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If you've spent any time at all listening to Canadian jazz, odds are you've heard Dave Young.

You may not have known it, of course, because Young - like many bassists - is seldom in the driver's seat. Indeed, his just-released album, Mean What You Say, is only his third as a bandleader, despite a career that stretches across four decades.

Still, Young's combination of rhythmic drive and virtuoso technique has made him one of the most in-demand rhythm players in Canadian jazz. In addition to lengthy stints with the likes of guitarist Lenny Breau and pianist Oliver Jones, Young's C.V. includes innumerable recording sessions and club dates.

The 69-year-old has spent much of his career playing classical as well as jazz. He has held positions with a number of Canadian orchestras and has also performed in opera orchestras, chamber groups and new-music ensembles.

Being able to work both sides of the street like that is no small achievement. As Young explains, the demands of classical and jazz on a bassist are "very different. The notes are in the same place, but that's about where it stops. The whole interpretation, and the fact that you're using the bow 99 per cent of the time - there's a whole range of factors that make [playing classical] quite different."

What makes Young's classical work all the more amazing is that the Winnipeg native started out as a jazz musician, and didn't begin to study classical music until after he'd graduated from university and moved to Toronto in 1967. An economics major, he worked first in accounting, and then as a financial analyst. "I was working on Bay Street all day, and working in clubs at night," he says. "That went on for a year or two."

Eventually, he turned in his pinstripes and focused on music full time. For a while, he maintained two basses, one for classical music and the other for jazz. But it was the jazz work that earned him the higher profile, particularly after he got a call to tour Japan with pianist Oscar Peterson in 1975.

"I took the gig assuming that it was just going to be a regular group, like a trio or quartet," he says. "Then, when I got to his house, he said, 'It's just you and I.' And that's what it was for six months: Two of us."

Isaac Newton famously described the Western intellectual tradition as "standing on the shoulders of giants." But to hear Young tell it, playing with Peterson was more like having to run alongside a giant. "You had to keep up," he says.

Even the best players could be shaken by what playing with Peterson demanded. Young recalls how Joe Pass - generally considered one of the most technically proficient guitarists ever to play jazz - would occasionally get "psyched out" by Peterson during a show. "He'd come off after the first half and say, 'You know, I could play this guitar yesterday. . . .' "

Young, for his part, dealt with the stress of Peterson's demands by learning to relax onstage. "I mean, I had to psych myself out in order to play the gig, but that was what it took," he says. "Little by little, he grew comfortable with what I did, so in the final 10 years, I could just get up there and play the way I felt comfortable, and away we went. There was no big push to make it more aggressive than it should be."

That relaxed confidence has been a hallmark of Young's playing ever since, and is amply in evidence on Mean What You Say. Working with brothers Robi and Frank Botos on piano and drums, plus trumpeter Kevin Turcotte, Young manages to be swinging and authoritative in a wide range of moods, from the driving hard bop of Minor 101 to the gentle, balladic take on Cole Porter's Every Time We Say Goodbye. Toss in a handful of spectacularly articulate bass solos, and it's a perfect a summation of Young's abilities as could be imagined.

The Dave Young Quartet will perform at the Trane Studio Jazz Lounge in Toronto at 8 p.m. on Thursday (416-913-8197).