Before there was “Pitch Perfect” or Pentatonix, there was The Manhattan Transfer.
In August of 1981, The Manhattan Transfer’s version of “The Boy From New York City” hit No. 7 on Billboard’s Hot 100, marking the beginning of a decades-long reign as the most popular and critically acclaimed vocal jazz band in the country, if not the world.
Although Trist Curless was too young to appreciate the Grammy Award-winning group’s success at the time, The Manhattan Transfer would have an outsized influence on the young Cheyenne student. Curless would go on to join the quartet in 2014 as its bass singer, touring and recording albums until the group retired in 2023.
Discovering Vocal Jazz
As a student at Cheyenne Central High School in the late 1980s, Curless said it was rather miraculous that he even discovered vocal jazz.
“I grew up in Cheyenne, Wyoming, without the internet,” Curless told Cowboy State Daily. “I couldn't just lock myself in my bedroom and pull up my computer and listen to the entire history of jazz music and know what it's about. I had to seek it out.”
But Curless said he was fortunate to have a music teacher who exposed the students to a variety of music genres and offered them the opportunity to experience vocal jazz themselves.
“We had a vocal jazz ensemble and a big band, and we would go to the Northwest Jazz Festival (in Powell) and the Greeley (Colorado) Jazz Festival,” he said. “And the occasional act would come to Denver that we’d get down to, or over the hill in Laramie, if the road was open that night.”
Curless became hooked on the tight harmonies and stylings of vocal jazz, which influenced his decision to attend Northwest College in Powell following his high school graduation in 1989.
“One of the main draws was the drummer up there named Ronnie Bedford,” he said, referring to the college’s percussion instructor, a renowned jazz drummer who spent decades performing around the world with the Benny Goodman Quintet and with jazz legend Benny Carter.
“Yeah, I'm a singer, but I can have an hour of lessons just hanging out with Ronnie Bedford? Yes, please,” said Curless. “You could hear all the stories from his years in New York and traveling the world, playing with all these - you just mention any artist and he'd talk for 20 minutes about the time he toured with them in ‘74 or whatever.”
Jazz vocal group The Manhattan Transfer became a household name in 1981 with the release of their hit “Boy From New York City.” Cheyenne’s Trist Curless, far right, sang bass in the quartet for the last 10 years of their run. (Getty Images) 
Jazz vocal group The Manhattan Transfer became a household name in 1981 with the release of their hit “Boy From New York City.” Cheyenne’s Trist Curless sang bass in the quartet for the last 10 years of their run. (Courtesy Trist Curless) 
Jazz vocal group The Manhattan Transfer became a household name in 1981 with the release of their hit “Boy From New York City.” Cheyenne’s Trist Curless sang bass in the quartet for the last 10 years of their run. (Courtesy Trist Curless) 
Jazz vocal group The Manhattan Transfer became a household name in 1981 with the release of their hit “Boy From New York City.” Cheyenne’s Trist Curless sang bass in the quartet for the last 10 years of their run. (Courtesy Trist Curless)
M-Pact
After earning his associate degree at Northwest College, Curless transferred his education to the other institution in the region that stood out for its jazz program, the University of Northern Colorado at Greeley.
It was while attending college there that Curless began to lay the groundwork for a career in music, forming a vocal jazz group called Exact Change that would travel to Denver to perform whenever possible.
“In the mid to late 80s through the mid 2000s, maybe even 2010s, there was a club in downtown-ish Denver called Acappella's,” he said. “We were just trying things out and putting things together on our own and arranging these jazz influenced pop songs, because, ‘Oh, hey, we can make money doing this fun thing we like.’”
Although many of the members of Exact Change moved on to other activities, three of them, including Curless, decided to take their act to Seattle, Washington, where there were more opportunities to perform their kind of music.
“When we landed there at the beginning of June 1995, we had no jobs, no places to live,” he said. “But we had such vision and commitment that within a month, we had all those things. After a while, we found a fifth singer, and we're like, this is what we're doing.”
The group they named M-Pact would find success on the community concert circuit, playing in performing arts centers around the western U.S. The group moved to Los Angeles, where they juggled intermittent singing gigs with day jobs waiting tables or working at call centers. Curless found himself in demand running sound boards for other groups.
“Running bands is still difficult and requires a specific set of skills,” he said. “But how do you do that guy who's spitting into the microphone, and make it sound like a drum set? You know it, or you don't know it. So I started doing sound engineering. Eventually I get called from the guys in Straight No Chaser, and I toured with them as their front of house engineer for about three years.”
After earning his associate degree at Northwest College, Curless transferred his education to the other institution in the region that stood out for its jazz program, the University of Northern Colorado at Greeley. It was while attending college there that Trist Curless began to lay the groundwork for a career in music, forming a vocal jazz group called Exact Change that would travel to Denver to perform whenever possible. (Courtesy Trist Curless) 
After earning his associate degree at Northwest College, Curless transferred his education to the other institution in the region that stood out for its jazz program, the University of Northern Colorado at Greeley. It was while attending college there that Trist Curless began to lay the groundwork for a career in music, forming a vocal jazz group called Exact Change that would travel to Denver to perform whenever possible. (Courtesy Trist Curless)
The Manhattan Transfer
It was while he was on tour with the popular a capella group Straight No Chaser that Curless first sang with The Manhattan Transfer, substituting for their bass singer.
“Right after a show, I got a phone call from Cheryl Bentyne of (The Manhattan Transfer) asking if I could sub in for them,” he said. “Not an offer, ‘Your name came up, and we might need someone to sub in probably sometime next month. Our fearless leader, Tim (Hauser), the bass singer, is out with a back surgery, and so we kind of need somebody, just seeing if you're available.’”
Curless filled in with the iconic group for the rest of 2013, and in early 2014 was brought on to do sound for another iconic vocal group, Pentatonix.
In September of that year, though, Hauser had a medical episode while on tour in upstate New York — at the same time, and in the same part of the country, in which Curless was touring with Pentatonix.
Call it coincidence, call it serendipity, call it divine intervention, but Curless had been training someone else to run the very specific sound engineering for Pentatonix when the call came, and he was able to finish out the tour with The Transfer.
“I did the rest of that year,” said Curless. “I did the few Pentatonix things that there were, and now I was off and running with The Transfer. So I stopped mixing them, and I was just doing The Transfer until they retired in ‘23.”
From world tours to studio albums, Curless’ 10 years with The Manhattan Transfer allowed him to perform the songs that he had been listening to since his high school years - but this time, on stage with the people who made those songs iconic.
“They had about 10 to 12 songs that we kind of needed to do six or seven of them every night,” he said. “We'd occasionally get someone mad if we didn't do ‘Boy from New York City,’ and we would do ‘Operator’ and ‘Birdland’ and ‘Trickle, Trickle.’”
However, because of the depth of the band’s repertoire, and their global appeal, there were times when Curless had to learn a song in a day or less.
“We’re going to Spain, literally boarding the plane to go to Spain for a show that night, and Janis (Siegel) tells me about a song I don't feel like I ever even heard before, that's the biggest song of theirs ever in Spain,” he said. “So I listened, and I was like, ‘Oh, this is kind of fun. I kind of wish we did this one more often.’ We did the concert, came out for the encore, the intro starts, and the thousands of people lose their minds. I just heard it on the plane that day, and an entire culture just was singing along.”
Curless said there was so much to learn that he rarely got to relish in the experience of being on stage with some of his music heroes. But he recalled one show where the magnitude of the situation hit him.
“I always loved ‘Choo Choo Ch’Boogie,’ which was from the ‘A League of Their Own’ movie, and it was always one of my favorites pre-Transfer,” Curless said. “And one night, middle of the show, for whatever reason, it starts, and just before we go to sing, I almost just lose it, like it hits me. I'm singing with this group, this song that I've loved. My brain finally could be in the moment of doing it, rather than like, ‘Oh man, how does this one start? Do I have a solo? I don't want to mess up an entrance.’ But I'm like, choking up as I'm starting to sing.”
Retirement
Since The Manhattan Transfer retired in 2023, Curless has continued to be based out of Los Angeles, doing sound engineering and some performing - including back at his alma mater, the University of Northern Colorado.
“When The Transfer was on its way to being done, I get a text from the Jazz Studies director at UNC, and he's like, ‘Hey, I'm thinking of putting together a Lambert, Hendricks and Ross (classic vocal jazz trio) tribute,’” said Curless. “He's like, ‘Who would you get to sing with you?’ And it was so fun, and it was so good, and it was so much work that we were all like, ‘Okay, we need to do this more often.’”
Curless said when he began this journey in 1995, he didn’t dream of one day becoming a member of the most well-known vocal jazz band in the world - that detail was just the icing on the cake.
“I'm not in high school looking at the ‘Vocalese’ album, thinking, ‘One day I'm going to sing in this group,’” he said. “I did say, ‘One day I'm going to do something like this - jazz, pop, close harmony, music of my own, tour the world, record.’ I did all of that.”
Wendy Corr can be reached at wendy@cowboystatedaily.com.
