Kenny Reed quite literally pulls you in to The Jazz Station All-Comers Jazz Jam that happens every Sunday afternoon on Broadway in downtown Eugene.

He sees somebody loitering by the jazz club storefront, and he’s on them “like white on rice,” he says. Reed shakes their hands, maybe smooths their collar, and says come in, sit down, take a listen.

Reed is 6-foot-2, and dresses in impeccable suits — such as a chocolate pinstripe over crisp white dress shirt — with a broad-brimmed hat that’s set that so, like syncopation, you know he’s the soul of jazz.

He’s the host of the Willamette Jazz Society’s Sunday Jam, where a serendipitous mix of amateur players and singers — and a complementary mix of professionals from Reed’s Stone Cold Jazz band — swing or scat or bebop their way through dozens of songs.

On this particular Sunday, that meant “Blue Bossa,” “Stella by Starlight” and “Fly Me to the Moon.”

As many as 20 aficionados sit at cafe tables drinking pinot noir or pints of beer or Kern’s Nectar. The walls are painted saturated red and the mood is illuminated by small oil lamps on each table.

The Jazz Station is a venue created by the nonprofit society to foster the love of jazz in a jazz-loving town. Many of the players started early here — with, say, teacher Glen Griffith at Spencer Butte Middle School — and worked their way through to jazz studies director Steve Owen at the University of Oregon.

If the young Eugeneans earn their chops, they can find work with the Emerald City Jazz Kings or the Swing Shift Big Band or some Oregon Festival of American Music production.

“There’s quite a bit of jazz interest around here,” said Nick Rieser, president-elect of the jazz society. “It’s not like Portland or New York or something, but there’s enough.”

Interest in the 9-year-old Jazz Station is growing, too, because the renaissance along West Broadway is filling the sidewalks with people from Noisette bakery, Oregon Contemporary Theatre, Sizzle Pie and the Bijou Art Cinemas — all within range of Kenny Reed’s charm-built snares.

As the jam progresses, Reed takes note of the musicians and singers who wander in with instruments. After a set of songs, he announces it’s time to “change the furniture” — meaning a new band will take the stage.

Reed, a drummer who played the jazz scenes in New York and Los Angeles, makes up bands on the spot by calling people up to the stage — a pianist, a bass player, a guitarist, a drummer, a saxophonist or trombonist, whatever he has to work with.

“Kenny knows a lot of musicians,” Rieser said. “They’ll come in to play with Kenny and that adds to the fun.”

The professionals from Stone Cold Jazz make sure there’s a backbone to every set. They all read music, and they can play whatever the sit-ins choose: swing, bebop, free bop, hard bop, cool jazz, Latin jazz. Vocalists bring charts in their chosen key.

“We’ll get keyboard players and then a bunch of horn players,” Rieser said, “and then the next week it will be five or six singers.”

Unexpectedly good players turn up unexpectedly, for instance, the day that a man in a soil scientist’s clothes bellied up during the all-comers jam to the club’s sweet Yamaha U-1 piano. That was Fumi Funahashi, a Japanese doctoral candidate from Oregon State University. He’d studied piano since he was 3 years old, and he swings like an old soul.

“He just showed up one Sunday,” Reed said.

Funahashi has jammed at The Jazz Station for five or six years now. “I just like this place,” the soil scientist said. “Everyone is open for everyone.”

Lorin Hawley, a silver-haired man in a black T-shirt arrives carrying two bags, pulls a set of bongos out of one of them and adds furious embellishments to the on-stage groove.

Some weeks, tap dancers roll out a portable dance floor and tap out the jazz rhythm with their feet.

On this Sunday, Izzy Whetstine in a blue seersucker suit sang a gravelly “St. James Infirmary” backed by a guitarist and drummer.

“Oh, when I die, bury me,

In my high top Stetson hat;

Put a twenty-dollar gold piece on my watch chain

God’ll know I died standin’ pat.”

Among the delightful surprises at The Jazz Station are the 15- and 16-year-olds on saxophone, trumpet, trombone, piano, bass or guitar who take the stage.

Reed calls them the “young lions,” and he invites the best of them to sit in for paid gigs and even recording sessions with his band.

“I bring the talented amateurs along,” Reed said. “There’s a lot of young people who come here and I nurture them. I’m the dude.”

There’s the teen-aged twins, Shanti and Jade Stewart, a piano-and-guitar tandem who win competitions against their peers but like to sit down with the old hipsters at The Jazz Station.

Trombonist Somer Joe Hornbuckle, 16, already got an offer from the UO jazz program, even though he’s only a junior in high school.

UO student and The Jazz Station regular Tony Glausi was away in Virginia over the weekend, winning first place in the National Trumpet Competition, jazz division, for students up to age 28.

There’s the red-haired kid, Dana McWayne, who regularly takes up his tenor saxophone and blows the room away.

“He’s on the way to greatness,” Reed said.

The students learn how to listen and respond to the other musicians in Reed’s ad hoc bands. Jazz is elastic and everybody gets a chance to solo. The students learn the give-and-take that is jazz and the appreciation for one another’s improvisation.

“You have to listen to make sure you’re on,” guitarist Jade Stewart said.

At Sunday’s jam, he sat on stage on his amplifier next to Stone Cold regular guitarist Neil Janssen, who sat on a chair and used his amplifier as an end table for a beer. They played with nigh on 50 years between them, but their groove was the same.

Follow Diane on Twitter @diane_dietz . Email diane.dietz@registerguard.com .