HASTAY AND WEISS: The Jazz Players Next Door

By Baylis Greene

When the first cold, wet weeks of April gave way to the month's better half, Peter Martin Weiss and Jane Hastay welcomed the sun's warmth one Friday by throwing open the doors of their house in Springs to let the air in.  The married couple laid out a spread of tuna and chicken salad and cold cuts from the Springs General Store. Pretty homey stuff for a couple of jazz musicians. And they like it that way.

Mr. Weiss, who plays double bass, was part of the Houston Person-Etta Jones Quintet for 10 years. The singer Etta Jones was probably best known for "Don't Go to Strangers," which was a hit in 1960, though her fame was consistently outpaced by the high regard of her peers. Houston Person, a tenor saxophonist, has scores of records to his credit. "Houston Person was also the business manager," Mr. Weiss said. "They were a perfect complement for each other. Etta didn't want to deal with business, she just wanted to sing. . . we toured all over the world," Mr. Weiss said, "which was great."

They moved to Springs six or so years ago from a brownstone apartment in Brooklyn. "Neither of us had owned a house before," Mr. Weiss said. They did what members of the middle class often do in that situation; they got a little family help for a down payment and made the leap. And just in time, what with South Fork real estate the way it is. Now the sensibly sized house on a cul-de-sac "has tripled in value," Mr. Weiss said, at once kidding and delivering a deadly accurate assessment.  "It's a quiet life here," said Ms. Hastay, who is soft-spoken and hails from Minnesota. "I like the pace."

"We like nature, so we go on walks," her husband said. When they get back, their grey tabby, Bebop, awaits. And Mr. Weiss enjoys working on projects around the house: refinishing furniture, for instance. Ms. Hastay's brush, too, has known turpentine. She refinished their house's biggest piece: her 1924 Knabe baby grand piano. Mr. Weiss's 100-year-old bass, made in Germany based on a Stradivarius design, keeps it company in a corner of the living room, its own curvy wood left markedly worn for fear of its sound being altered by new varnish.

While they were in New York, the couple took advantage of it. They got master's degrees from the Manhattan School of Music, for one thing. And, almost always separately, they played at places like the Village Vanguard, the Five Spot, the Lenox Lounge - Ms. Hastay with the Kit McClure Big Band and the drummer Michael Carvin, Mr. Weiss with the trumpeter Nat Adderley and the alto saxophonist Hank Crawford, among many others. At the Blue Note, Mr. Weiss said, he and the Person-Jones group had a six-year engagement.

Ms. Hastay, who graduated from Mills College in Oakland, Calif., lived in the Bay Area for more than a decade. At clubs in San Francisco during those years, she accompanied the singer Denise Perrier, with whom she also later recorded. Ms. Perrier, it so happened, was an old friend of Ms. Jones. In 1991 Etta Jones passed through town. "They had this wonderful bass player." Ms.  Hastay joined the musicians at a fog town diner after the show, and she and Mr. Weiss hit it off, talking till daybreak. "They got back in the van after that night and were gone," Ms. Hastay said. But she had thought to give her new friend her card - one without her address on it, which temporarily flummoxed the bass player. "You know how clueless guys can be about these things," he said, leaning back in his chair.

When Mr. Weiss finally ascertained the address after four or five months of no contact, a correspondence was begun. "When I got her first letter back," Mr. Weiss said, "I knew I wanted to marry her." One day in 1992, after innumerable two-hour phone conversations, the same put-upon van again crossed the nation on tour, depositing an eager bassist back in San Francisco. He proposed up in the Marin Headlands, the park north of the Golden Gate Bridge with views down to the city.

For being indirectly responsible for their meeting, and for other reasons, Mr. Weiss speaks fondly of Ms. Jones, who died in 2001. "She was a very loving person. She didn't have fans, she had friends. Etta Jones orated," he said, awed. "There was storytelling in every verse. Now, I have her in my head a lot when I sing; her phrasing.”

Their instrumental release "Never Never Land" and Mr. Weiss's "Bass Hits" came out in the second half of the 1990s. "Bass Hits" has the flute and saxophone player Frank Wess and the drummer Kenny Washington helping out, as well as, given its title, a playful cover with an illustrated Mr. Weiss in front of a baseball diamond. Near him, a baseball floats as if just swatted by a double bass's big lumber.

As exhibited at Pierre's at the end of April, the two usually sprinkle some bossa novas in with standards and jazzed-up show tunes from the great American songwriters of the 1930s to the '50s - Duke Ellington, Richard Rodgers, George Gershwin. At a restaurant like Pierre's, or at the Maidstone Arms in East Hampton, where the duo will return next week, they provide background music to dinnertime conversation, and something akin to a side player's gentle self-effacement takes hold. "You learn a lot being a side person; I recommend it to young musicians," Mr. Weiss said. "When you accompany a leader, a vocalist or trumpeter," Ms. Hastay added, "it's their feature." "You're there to make them sound good," her husband finished. "There's an art to it."

The couple's Friday lunch wound down, and they began clearing the dining room table in time for the afternoon's lessons. As he spoke, one of Ms. Hastay's students sneaked in early, sat at the piano, and started softly playing - a minor-key complement to the clinking music of domesticity coming from the kitchen.