It would be difficult to determine when Frank Wess first heard the blues. The great tenor saxophonist, who is appearing this week at the Village Vanguard with his quintet, was born in Kansas City in 1922. After moving to Washington, D.C., as a teenager, he studied music at Howard University and remembers hearing Count Basie and meeting his hero, Lester Young. Since the concept of jazz education was many decades away, Mr. Wess’s training was in classical music. Even so, as a black man growing up in Kansas City in the ’20s, the earliest variations of the blues had been ingrained in him.

The blues have been a staple of Mr. Wess’s music throughout his 70-year career, in all the early bands he played with (including those of Lionel Hampton, Billy Eckstine, and Lucky Millinder) and, most famously, in his decade-long association with Count Basie and what came to be known as the New Testament orchestra. So it wasn’t surprising when Mr. Wess chose to begin and end his opening set on Tuesday night with the basic 12-bar blues, played fast in high-octane swing.

Mr. Wess, who received the American Jazz Masters Fellowship award from the National Endowment for the Arts in 2007, has also distinguished himself as a composer and arranger. On Tuesday, three of the seven tunes were his (the others were by Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn, and Benny Carter). While his big yet flexible sound on the tenor helped define what was once known as “mainstream” jazz, Mr. Wess has also always favored unusual instruments and combinations. He was, for example, the first widely known flute soloist in jazz. His quintet at the Vanguard is a slightly unusual lineup that at once recalls Basie’s Kansas City Sixes and Sevens of 70 years ago, as well as all the contemporary saxophone-guitar groups on the downtown scene today.

Mr. Wess’s partner on the frontline in the current quintet is the fine trumpeter Terell Stafford. Normally, I think “underrated” is an overused term, but if it applies to anybody, it is Mr. Stafford, an exceptional player whether going open-belled with a Harmon mute (as he did on Mr. Wess’s “Something Went Wrong”) or a plunger (on the climactic blues).

At the Vanguard, Mr. Wess’s rhythm section was exceptionally taut and springy: Normally, in bands that feature a guitar but not piano, the guitar is expected to assume the keyboard’s responsibilities. But in Mr. Wess’s group, the veteran bassist Rufus Reid astutely handled the harmonic duties while the guitarist Ilya Lushtak and the drummer Winard Harper took charge of the rhythm. Mr. Harper is a hard-driving yet subtle player, while Mr. Lushtak is all rhythm. As a soloist, he’s somewhat sloppy, banging away with his thumb most of the time, but on Tuesday he gave the group an undeniable rhythmic lift, particularly on the opening and closing blues numbers.

With a player of Mr. Wess’s generation, one always wonders what the effects of age will bring. On opening night at the Vanguard, his first chorus was slightly tentative, but on the second number, Strayhorn’s “Raincheck,” he was back in the saddle. He entered dramatically, blasting a few low notes below “C” level to showcase his command of the full range of his tenor. He is still the Frank Wess of old, who, like his late contemporary, Dexter Gordon, brilliantly distills the primary influences of Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young into a personal, fully rounded sound with uncommon sensitivity.

Mr. Wess’s only non-blues original was “Something Went Wrong” (he introduced it with the aside, “I hope it doesn’t”), a straight-up bopper based on changes related to “Exactly Like You” and “Take the ‘A’ Train,” and heard on two of his recent albums, “Without a Doubt” and “Hank and Frank.” In the tradition of such Basie classics as “Flight of the Foo Birds,” the song used the fresh-sounding sonic combination of flute (Mr. Wess) and mute (Mr. Stafford).

The leader followed with another variation on an essential standard, Ellington’s “Cotton Tail” (from Gershwin’s “I Got Rhythm”), which he played with such energy and force that, for what might be the first time, I actually saw the waitresses dancing in the aisle of the Vanguard. Messrs. Harper and Stafford wanted to show that they knew a few “rhythm” variants of their own, thus the trumpeter quoted “Allen’s Alley,” and the drummer referenced “Salt Peanuts.” Mr. Wess, for his part, came back with Leonard Bernstein’s “Glitter and Be Gay.” Either he had just been to see “Candide” at City Opera, or he had realized that this was, after all, the West Village.

If there was a down moment in the show, it was during Benny Carter’s “When Lights Are Low,” which the composer introduced as a medium-up foxtrot in 1936, but in recent decades has increasingly been played as a ballad. Though Mr. Wess’s own solo was full-bodied as usual, the ensemble slouched toward the tepid side. But the group was off to the races again with the furiously fast closer, in which the melody was stated in a tit-for-tat exchange between tenor and trumpet, and then between the drummer and everyone else — a conversation in blues.

Following the engagement with Teddy Charles a few weeks ago, the Frank Wess performances extend the Vanguard’s commendable policy of presenting veteran players who have not led their own groups in major clubs for far too long. By a stroke of good fortune, Mr. Wess will play Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola in a month. I will be there — look for the bald guy.

wfriedwald@nysun.com