Red's return

Red Rodney got misplaced in jazz history because of a struggle with heroin, which led to time in prison, and too many years spent as a Vegas lounge act. But he had a big comeback in the 1970s and '80s, some of the best of it recorded on the Muse label and later reissued by Joel Dorn and his late, lamented (in my house anyway) 32 Jazz label, which did a lot of tapping of the old Muse catalog.

You can sometimes find 32 Jazz disks on sale used, and even never opened if you're lucky, and if you see "Hey, Chood" grab it. It's a fabulous compilation of prime cuts from Red Rodney's Muse dates (real name Robert Chudnick, Chood to Charlie Parker) with more from multi-instrumentalist Ira Sullivan and such sidemen as Barry Harris, Sir Roland Hanna, Billy Higgins and Sam Jones.