Reunion! Trio heads to Bay Area for shows devoted to their heroes

After far too many years away from Bay Area stages, guitarist Bruce Forman is back, playing with all the poise and improvisational daring-do that made him a San Francisco mainstay from the mid-1970s through the late aughts.

A February four-night run at Keys Jazz Bistro brought back memories of his North Beach ubiquity back when he could be found at lamented clubs like Milestones, Keystone Korner, the Jazz Workshop, and Jazz at Pearl’s, dispensing high-velocity bebop runs with casual panache. But his upcoming gigs with bass master John Clayton and drum maestro Jeff Hamilton, the musical confidants who co-lead the Clayton Hamilton Jazz Orchestra, are designed to trigger an even deeper well of historical reminiscing.

Assembled to pay tribute to their mentors — guitarist Barney Kessel, bassist Ray Brown, and drummer Shelly Manne, who recorded a series of popular albums for Los Angeles-based Contemporary Records in the 1950s as the Poll Winners — The Reunion! Trio plays Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society Sunday afternoon and Kuumbwa Jazz Center Monday night.

The group reflects the deeply intertwined cross-generational ties between the Reunion! triumvirate and the Poll Winners, who were some of the most esteemed and recorded players in jazz history. More than era-defining jazz artists, Kessel, Brown and Manne were consummate studio musicians who played on thousands of sessions encompassing seminal bebop tracks, Beach Boys hits, and Henry Mancini film scores. Brown and Kessel were also founding members of the Oscar Peterson Trio.

Forman was a rising force in the late 1970s when he first connected with Kessel, who died in 2004 a dozen years after a major stroke ended his career. The Great American Music Hall was regularly presenting jazz masters, and when Kessel or Joe Pass played a concert they often paired it with an afternoon workshop.

“Barney took a liking to me and he’d hire me to play with him, two guitars, bass and drums,” Forman said. “We toured in Europe and the States. And the last gig I played with him was at Bach.”

Hamilton and Clayton were gaining notoriety as the young guns in a blazing trio led by the Jamaican piano great Monty Alexander in 1975 when Hamilton first met Manne, who also owned and ran the essential Hollywood jazz club Shelly’s Manne-Hole.

“I kept asking him advice, and Shelly was so kind and encouraging,” said Hamilton, who had already met and bonded with Brown. He was playing with Woody Herman’s big band when he got a call from Brown about taking over the drum chair in the L.A. Four, a chamber jazz group recording prolifically for Concord Records that the bassist founded with Manne, Brazilian guitarist Laurindo Almeida, and Bud Shank on flute and alto sax.

“You want me to replace Shelly Manne?!” Hamilton said. “It turned out that Shelly and Ray had gotten together and decided I was the right person for the spot. That was my move to L.A.”

Meanwhile, Clayton had already put in years shadowing Brown, ever since he was a jazz-dabbling 16-year-old Venice High student in the late 1960s who took Brown’s extension course, “which really just blew my head open,” Clayton told me in a 1993 interview. “I’d hang out at Donte’s and Shelly’s Manne-Hole and all the other local clubs to follow Ray Brown as much as possible.”

Forman and Hamilton first played together on vocalist Mark Murphy’s classic 1981 album “Bop for Kerouac,” but it wasn’t until several years later, when Ray Brown brought the guitarist into his West L.A. jazz club Loa, that they really got to stretch out together.

“Ray loved Bruce Forman,” said Hamilton, who returns to the Bay Area May 27 for a gig with his trio at Piedmont Piano Company. “When he had Loa he gave Bruce a weekend. It was just three of us and it was beautiful.”

Forman brought Hamilton and Clayton together for 2021’s “Reunion!” a recording project that featured each of them playing their mentor’s instrument. He’s still touring with Kessel’s guitar, though Manne’s kit doesn’t travel and Clayton doesn’t always bring Brown’s bass on the road.

Rather than focusing on standards associated with the Poll Winners, Forman wanted to interpret tunes related to significant recording sessions that Brown, Manne and Kessel played on.

“The concept of this record was the kids getting together and playing their parents’ instruments,” Forman said. “There’s no real attempt at tributizing them. But Barney was a mentor of mine, and we did a lot of my playing and I feel like that his contributions have never really been acknowledged.”

Contact Andrew Gilbert at [email protected].

REUNION! TRIO

When & where: 4:30 p.m. April 16 at Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society, Half Moon Bay; $35-$45 (livestream $10); bachddsoc.org; 7 p.m. April 17 at Kuumbwa Jazz Center, Santa Cruz; $42-$47.25; 831-427-2227, www.kuumbwajazz.org.