“Well, you know, the blues got pregnant,” as Muddy Waters once told us, “and they named the baby rock ‘n’ roll.” The blues giant knew what he was talking about, but he seems to have deliberately omitted jazz from this genealogical discussion. Jazz is, if not a child of the blues, certainly a brother to it, and it bears a complex and fascinating relationship to the mass-market pop music of the last 50 years. That association is being explored this week at the Blue Note by the Delirium Blues project, an all-star band of sympathetic players — contemporary jazzmen with an affinity for the blues, under the leadership of the pianist and arranger Kenny Werner.

The goal of Delirium Blues is to re-examine various takes on the blues, from the Mississippi Delta and Texas to the urban funk of Memphis and Detroit, all from a jazz perspective. To that end, Mr. Werner and producer Jeff Levenson (who is recording the project for release on the Blue Note’s label, Half Note Records) have assembled a crack team of four horns and four rhythm players, all of whom are equally versed in the intricacies of bebop and the fundamentals of American roots music.

The biggest star in the line-up is James Carter (here playing tenor saxophone), who’s as futuristic and as primitive a player as jazz has ever produced. He can make his horns growl like a tyrannosaurus while playing the most technically challenging lines imaginable. He’s joined by John Patitucci, a rare contemporary bassist who is equally at home playing pop-oriented electrified jazz and the acoustic straight-ahead stuff (he was formidable in the presence of Hank Jones at Birdland last month); and Ray Anderson, who has divided his career evenly between funk-oriented jazz and the most far-out, abstract stuff.

But the most essential player here is the trumpeter Randy Brecker, a highly advanced bopper who, with his late brother Michael, was present for an uncountable number of rock ‘n’ roll sessions in the 1960s and ’70s. Virtually every time a rock band brought in a horn section in the classic rock era, it included the Brecker Brothers; as a young man, Mr. Brecker played on at least a few of the original recordings of the songs “covered” here by Delirium Blues.

The singer, the Texas-born Roseanna Vitro, is also an astute choice because, unlike most contemporary jazz vocalists who make every third tune an obligatory bossa nova, Ms. Vitro has consistently shown blues leanings, and I would rather hear her doing this music than, say, the Rodgers & Hart songbook. Although she sings on every number, this is not a project designed merely to spotlight her as a star singer; the most effective of Mr. Werner’s charts are those that use her essentially as another soloist in the ensemble, much as Billie Holiday’s classic recordings of the late ’30s did.

I didn’t even mind so much, when, on the first few numbers, the sound wasn’t quite right and Ms. Vitro was somewhat overpowered by the four horns. This music isn’t about the nuances of the lyrics, but about the overall feeling and the sonic quality of the voice itself. She brought other influences to the second number, “Half Moon,” associated with Janis Joplin, in which she chanted in a style closer to Indian music than jazz-style scat singing.

Mr. Werner’s take on the Tower of Power hit “What Is Hip?” is pretty much the signature piece of the band. Generally, when a contemporary jazzman plays something from recent pop music, we expect them to completely reharmonize it, to express it in the more sophisticated chordal language of modern jazz, and often to dramatically recast the melody, sometimes beyond the point of recognition. Mr. Werner’s charts are certainly harmonically and melodically inventive, but the original is immediately recognizable; in this case, he spaced out the tune, made it sound more like the blues than funk, and featured Mr. Patitucci and Ms. Vitro, who made it sound more like the low-talking jazzblues of Mose Allison. Continuing in the vein of that singer-pianist, whose music is equal parts Deep South and Bop City, Ms. Vitro then sang Mr. Allison’s “Everybody’s Crying Mercy,” to wild wails from Mr. Anderson’s muted trombone and Mr. Werner’s piano.

On “Cheater Man” (from the Esther Phillips canon), the group sounded equal parts like Gil Evans and the Saturday Night Live Band, with an earthy baritone sax solo from Geoff Countryman. Ms. Vitro also essayed two slow, comparatively intimate love songs. The first, “Crazy He Calls Me,” seemed out of place in its lack of any blues content whatsoever (the song is associated with Billie Holiday, who only worked in the form sporadically, despite the title of her autobiography). Contrastingly, the voice-and-piano duo treatment of Carl Wilson’s “I Wish for You” lent tenderness and feeling above and beyond the call of duty to a Beach Boys ballad.

The opening set on Tuesday night began and ended with two big belters: “Nelda Greb,” by Tracy Nelson, and “I Love the Life I Live,” by one of the great blues songwriters, Willie Dixon. There were extroverted solos by Mr. Anderson, Mr. Patitucci, and, most notably, the outer space blues of Mr. Carter, who wailed so extravagantly it was like he was trying to contact aliens from a past life. Ms. Vitro was by now fully shouting over the band. (I would advise going to see the band as soon as possible, because I can’t imagine she’s going to have any chops left by the late show on Sunday night.)

If it isn’t enough to show the connections between Janis Joplin, Tower of Power, Mose Allison, and Willie Dixon, Ms. Vitro led me to another interesting bedfellow of the blues. She said she couldn’t remember the composer of “Half Moon,” so I looked it up; it turns out to be the work of one John Hall, who later was the force behind the successful pop band Orleans and who, since last year, has served in Congress as the Democratic Representative of New York’s 19th District. Maybe the point is that jazz is, no less than the blues, a true parent of rock ‘n’ roll. If I were jazz, I would demand a blood test.