What is so Philly about the Philly sound in jazz?

What is the Philly sound in jazz?

There is no one answer, but part of one lies in Philadelphia drummers’ singular sense of sonic misdirection.

That, in any case, is the conclusion of Johnathan Blake, a Philly-born-and-raised drumming powerhouse and, as the son of the late violinist John Blake, a scion of the city’s jazz royalty.

“I think there’s this element of the Philly sound where you think we’re in a hurry to get somewhere, but we’re not,” he said.

Speaking recently at New York City’s Village Vanguard, Blake — who in minutes would take the stage as one of the few drummers to lead a group at the vaunted basement jazz venue — was clearly ready to assume a role to which he has become accustomed: global emissary of the Philly sound.

He played the role well. As the set unfolded, he betrayed little overt emotion even as his hands became a dizzying cascade of press rolls, paradiddles, and the like — conjuring as satisfying an expression of Philly-inspired, rhythmic sleight of hand as one is likely to see.

But the lineage is long and the 90-year-old Vanguard was filled with the ghosts of similarly resourceful Philly drummers.

Atop the list was Philly Joe Jones, who died in 1985. In the cool intensity he brought to the bandstand, with everyone from Miles Davis to Thelonious Monk, he could be a confounding — and commanding — presence.

“He had,” Blake said, “a sense of urgency in the way he played the ride cymbal. But it still felt relaxed. It just had this sense of drive, this sense of forward motion where he placed the cymbal beat.”

Blake’s mentor, Mickey Roker, effected a kind of illusory beat placement. “He had this energy about him like, ‘Oh, man, he’s getting to the next bar; he’s going to hit it too early,’” Blake said. “And then it would be right smack where it needed to be.”

Among today’s drummers, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson extends the lineage as bandleader on NBC, with talk-show host Jimmy Fallon first on Late Night and now The Tonight Show.

A Thompson performance, Blake said, “feels one way but looks a different way. He looks really relaxed when he’s playing, but you feel this energy that’s there and he’s still in the pocket.”

Childhood friends, Thompson and Blake learned to find the pocket as they soaked up the sounds of soul, R&B, and hip-hop swirling around them. But when the bustle of Germantown’s Berkley Street became too much, Blake retreated to his home’s basement studio, where he would delve into his father’s jazz records.

Now 48, Blake has fully assimilated those influences, emerging as a polyrhythmic whirlwind with a unique sense of groove and a mission to spread the Philly jazz gospel. Sporting a baseball cap that said “jawn,” he reserved a prominent slot in his Vanguard set for hometown hero Trudy Pitts’ “Anysha,” as tribute.

Similar tributes, he said, can be expected when he returns to Philadelphia on May 31 at the Clef Club. That spot, he said, is where much of his sound was formed.

“This feels like home,” he said, making a sweeping gesture around the semi-dark Vanguard. “That actually is home.”

The Clef Club — where Blake will be part of an all-Philly quartet led by bassist Alexander Claffy and featuring Kurt Rosenwinkel on guitar and Tim Brey on piano — has, in multiple incarnations, educated some of the world’s top jazz artists. But from a multigenerational perspective, arguably none embody the Philly sound more than Johnathan and John Blake.

“You really hear it in the Blakes,” said Lovett Hines, the legendary Clef Club educator and friend of the elder Blake, who brought his son to study with Hines more than 30 years ago.

Guthrie Ramsey, a pianist and professor of music at the University of Pennsylvania, detected in Blake and another Clef Club alumnus, saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins, a spiritually driven universality emblematic of the Philly jazz sound. They have “a kind of expansive approach to sonic spirituality that is able to transcend demographics,” Ramsey said.

Philadelphia musicians, he said, “have a very eclectic base of experience that they somehow mix into the traditions of jazz we know and think we know about.” His hyper-eclectic new album, Race Music 21: Etudes/Grooves/Interludes, functions as an inarguable case in point.

The eclecticism of Philly jazz encompasses a classical underpinning, though it can be deceptive. Despite having studied with and gained the admiration of Philadelphia Orchestra members, the late virtuosic trumpeter Lee Morgan often wrote in a style belying his rigor.

“His songs are so soulful, you think they’re simple,” said Terell Stafford, director of jazz studies at Temple University. “But they’re far from simple. There was an intellect, a complexity to them.”

That complexity was clear in a track parallel to Morgan’s that started forming in the 1950s around the late pianist and French émigré Bernard Peiffer, who in later years held court at the Borgia Café in Headhouse Square. A master of jazz-classical integration, he brought a European sensibility to the Philly sound that influenced students like Uri Caine, Sumi Tonooka, and Don Glanden, who is making a documentary on Peiffer’s life.

Caine and Tonooka, both 68, have both composed well-received works for symphony orchestras. Yet both cut their jazz teeth as teenagers playing piano with Philly stalwarts like Jones or Roker. And both have periodically documented their claims to Philly-centric jazz terrain.

Caine, in 2003, released a widely noted album with Philly bassist Christian McBride and Thompson, The Philadelphia Experiment, on which tunes like his “Grover” pay funky tribute to the Grover Washington side of the Philly jazz sound. The group will reunite at the Newport Jazz Festival on Aug. 2.

On June 27, Tonooka, who toured with John Blake for 30 years between Blake’s stints with saxophonist Washington and Philly piano titan McCoy Tyner, will release a septet album that, in musical metaphor, explores her hometown roots.

The album, Under the Surface, begins with a head-spinning solo by Johnathan Blake that, in Tonooka’s words, reflects “an openness and intensity” and “an ability to hover over the music.”

Those qualities, of simultaneous drive and detachment, may seem at odds. But in feeding a sense of misdirection, they hark back to Philly’s drumming pioneers — sustaining, in the process, an enduring version of the Philly sound in jazz.

Alex Claffy, featuring Kurt Rosenwinkel and Johnathan Blake, at 7:30 p.m. May 31 at the Philadelphia Clef Club, 736 S. Broad St. Tickets: $35. Information: clefclubofjazz.org