The Cheyenne Man Who Spent a Decade Singing Bass for The Manhattan Transfer

Before there was “Pitch Perfect” or Pentatonix, there was The Manhattan Transfer. The Grammy-winning vocal jazz group became a household name in 1981 with “Boy From New York City,” launching a decades-long reign as one of the most acclaimed acts in the genre. And for the final 10 years of their run, the bass singer was a kid from Cheyenne.

Trist Curless grew up in Wyoming without the internet, discovering vocal jazz the old-fashioned way: through a high school music teacher who exposed students to big bands and jazz festivals. “I had to seek it out,” Curless told Cowboy State Daily. “We had a vocal jazz ensemble and a big band, and we would go to the Northwest Jazz Festival in Powell and the Greeley Jazz Festival.”

After Cheyenne Central High School, he attended Northwest College in Powell, drawn partly by renowned jazz drummer Ronnie Bedford. “Yeah, I’m a singer, but I can have an hour of lessons just hanging out with Ronnie Bedford? Yes, please,” Curless said. “You could hear all the stories from his years in New York and traveling the world.”

From there, he transferred to the University of Northern Colorado, forming a vocal group called Exact Change that played Denver clubs. In 1995, three members moved to Seattle with no jobs and no places to live—but within a month, they had both. The group, renamed M-Pact, found success on the community concert circuit before relocating to Los Angeles.

Curless juggled singing with day jobs and eventually found himself in demand as a sound engineer, touring with popular a cappella group Straight No Chaser. It was during that tour that Cheryl Bentyne of The Manhattan Transfer called asking if he could substitute for their bass singer, Tim Hauser, who was out with back surgery.

Curless filled in for the rest of 2013. In September 2014, Hauser suffered a medical episode on tour—at the same time Curless was touring with Pentatonix in the same region. Serendipitously, he had trained someone else to run sound for Pentatonix and was able to finish the tour with The Transfer. He stayed for the next decade.

Performing with the group meant nightly staples like “Boy From New York City,” “Operator” and “Birdland.” But it also meant learning songs on the fly for international audiences. Before a show in Spain, Janis Siegel told him about a song that was massive there—one Curless had never heard. He listened on the plane. That night, thousands of fans sang along to every word.

One performance of “Choo Choo Ch’Boogie”—a favorite from the “A League of Their Own” soundtrack—finally hit him. “My brain finally could be in the moment of doing it, rather than like, ‘Oh man, how does this one start?'” he said. “I’m choking up as I’m starting to sing.”

The Manhattan Transfer retired in 2023. Curless remains in Los Angeles, doing sound engineering and performing—including back at his alma mater, UNC. Looking back, he said the dream was never specifically to join The Transfer, but to make a life in music.

“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,'” he said. “I did all of that.”