at 7:30.

* WHERE: Wheeler Hot Springs, 16825 Maricopa Highway in Ojai.

* HOW MUCH: Tickets are $50.

* FYI: 646-8131.