"Gentlemen, I have a long drive back to Washougal," says the 68-year-old bassist with mock formality. "Let's play some music."

Three horn men step to the footlights, looking old enough that they could have purchased their '40s suits brand new. The drummer swings a mid-tempo blues, and the horns pop to attention in unison. The trombonist and trumpeter seem mic-shy, stammering tentative solos.

But the tenor saxophonist delivers a confident chorus, swaggering just behind a strident beat. By the time the vocalist, a tall man dressed in black from his patent leathers to his fez, steps forward, the band has found communion.

"I took a trip on a train," he sings in rich baritone. "And I thought about you."

This is not a sepia-toned outtake from Ken Burns' ponderously reverent Jazz. This is live from Portland, where a group of septuagenarian jazz pioneers have banded together as the Original Cats, intent on breathing old-school vitality into the new scene. Don't mistake the Cats for some Preservation Hall-style touristic nostalgia trap, either. These guys have never relinquished their love for the jam.

"Man, we're just having fun," says vocalist Sweet Baby James Benton.

Between them, these five heavyweights boast a staggering 200-plus years of experience. First cousins Bobby Bradford and Cleve Williams have been a trumpet-trombone tag team since their teens. Bass journeyman Frank de la Rosa put his stride behind Ella Fitzgerald and others. The senior among seniors at 77, tenor swing master Bobby Hernandez backed up hundreds of singers in Vegas pitcrews, including Sinatra himself.

Bradford's first stage gig was in Bill Clinton's own Hope, Ark., where he tap-danced with the Ike Wilson Band.

Soul shouter Benton is a human landmark of Portland jazz, one of the instigators of the thriving '50s scene on North Williams Avenue. Anchored by Benton's own Jimmy's House of Jazz, Williams was one of a chain of West Coast hot spots, strung together like pearls from Seattle to L.A.

Benton tells a tale of his early days on drums, adding rhythmic rim shots in synch to the gyrations of nine "lady dancers" at the Desert Room.

"I remember arguing with the guys in the band," says Benton, "to allow a certain 17-year-old drummer on the bandstand. They finally agreed, and young Mel Brown had sparks flying off the walls." Brown, Portland's reigning drum god, will sit in with the Cats sometimes.

The group's recent debut gig at Berbati's was a sweet shot of Kansas City-style soul that proved how well the big-band jam-session fabric has worn. At one point, Benton crooned the refrain to
"I Want a Little Girl," trawling the line with his head back and eyes closed. Then his eyes opened wide as his arms sketched the air, and he locked his gaze on one of the young female scenesters. As she smiled back, he cooed, "You, baby, you turn me on," with a mix of teen testosterone bluster and Barry White's knowing sensuality.

The horns swelled beneath him. He sailed the refrain again and again, to a climactic and sublime blues--raw and laced with the bittersweet elegance of a man who knows he can't quite quench every appetite anymore, but he can try.

By the closer "Flip, Flop and Fly," the group had the crowd standing and singing along on the chorus--"I don't care if I die"--and believing it.