Only in New York! When Dave Colding, the scheduled performer at this week's Whole Food's Columbus Avenue weekly Friday jazz session from 5-7pm couldn't make the gig, a remarkable trio of exceptional musicians arrived in his stead, including two old timers who might have stepped down from whatever part of jazz heaven you can reach without yet dying, both in fact very much alive - the giant (in both senses) blues-jazz organist Reuben Wilson and the great (though smaller in stature) drummer Billy Kaye, now 80 years old, two names from the pantheon of jazz greatness that was formed before the first half of last century. They were ably complemented by the younger but equally resourceful guitarist Kevin McNeal, who was clearly very happy to be inspired by the company of the two old timers.

Suddenly those who weren't friends of the performers or otherwise been alerted to this unique occasion through the grapevine were surprised to find themselves in the sizable though casual space with front row seats at a concert which they would surely have been delighted to pay $100 for in a formal setting, if they could afford the money, which would have been no less than the players deserved. This was jazz played not only by consummate musicians familiar over decades with the greatest stages and the hippest clubs of jazz history - Billy Kaye was playing in London, he told me, before Ronnie Scott even had his club - but jazz royalty in a relaxed mood whose emotional warmth and casual joy in their shared, easygoing creativity passed their good mood right along to the delighted audience, who sent the love straight back with rhythmic clapping and finger snapping and, as one lady who came up to Reuben when the music was over said, thanks for "a very good time!"

The two videos below (beginning the series marked with an arrow in the center) have deficient bass but give some sense of how Reuben WIlson's fingers on a keyboard typically create a bluesy rolling 4/4 bass walk underpinning melodic riffs to intrigue, satisfy and cut through to the heart of the matter in Henry Mancini's Days of Wine and Roses and Ellington's Satin Doll, two familiar classics which the group followed with Ellington's Take the A Train for a fine finale, though unrecorded because unfortunately after our camera card ran out of space.

"Hey that was great, Reuben" said Kevin McNeal as they were packing up. "We'll have to do that again sometime!"

Their listeners should be so lucky.