Hawk bops

"The Birth of Bebop: A Social and Musical History" by Scott DeVeaux, University of California Press, was a little heavy on the musicological for me but the book also looks at the social, especially racism, and economic forces that drove the advent of bebop and it doesn't stint on the personalities involved, focusing in particular on Dizzy Gillespie while including some leaders in the movement who haven't received as much attention, such as Howard "Maggie" McGhee.

What I found especially interesting was Coleman Hawkins' facilitation of bebop by showing that small group concert, versus dance, jazz could be lucrative for black musicians, as well as by his incorporation of bop into his own music. I can hear it in "Bean and the Boys," Prestige, which has Hawkins in three octets and a quartet including Monk and modernists like Fats Navarro, Max Roach, J.J. Johnson, and Hank Jones, among others. The first set, he's transitioning from big band swing. The second and third, he's bopping, man. On the final set, from 1959, he's adapted soul jazz. But he's always Coleman Hawkins. It's hard to mistake that Hawkins sound, indelibly etched in my mind from "Body and Soul." In addition, all except seven of the 22 tracks on "Coleman Hawkins 1945" from the French Classics Records label are by Hawkins small groups with McGhee and much of the music is bop leaning. Personally, I think Hawk is talkin' trash to Charlie Parker on "Rifftide" and "Stuffy."

Party down

Miles birth certificate,
originally uploaded by mrgreg.

From the Mother Jones Monument in Mt. Olive, IL, on my way back from Alton, where I attended Miles Davis' 80th birthday party this afternoon. Miles wasn't there, of course, and he wouldn't actually have been 80 until Friday. But they had a nice local quintet, fronted by Tim Jarden, director of the jazz program at Lewis and Clark Community College, playing Davis music and songs associated with him like "Four," "Someday My Prince Will Come," and "My Funny Valentine." Alton tenor sax legend Herb Hutchinson was fun to hear and trumpeter Kerry Waller did a good job filling in for Miles, who was born at home in Alton May 26, 1926, at 5 a.m. according to his birth certificate, which was on display. The cake was good, too. The folks at the Alton Museum of History and Art hope to make it an annual event that grows and I hope they succeed.

What he said

Here's a piece by Stanley Crouch on John Hicks and one from the Hartford Courant remembering Jackie McLean.

Some people don't like Stanley Crouch and consider him a neocon didact, but I could listen to Crouch and Nat Hentoff talk jazz all day. I certainly have an interest in the academic and musicological aspects of jazz. However, after the music itself, with its wonderful diversity and oft-wondrous instrumental manipulation, I think I am most attracted by the personalities who pepper its history (he said as he works his way through Brian Priestley's "Chasin' the Bird: The Life and Legacy of Charlie Parker"). You learn plenty from reading them, but Crouch and Hentoff tend to be people focused as well so I get a good story, too. Says Crouch is working on a biography of Parker, which I will surely buy.

So far, no demons, and no disco

If I were the guys at MacAddict, I'd be rating Pandora "spiffy." Sonny Rollins Radio is shaping up as the place to hear tenor sax (and some alto and soprano). Songs from the man himself, Coltrane, David "Fathead" Newman, Michael Carvin, Stan Getz, Joe Lovano, Sonny Stitt and Hal McKusick are among the recent tunes to roll through. I'd never heard of McKusick, which means Pandora's stated purpose, teaching me about some new music, is working. Charlie Parker Radio is shaping up as my bop station, naturally, and Duke Ellington Radio is for big bands. I just created Ornette Coleman Radio for the avant-garde. The collection could be bigger, I get a repeat now and then, but they say it grows every day. Besides, it's free, so why complain? What I really like the idea of is that I could travel, access the Web-based service and hear my stations anywhere. Like I said, spiffy.

More Frank Hewitt

I have a favorite Stephen King tale, "The Breathing Method", that includes a scene where the narrator begins to read some books off the library shelves of a strange gentlemen's club (the kind where they drink brandy and play snooker, not a strip joint) central to the story. He decides they're among the greatest American novels, but he's never heard of the author and can't find anything else by him, nor can he locate the publisher. It's like the books came from nowhere, or from a parallel universe. (Hey, it is Stephen King.)

I feel a little bit like that listening to "Four Hundred Saturdays" from Smalls Records, the second CD from the late Frank Hewitt I've purchased recently, this one in a quintet with two saxophonists as opposed to a trio setting. The guy is simply one of the finer jazz pianists I've heard and the sax, bass and drums work on this from Chris Byars (tenor), Mike Mullins (alto), Ari Roland and Jimmy Lovelace are outstanding to boot. Four songs, recorded live (and well), all clocking in near 15 minutes, with lots of stellar improvising. Their version of Dizzy Gillespie's "Manteca" is fantastic. I don't think Monk ever played it. But you can get an idea of what he'd of sounded like listening to Hewitt.

I enjoyed Luke Kaven's liner notes excoriating the music industry for ignoring Hewitt when he was alive, and I'm glad Kaven and Smalls went so far as to create a record label to make sure he's finally heard by me and other folks. He should be.

Box open

I read about Pandora today and have been giving it a try this evening and I have to say it's something I might even pay for if I had to, which I don't, as long as I can live with some ads.

I created, in effect, my own Sonny Rollins, Charlie Parker and Duke Ellington Web radio stations. They don't actually play only Sonny Rollins, Charlie Parker and Duke Ellington. They play some, and a lot of other stuff like Sonny Rollins, Charlie Parker and Duke Ellington. It's a pretty diverse mix, including some fairly obscure stuff. You can thumbs up or thumbs down things to refine what you get. There also are links explaining why you're getting a song, which helps in the refining process, and links to buy songs from iTunes and CDs from Amazon as well. Nicely done.

Knows how to throw a party

Regina Carter can certainly play classical violin (the Italians let her have at Paganini's "Cannon" after all). She's got more than a little Stuff Smith in her as well, and she can do Latin jazz as in "Mojito," one of my favorite songs on her CD "Rhythms of the Heart." And I have to think she could get as avant-garde as Jenny Scheinman, need be. But her thing is getting Motown funky. No surprise then that Carter fit right in with Christian McBride and the jazzed funk fest he put on at the concert I attended in Chicago's Orchestra Hall Friday night.

In addition to Carter, McBride's other special guest was Fred Wesley. I had no idea who Fred Wesley was before the concert. After, I found out he was trombonist of choice and musical director for James Brown. So you know he had no problem contributing plenty of funky licks. In fact, Mr. Wesley, older gentleman and the only guy in a suit though he was, kept right up with the youngsters, including DJ Logic. (McBride joked that Logic was probably the first "turntablist" to play Orchestra Hall, and I imagine that's right.)

I'd like to know more about Christian McBride's bass, which had the dings and dents of a bad boxer's face and looked like it had about 50 layers of shellac covering it. Something tells me it's a classic. He made it sound like it anyway. Dude played a mean electric bass guitar in the bargain. Geoffrey Keezer on piano and electronic keyboards and Terreon Gully, who's from East St. Louis, on drums also were great. Gully is just an impressively skilled drummer, powerful but capable of being subtle, too. I was reading a review Sunday that called him one of the most promising drummers to emerge in a decade.

You could see where Christian McBride was headed on his own CD "A Family Affair" and on "The Philadelphia Experiment," Ropeadope Records, which I gave another listen over the weekend and should pull out more often, because frankly everything on it is good. The duet McBride and pianist Uri Caine do of Elton John's "Philadelphia Freedom" is priceless. McBride's doing his own thing, but some of it also reminds me of Herbie Hancock's Headhunters, Weather Report and, of course, Miles Davis' electric music. I liked him before I went to the concert, but I came away a fan. "Live at Tonic," Ropeadope, his most recent CD, captures the kind of stuff that happened at Orchestra Hall pretty well.

Working on it

"I'm not sure what my usual kind of things are. I'm still getting together my usual kind of things." From an interview with Sonny Rollins on "Live in London."

I think he still is still getting together his usual things, and that's one reason he's so darn interesting at 75. The guy has never stopped searching musically. New CD due June 30 and I can't wait. Plus, yesterday I ordered my ticket to his concert here in September and I can't wait for that either.

John Hicks and Mary Lou

You wanna hear joy, check out "The Lord Says" on John Hicks' "Impressions of Mary Lou," High Note, a gospel romp that's part of a piece Mary Lou Williams wrote for the Catholic Church.

This CD, a mix of Williams compositions and songs Hicks composed in her honor, really shows what an accomplished and versatile pianist he was; sure, he could play blues, stride, bebop, hard bop, but he would have been right at home in a concert hall or a church (and sometimes was in the case of the latter as I understand it).

I bought the disk Friday, after Hicks, a favorite of mine, passed on last week and because I admire the music and life story of Mary Lou Williams. Hicks did a series of these tributes to great jazz pianists and composers. I have the Earl Hines one as well, and like it a lot. I should probably pick up the Kenny Clark, Erroll Garner and Billy Strayhorn sets because the music on the first two is excellent and they're outstanding showcases for Hicks, whom I'm going to miss. All but the Hines CD are available on emusic.

Can't touch this...

I'm getting ready to write some more about the funk-ee Christian McBride concert I went to Friday night. Meanwhile, this afternoon it's the fourth disk of "Miles Davis: The Cellar Door Sessions 1970."

The funk you say, try "Honky Tonk" and "What I Say" and catch that Michael Henderson bass and those Jack DeJohnette drums. Gary Bartz sounds like he's auditioning for the J.B.'s or maybe the Family Stone.

What MC Hammer said.

Burning

"Forrest Fire," Prestige, is the Jimmy Forrest classic equivalent of Ron Blake's "Lest We Forget," with a just-out-of-his-teens Larry Young on organ, before Larry went all Coltrane. I love the versions of "Bag's Groove" and "When Your Lover Has Gone." I'm kind of amazed how good this sounds. I actually downloaded it from emusic and burned it to disk some time ago, before emusic even upped its bit rate. High-end audio fanatics who claim they can hear a difference in MP3s slay me. Likewise LP nuts who say records sound "warmer," whatever that means.

Good ride McBride

This morning I'm listening to "'Lest We Forget," Mack Avenue Records, from saxophonist Ron Blake, who was one of numerous great things about the ultra-funky Christian McBride concert at Chicago's Orchestra Hall last night. I even had a seat front row center. "Lest" is Blake's homage to organ jazz greats past and he's paired with Joey DeFrancesco, along with McBride, an even more super bassist in person than on record. Trumpeter Rashawn Ross gets in some good licks, too. Blake doesn't venture as far as, say, my man James Carter on "Out of Nowhere," Carter's recent organ jazz CD. But he loses nothing in a comparison with guys like Jimmy Forrest or Stanley Turrentine. For me, the attractive thing about organ jazz is its funky joyousness and this disk is all that. Fab version of "More Today Than Yesterday."

Two Christian

Two enjoyable CDs from Christian McBride as I head out to hear the
bassist and band at Chicago's Orchestra Hall this evening. "Gettin' to
It," Verve, modern hard bop with Joshua Redman on sax, trumpeter Roy
Hargrove and trombonist Steve Turre along. McBride's solo "Night Train"
is precious. Some great playing from Redman. "A Family Affair," Verve,
McBride makes jazz with the funk, R&B and soul forms he listened to
growing up in Philly. If disco had sounded like this it might not be a
thing I'm trying to forget. Charles Craig on electric piano and
saxophonist Tim Warfield are memorable. Some interludes are almost
avant-garde.

Mr. Rollins goes to London

The sound is unbalanced in spots, but "Sonny Rollins Live in London" from British Harkit Records, which captures Mr. Rollins at Ronnie Scott's in January 1965, is a good look at him in what I think of as his coming-to-terms-with-the-avant-garde phase. He does some interesting exploring over an 18-minute medley including "Autumn Nocturne," "April in Paris," "Three Little Words" and "I'll Be Seeing You." As always, he impresses me with how he can take diversions and yet never stray out of range of the straight rendering of a song, like "My One and Only Love," a favorite sad ballad of mine, or Miles Davis' "Four" and Charlie Parker's "Now's the Time." He never goes as far as the Coltrane of the period or an Archie Shepp. However, it sure ain't bop either. Pianist Stan Tracey, a U.K. jazz legend, and his trio are compatible accompanists and nice to listen to as well. Personally, I'll take all the live Sonny Rollins I can get.

So long John Hicks

Not long ago I wrote that pianist John Hicks seemed to be great no matter what context you placed him in, with violinist Billy Bang in that case.

Looking today, I see I've mentioned Hicks a half dozen times since I started this jazz journal last year, with James Carter, Chico Freeman, and Jimmy Ponder as well as Bang. I really liked a duet CD featuring Hicks and bassist Richard Davis (who's kind of like the Hicks of the bass). I also enjoyed seeing him dueting live with Frank Morgan in LA last year.

Hicks, who died yesterday, led many of his own sessions, too. I'm partial to "Fatha's Day: An Earl Hines Songbook" from High Note. He may not have been a big name outside of the circle of musicians he played with so well, but I think the guy was an unsung jazz giant.

Fats and Tad

Eight of the 11 Sonny Rollins and Fats Navarro cuts on "The Amazing Bud Powell, Volume One" are on the two-disk "The Complete Blue Note and Capitol Recordings of Fats Navarro and Tad Dameron" as well. I don't regret buying both because the Navarro-Dameron sets include 28 other pieces in a bop or prebop mode that also approximate Miles Davis' "Birth of the Cool." (See "Lady Bird.") Even the alternate takes, which normally don't do much for me, are interesting because of the radical tempo shifting that takes place from take to take. Navarro is every bit of Dizzy Gillespie and the lineup of sax gods showing Charlie Parker-like licks, besides Mr. Rollins, is extensive, Charlie Rouse, Dexter Gordon and Wardell Gray for three. Really, every song includes an all-star collection of bop pioneers. I should listen to this more.

Bopping Sonny

Getting to hear Sonny Rollins play straight bebop is one of the cool things about the Rudy Van Gelder Edition reissue of Blue Note's "The Amazing Bud Powell, Volume One." The 19-year-old Mr. Rollins, on 11 cuts from 1949, was quite good at bop. He plays with some Charlie Parkeresque flashes, on the tenor no less, and gives Powell and Fats Navarro plenty to think about.

Blue Bird

The last two cuts on Disk A of "Charlie Parker: A Studio Chronicle 1940-1948," JSP Records, have Parker in a band backing singer Rubberlegs Williams on a couple down-and-dirty blues in 1941. Other band members include one Dizzy Gillespie on trumpet and Don Byas on tenor sax. Weird. And fascinating. I don't think the bebop guys were meant for straight blues, but they still sound good.

The early Bird

"The Kansas City of the 1920s and 1930s had many of the elements of medieval Florence. A wealthy Italian city state, Florence reveled in its independence and in the creative abilities of its artists. Botticelli, Leonardo and Michelangelo all lived and worked there."

Cool passage from the liner notes of "Charlie Parker: A Studio Chronicle 1940-1948," an English JSP Records compilation I got today, which starts with Parker in Jay McShann's Orchestra (if Basie is Leonardo and Charlie Parker is Michelangelo, Jay McShann can be Botticelli or maybe Brunelleschi). Some people hear bebop in the 1941 version of "Hootie Blues" on this. I hear Charlie Parker ascendent in "The Jumpin' Blues" and "My Heart Tells Me," among other places. Great sound restoration for the most part. I'm really excited about this boxed set, a bargain at $25.98 for the five CDs on Amazon. The four recordings of the Kansas City Band, Parker in a trio with guitar and drums, from 1941 are an especially interesting way to hear where he stands at this point. The version of "Body and Soul" isn't Coleman Hawkins, but it sure points the way to Parker's later sound. He's in New York with the Tiny Grimes Quintet by the end of the first disk and showing the stuff that got everybody so excited.

The annoy me state

On the road home from Lawrence, Kansas, and a visit with my great
friends the Dewars. Billboard-festooned, porn-store laced Interstate 70
through Missouri is one ugly stretch of road, but hey, at least it's
long. Glad I had Tab Benoit's "Fever for the Bayou," Telarc, to help me
get across. Excellent driving music. Also, "Whiskey is My Habit, Good
Women is All I Crave: The Best of Leroy Carr," Columbia, is perfect
starting-out music for a cloudy, hungover Sunday morning with an
eight-hour drive in the offing. Don't bother with the Music Outlet at
Warrenton, Mo., unless you're a big old-time country music fan or you
really love Elvis Christmas music. The jazz and blues pickings are slim.

Belgium for chocolate...

And Sweden for jazz. I'm adding the great trumpeter Rolf Ericson to my list of favorite Swedish jazz musicians, which is getting pretty big. On "Stockholm Sweetnin'," Dragon, he makes me think of Art Farmer with his lyrical, understated, but clearly very skilled playing. I hear elements of Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie, too. He does Thad Jones' "Bird Call" up appropriately boppy and includes a number of clever quotes Charlie Parker (whom Ericson actually accompanied on a Swedish concert tour at one point) would have appreciated.

The title track is, in fact, a sweet ballad while the unmuted up-tempo approach to "If I Were a Bell," a Miles favorite, is an interesting contrast to Davis' renditions. Pianists Göran Lindberg and Claes Croona are quite good on this. (Check out "Just Squeeze Me" and "Evelyn".) I'd like to hear more of saxophonist Nils Sandström, who mostly comps but has a nice Coltrane-like tone. Listened to the CD after a busy day writing the first draft of a work project on human research subjects and it made me feel better.

Sad story, marvelous music

I think Bob Belden's "Black Dahlia," Blue Note, is the recent equivalent of Stan's Kenton's "City of Glass". Forward-looking large-group jazz with classical elements that's powerful for much of its run but also makes crafty use of subtlety. The array of great musicians Belden used on this is incredible. Having read an excellent book about the Black Dahlia murder, I'll also say this piece is uncanny in the way it captures muscially the story's rhythms (at least as presented in the book I read). If this music had scored a movie, it would have won an Oscar.

Candye's ... a good singer

I'm calling Candye Kane's "The Toughest Girl Alive," Bullseye Blues & Jazz, jazzy blues with gospel and country tinges. In the best tradition of Ma Rainey, Big Momma Thornton and Bessie Smith, her songs may be racy (one of them is titled "Let's Commit Adultery") but I figure you can send the kids and the fundamentalists out of the room when you play this CD. The latter don't like to have a good time anyway, so the disk would be wasted on them. Some songs, like "Highway of Tears" and "Get Happy," are pretty much straight jazz. Another attraction: she's got a heck of a backing band with some good boogie-woogie piano and hot trumpet and tenor sax (see "Je N'en Peux Plus Sans Ma Cadillac"), in addition to bluesy guitar playing. Fun stuff I found through The Roadhouse podcast.

Don't throw stones

Pulled out "City of Glass: Stan Kenton Plays Bob Graettinger," Capitol, last week, after it crossed my mind for some reason, one of those CDs that didn't turn me on the first time I listened to it but keeps getting better every time I listen.

The "City of Glass" suite and the other compositions are large-ensemble music that I would call jazz. Not everyone would agree, certainly not on "City of Glass," although stuff like "Thermopylae" is pretty clearly jazz, albeit not the traditional variety heard from big bands, even most modern big bands. Scott Yanow on allmusic characterizes it as futuristic when it was recorded and still futuristic today and I guess that's about as good a way of putting it as any.

Abstract but structured also describes it, not free and yet employing free jazz elements like dissonance, tension and release, odd juxtapositions and surprising twists and turns which are, upon examination, quite logical. I think it's jazz, because of the soloing and the improvisation I believe I hear, among other things. But it also borrows from classical music, particularly modern impressionistic classical music. Stan Kenton was into bold, powerful music and Graettinger surely provided it. The cuts on this disk aren't so much swinging as imposing.

There are loads of big names in jazz among the small army of musicians Kenton employed for these recordings, Lee Konitz, Art Pepper, Bud Shank, Maynard Ferguson, Conte Candoli, Frank Rosolino, Shelly Manne and Stan Levey among them. Some, like tenorman Bob Cooper, show their versatility by playing instruments you don't normally hear on a jazz recording. Cooper plays oboe and English horn besides his sax. The instrumental mix overall is diverse and interesting with cellos, bassoon, bass trombone and more. To me, it's important and fascinating music that any semi serious jazz fan needs to try, probably more than once to really appreciate it.

A Ragin Revelation

"Revelation," the title track on the Hugh Ragin Justin Time CD, came up on my iTunes Party Shuffle playlist tonight and two things occurred to me. First, Ragin (a regular David Murray collaborator) does some of the best avant-garde trumpet playing I've heard in a long time, and yet it's still accessible.

Second, if you're going to play avant-garde jazz, you should get Hamid Drake to do the drumming. William Parker on bass helps, too, and Assif Tshar on bass clarinet, as well as tenor sax, adds some interesting texture.

Jazz weekend

I'm bushed this morning from a jazz weekend in Chicago, starting Friday night with Joe Segal's birthday party concert, where Yusef Lateef and Von Freeman did a butt-kicking call-and-response improvisational duet that makes me want to find out what they're drinking and get some of it (both are in their 80s). Saturday early, Greek saxophonist Dimitri Vassilakis at the HotHouse, a very nice venue I hadn't been to before. This guy really is good, check him out if you like your sax playing recognizable but still with plenty of free-leaning improvisation. Saturday late, Ira Sullivan at the Jazz Showcase. He's one of the revelations of the weekend for me and played alto sax, very much Charlie Parker style, trumpet, flute and probably some instruments I missed, all well. The other revelation was Chicago-based bassist Larry Gray, who backed all three performances. He's a name I'll be looking for in the future when I'm checking out the lineup on disks in considering whether to buy them. Oh, my buddy Carl Abernathy and I worked in a visit to the wonderous Jazz Record Mart Saturday afternoon, too. No wonder I'm tired.

Hey Hef, centerfold this

I've said it before and I'll say it again. James Carter's "Live at Baker's Keyboard Lounge" is better than sex. Don't believe me? Just queue up "Free and Easy."

Happy birthday Joe Segal

You ask me the greatest thing about the Chicago jazz impresario Joe Segal's 80th birthday is the concert at Orchestra Hall celebrating it that I am attending this evening.

Among the big horns feting the owner of the Jazz Showcase: Von Freeman, Jimmy Heath, Yusef Lateef, James Moody and Ira Sullivan. Word is Lou Donaldson may be there as well.

I mentioned some Sullivan dates with Red Rodney earlier this week. Today, I've been listening to stuff from Heath, Lateef and Freeman.

I highly recommend Heath's "On the Trail," Riverside. High energy hard bop, save for a ballad interlude or two, with Wynton Kelly, Kenny Burrell, Paul Chambers and the drumming Heath brother Albert "Tootie," it's a classic jazz CD. If you can find it, get "Freddie Hubbard & Jimmy Heath Live at the Left Bank," from defunct Label M, another project of Joel Dorn that I sorely miss. Two masters trading improvisations that mostly clock in near 10 minutes or more. It's almost like being there, and this disk makes me wish I had been.

Lateef's "Eastern Sounds," OJC, shows his versatility and makes interesting use of some Asian musical forms.

Freeman's recent "The Great Divide," Koch, will make you think of Gene Ammons. I really like "You Talkin' to Me?!" from Delmark, with Freeman and young Frank Catalano matching tenors in a more free-leaning set.

Throw heat

On "Body and Soul," Black Saint, my man David Murray does a lot of Sonny Rollins via Albert Ayler and Ornette Coleman, with the song "Odin" an excellent example of that. Murray was a power player at this point, 1993, and still is, although like Mr. Rollins he's worked a variety of placement pitches into the mix with those heaters he continues to uncork.

Here, he's mostly bringing it like Lee Smith used to for the Cubs. (Sorry, it's baseball season). If you don't remember Lee Smith, just spin the first two tunes on the disk, "Slave Song" and "Celebration Dance," and you'll see what I'm talking about. Pianist Sonelius Smith (no relation to Lee, as far as I know) is an attraction on this quartet date as well. He's complimentary throughout and pay attention to his unusual intro to, and his solo later in, the title track, which Murray uses to update Coleman Hawkins in ways that just make me marvel at the cleverness of his approach. Still waiting for the first David Murray CD that doesn't intrigue me.

Poband, rich music

Last year I touted CDs from drummer Lou Grassi and multi-reedist John Tchicai, as well as disks from CIMP in general, so when I saw "comPOsed," a CIMP CD from Grassi's Poband with Tchicai as a guest, I had to have it. Moreover, it's kind of an all-star CIMP lineup with trumpeter Paul Smoker, clarinetist Perry Robinson and bassist Wilber Morris along in addition to Grassi and Tchicai. Now all-star lineups, it seems to me, sometimes disappoint. But not these guys.

"Daddy No Mana" makes me think of Mingus' "The Clown," a piece that skirts the edge of the avant-garde envelope, moved somewhat beyond that edge. "Drunk or Happy" captures the dichotomy in the title musically and makes interesting use of the didgeridoo courtesy of Art Baron, whose main axe is the trombone. "Oxbow Incident" begins in kind of an eerie whisper, fitting if you know the short story or movie, and evolves into a quiet, haunting cross between a sad ballad and a Native American chant. I think bad free jazz frequently results from ham-handed handling of discordance. This group, which reminds me of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, shows how it should be done. A fine CD I'm likely to find something new in each listen.

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.

Murray's voice

If you want to know what a wonderful saxophone player David Murray is, check him out playing the straight-ahead ballad "Voice of the Saxophone" on Ya Ya Fornier's "Bearcat," Random Chance Records, a CD that's a pleasant experience overall as well. Nothing fancy, no tricks, not much in the way of avant-garde flourishes, just total command of his horn.

Red alert

It seems to me Red Rodney has kind of gotten lost, or at least misplaced, in jazz history, despite having played in Charlie Parker-led combos. That's a shame because he's an inventive trumpeter with a lot more range and creativity than, say, better-known Chet Baker. I certainly rate him with a Lee Morgan or Freddie Hubbard, for instance. "The Red Rodney Quintets," Fantasy, is a nice compilation of two dates from 1951 and 1955 with Roy Haynes on drums and saxophonist Ira Sullivan, who also should be better known (check out his solo on "This Time the Dream's on Me" on this disk), as partners on the latter. Hard-swinging bop for nearly 70 minutes.

Piano man

I read about Frank Hewitt, a pianist known in New York (and a small part of the city at that) but never much beyond, in a Jazz Times piece last year, prompting me to order "We Loved You" from Smalls Records, which is producing a series of posthumous Hewitt CDs.

Hewitt, who died in 2002 essentially homeless, never released a recording when he was alive and that's too bad. On "We Loved You," he's something like a cross between Monk and Hank Jones, with the lyrical beauty and classical flourishes of the latter and the propensity for risk taking and familiarity with stride of the former.

Hewitt, in a bass and drums trio, does mostly standards on the disk but I'm never bored listening to it because of the way he reconstructs the songs in his own highly individualistic style. A melancholy "Polka Dots and Moonbeams" and a swinging "I'll Remember You" are among the highlights. The whole program's good, however.

Blue gin, straight

I'm an unabashed Pink Martini fan and have been ever since I heard the band in an NPR story a few years ago and went out of my way to special order its first CD "Sympathique," which you can find pretty easily now. What Pink Martini does is generally jazzy and when it's not you can count on it being interesting.

If Pink Martini went bad, I think it would end up as "Watermelon Slim & the Workers," the title of a great blues CD from Northern Blues, and the kind of blues often at the root of memorable jazz. From the looks of them, you probably wouldn't want to meet these guys in a dark alley, unless Slim, a member of Mensa with a journalism degree for gods' sake, was playing his "harp" and National Steel and singing songs like "Devil's Cadillac" in his voice that sounds about as bad as Tom Waits and gets the point across just as effectively. Then you'd stick around, after a side trip to the corner gin mill for a bottle, probably Red Rocket, and listen raptly. I just betchya there ain't many homages to Muddy, the Wolf, John Lee and B.B. sung in French.

Didn't find this one on NPR, but via The Roadhouse podcast from Tony Steidler-Dennison, one of my must-listen musical pleasures every week.

A chat in the Hall

As I guy who will extol the virtues of Sonny Rollins ad nauseam to any poor sucker who will listen, one of my hobbies is reflecting on the players I think were perfect compliments to Mr. Rollins, like Max Roach on drums, Oscar Pettiford on upright bass, Bob Cranshaw on electric bass and Rufus Harley on bagpipes. (OK, Rufus is the ONLY bagpiper Sonny Rollins recorded with to my knowledge, but he was still darn complimentary.)

In my view, some of the best stuff the great tenor saxophonist has done (and I should know because I have bought about all of it) was with guitarist Jim Hall, which I also think says a lot about Jim Hall, because it's no mean feat to hang musically with Sonny Rollins, especially Sonny Rollins in the '60s hot off one of his celebrated sabbaticals to rejuvenate and scout out new musical paths to tread.

This inclined me to buy Hall's "Dialogues," Telarc, when I saw it last weekend for the great price of $10.99, not to mention the lineup Hall is dialoguing with, Bill Frisell and Mike Stern, two of my favorite modern jazz electric guitarists, ace saxophonist Joe Lovano, trumpeter Tom Harrell and Gill Goldenstein, normally a pianist who in this case plays the accordion, which he'd started noodling with again in a nod to his youth. Hall went so far as to compose all but one of the songs specially for his guests and the result is wonderful. (Hoagy Carmichael's "Skylark" is the exception, and that's OK, because he and Harrell destandardize it.) The two Stern pieces (Hall does two with everybody) are highlights, especially "Uncle Ed," and the accordion duets are fun. "Calypso Joe" gives Lovano a chance to play Mr. Rollins ala "St. Thomas."

I'd consume Rollins' "The Bridge," Hall's "Concierto" and his "Alone Together" duets with bass legend Ron Carter first, but "Dialogues" is a nice Camembert for a cheese course, and all my friends know I've got a soft spot for a nice Camembert.

Guitar sitar man

Miles Davis, among others, experimented with South Asian instruments like the sitar and tabla in his electric bands and I wouldn't say without success.

But maybe it takes someone like Fareed Haque, whose group I caught at the Jazz Kitchen in Indianapolis Saturday night, to really get full use out of such instruments and Pakistani-Indian musical forms in a jazz context. A Northern Illinois University music professor and son of a Pakistani father and Chilean mother, he understands both the axes and the music in a traditional sense and he's as deft and innovative a jazz electric guitarist as Bill Frisell and Mike Stern, two of my favorites, the latter of whom played with Miles.

This is evident on "Cosmic Hug," Magnatude, a 2005 Haque CD I bought in the wake of the Indy show. The disk opens with "Gulab Jammin," a fine mixing of South Asian, jazz, rock and funk elements. Make no mistake, Haque is known as a fusion guitarist and there are plenty of stretches where he gives the Johns McLaughlin and Scofield, or any other guitarist Miles employed, a run for their money, even on an overtly subcontinent-influenced piece like "Lahara." I'm betting Davis would be impressed, with Haque and with his band mates, Dan Nimmer on Fender Rhodes and J. Cappo on keyboards and electronics not the least. It's a tight group and exciting stuff.

Exochos

I said I heard a Sonny Rollins' influence when I caught Greek saxophonist Dimitri Vassilakis at the Vortex Jazz Club in London last month, but I don't hear it so much the first four cuts on "Parallel Lines," Candid. He reminds me more of cross between Jackie McLean and Joshua Redman with some Coltrane and Steve Lacy in the mix.

Parts of "Soul Eyes" recall "Freedom Suite," however, and there's some Mr. Rollins in "James." I don't mean to imply Vassilakis is at all imitative. It's a matter of borrowing techniques and tricks to bend to his own purposes. He's got excellent range and peppers what he does with Mediterranean themes, a little rap-like poetry and other surprises. He's also quite a creative composer and arranger. Nearly everything on "Parallel Lines" is original.

I'm pleased I went to see him in London and even more happy I bought this CD. The guy's a find and he's in New York this week and Chicago the next with drummer Jeff "Tain" Watts, a Marsalis family favorite, so go see for yourself.

In walks Bud

If you don't own "The Amazing Bud Powell, Volume One," Blue Note, get
the new Rudy Van Gelder Edition. Like Bud wasn't enough, you go 11
tracks deep with Sonny Rollins and Fats Navarro as sidemen. Then you
have to "suffer" through nine trio pieces with Max Roach on drums. I
wouldn't want to live in a world where I couldn't listen to Bud Powell
play "You Go to My Head." And what he does with "Over the Rainbow" is not to be missed. Mr. Rollins, just a pup at this point, kills on the alternate take of "Wail." Massively classic.

Swing me

I can't suggest Jaques Émond's Swing is in the Air podcast enough. This morning, I'm listening to his latest show, which highlights the music of Charlie Rouse and Kenny Dorham, and it is wonderful.

Another place where it's at

If you're gonna get one thing from Stanley Turrentine make it "Up at Minton's," two CDs from Blue Note with a young, randy Mr. T pushing his tenor sax and Grant Green as an apt collaborator.

Munich electric

I probably need another collection of Miles Davis' electric music like I need hungry wolverines roaming my apartment. I dropped $270 this winter on "The Complete Miles Davis at Montreux 1973-1991" (20 disks) and "The Cellar Door Sessions 1970" (six disks), which I'm gradually working my way through. I'll say this, I might have been pissed if I had paid $75 for the first disk of "Cellar Door" alone. But not too pissed. It's as powerful a Miles Davis as you've ever heard and the other band members, Keith Jarrett and Jack DeJohnette among them, are stunning as well. Gary Bartz makes his sax sound like the bagpipes on "What I Say," and I don't mean just a little. Likewise, John Scofield's rockin' guitar god showing on some of the "Montreux" disks is a revelation to me. (More on all this later.)

Still, I wouldn't suggest "Cellar Door" or "Montreux" (they're both from Columbia) for everybody given the cost. I will suggest "Miles Davis Munich Concert," from Imc Music, which I spied for $15.99 at the local Best Buy this month, a bargain price for a three-CD set, mostly from 1988, that gives you a good idea what the later Montreux stuff sounds like.

That is, like rock, pop and jazz fused in a way that made for a jazz music, if not with the popularity swing once commanded, at least more popular than jazz had been since the swing era. Kenny Garrett in particular rocks, man, as much as Clarence "The Big Man" Clemons ever did with The Boss, and Garrett's a much more technically proficient saxophone player.

As a bonus to fill the third CD, you get 35-minutes of "Call It Anything" from a 1970 Isle of Wright Festival recording. The band included most of the "Cellar Door" crew, plus Chick Corea and Dave Holland.

At five bucks and change for each disk, I'll be suggesting it henceforth to anyone who wants a nice, representative slice of Miles electric.

12 more songs

Randy Newman is rightly known for his Oscar-winning movie music but it always has kind of bugged me that his place in the popular conscious is generally occupied by goofy-sounding songs (unless you really pay attention to what the words say) like "Short People" and "I Love LA" and not, for example, by his brilliant sets on "Good Old Boys" and "12 Songs," the latter a musical cornucopia.

Violinist Jenny Scheinman says her own "12 Songs," Cryptogramophone, is in part a nod to Newman's disk and it's an aural feast in its own right. "The Frog Threw His Head Back and Laughed" could be the background music for the scene in "Stripes" where Bill Murray loses his girlfriend, his car gets repossessed and he drops the pizza he's bringing home for dinner on the ground ... face down. You gotta laugh so you don't cry it says. There's a noticeable Bill Frisell influence (see "Unspeakable") on parts of the CD, which Frisell appears on with regular collaborator Scheinman. OK by me because I'm a Frisell fan.

The music is diverse. In one stretch you get the Latin-inflected "Little Calypso," while "Satelite" has overtones of classical chamber music, "Atenna" starts like an avant-garde electronic experiment before becoming a fairly conventional ballad and "Albert" could be a piece from "Cold Mountain." "Moe Hawk" sounds to me like a march composed by Mingus instead of Sousa. The instrumental mix, including an accordion and a claviola, and especially drummer Dan Rieser, also is a big part of what makes this a keeper.

That's Bunk

"Saints Go Marching In," the illicit Bunk Johnson CD I bought at the Petticoat Lane Market in London, turns out to be not that illicit after all. It's a legit Past Perfect collection of recordings from 1944, when the New Orleans trumpeter saw a revival in his career. The sound is excellent and Bunk plays with a sextet and septet of other notable New Orleans-oriented musicians, including drummer Baby Dodds, clarinetist George Lewis, who's a standout, and trombonist Jim Robinson.

Bunk may not have been Louis Armstrong, but "Saints Go Marching In" is a really nice package of traditional New Orleans jazz with tasty versions of the title track, "Careless Love," "St. Louis Blues" and "C.C. Rider," among others. He does two boffo renditions of his own "Midnight Blues." Not a bad minute out of all 77:20 of it. Plus, I paid less than six bucks and that almost makes me giddy.

Nothing to do with jazz...

...but "Streets of Fire" came up on the Shuffle as I was grocery shopping this afternoon and that prompted me to pull out "Darkness on the Edge of Town" (great as always), which got me on a Springsteen jag and led me put on "Lucky Town." I bought it a long time ago and I don't play it often and that's a shame. There's not a track I don't like. Bruce fans, me included, should appreciate this disk more. It's in my iTunes library now.

Modern jazz painters

"The Lacemaker"
originally uploaded by mrgreg.

Whenever I'm in Paris, which is as often as possible, I visit the Louvre and whenever I visit the Louvre I always spend some time in front of Vermeer's painting "The Lacemaker." It's a simple painting, a lone woman in a yellow dress bent over a small table making lace, as the title implies. But I have been drawn to it since the first time I saw it. In part, that's because I find Vermeer himself interesting, a bit of a mystery man, who left behind fewer than 40 paintings, most of them with subjects as common as "The Lacemaker" and as brilliant.

But last time, I finally decided that what really attracted me to the painting was Vermeer's subtle yet affective use of color, the yellow in the lacemaker's dress, the shades of blue and gold in the material she's working with, a swatch of red.

I thought of this the other day as I listened again to my favorite Modern Jazz Quartet CD set, the two-disk "Dedicated to Connie," Atlantic, which captures a concert at Ljubljana, Slovenia, in 1960. Like Vermeer, it seems to me, the genius of the MJQ was the subtle use of musical color to render a book mostly made up of standards differently without going to extremes like, say, Paul Smoker and his mates on "Standard Deviation," which I happen to like as well, and without any horns to augment their palette.

Take the medley that opens the first CD, which includes pieces of "The Little Comedy" and "Fontessa," among other well-known tunes, colored with "Pop Goes the Weasel" and "My Old Kentucky Home" quotes, the blues, classical undertones, stride, avant-garde snatches and an unusual cymbal solo by Connie Kay. Also note the stop-and-go version of "'Round Midnight" and the way they come at "I Should Care" from different angles using similar tempo shifts and stutters. They essentially turn "I Remember Clifford" inside out, reversing fast and slow interludes and places where it swings and where it is melancholy. In none of these examples are the individual effects blatant or jarring, but the total effect can be captivating ... like a Vermeer painting.

A dude of few notes

"The Great Paris Concert," Atlantic, proves that Edward Kennedy Ellington and his men could say more musically in two to five minutes than most musicians, of any kind, think about saying in a dozen. Mondo amusing banter from Duke to the crowd as well. He was s-o-o-o cool.

More McLean

I can honestly say I don't own any Jackie McLean disks I dislike. Here are a couple others to which I'm especially partial.

"Destination Out," Blue Note. If Charlie Parker had lived into the '60s I hope he would have sounded like this, a logical extension of bop into the avant-garde era. Bobby Hutcherson on vibes and Grachan Moncur III on trombone are copacetic partners in the effort. I sometimes wonder if Roy Haynes ever recorded a session where he didn't sound like the perfect drummer for that particular date.

"Jackie McLean and Company," Prestige. Tuba player Ray Draper, on three cuts, gives it a different flavor. McLean's playing is soulful. Mal Waldron on piano and the fact that the songs are all originals by the players suggest it as well. Doug Watkins is impressive on bass.

Jackie Mac attack

I like Wynton Marsalis and his music and I think he does a lot for jazz even if you disagree with his unwavering traditionalist outlook somewhat. I thought he was an articulate, educational spokesman for the music in Ken Burns' "Jazz" as well. But the narrator Burns used who impressed me the most (in fact, I owned none of his CDs until I saw him in the documentary series) was Jackie McLean, who not only had lived jazz history but conveyed what he lived with heart and soul. When he talked about his relationship with Lester Young and Young's death, I teared up.

I've been listening to the great alto saxophonist, a stellar jazz educator in his own right, since I learned about his death yesterday and picked out what I think are my three favorite Jackie McLean disks.

"Nature Boy," Blue Note. This is McLean curbing (to some extent) his avant-garde leanings and playing a lovely, ballady set with Cedar Walton on piano, David Williams on bass and Billy Higgins on drums. I think McLean's playing, usually more Charlie Parker meets John Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders by way of Thelonious Monk, is lyrically beautiful and a perfect introduction to his inherent greatness as a saxophonist. Miles Davis, Charles Mingus and Art Blakey didn't use the guy when he was a pup for nothing.

"The Jackie Mac Attack Live," Verve. I believe my buddy Carl Abernathy, taste spot on as usual, gave me this. Think Jackie McLean plays his alto live like Sonny Rollins plays his tenor live and you're not far wrong. Accessible hard bop with strong avant-garde leanings and impressive improvisation. A nice companion to "Nature Boy."

"Dynasty," Triloka. Essential jazz music, not just essential Jackie McLean music. He recorded this after 10 years off to work on his educational career. I think he had a lot waiting to get out, and it does. Playing with son René, a fine reedist himself, likewise seems to have been inspirational. Pianist Hotep Idris Galeta, also on "Jackie Mac Attack," is a guy you want to hear, too.

Neville jazz

Saxophonist Charles Neville and his brothers may not be jazz musicians per se, but they’re from New Orleans and you’ve got to figure there will be jazz in their music, which there generally is. In the case of "Charles Neville & Diversity," LaserLight, a disk I picked up not long ago, the jazz is front and center.

"Diverse," for instance, is straight out of the Hot Club de France with violinist David Kempers as Stephane Grappelli, Eric Struthers as Django Reinhardt, with a touch of Grant Green, and the addition of Neville's saxophone. Although the last thing I need is another version of "Summertime," the soprano sax version Neville lays down is different at least, higher pitched naturally, but I hear some Neville Brothers' touches in it as well. The group puts soul in "God Bless the Child," while "Nyomba" is good hard bop followed by "Moose the Mooche," which as you might expect comes out as good bop, the violin giving it an unusual texture. Likewise a breezy rendition of "The Jitterbug Waltz" with Rachel Van Vjorhees and her harp leading the way. Diverse this CD is and, as with diversity in general, I think that's a good thing.

Big Banding, part 8

Here's another in my hunt for good one-disk samplers covering a selection of classic big bands from the '20s, '30s and '40s with decent sound, representative material and a reasonable price.

"Earl Hines The Early Years: 1923-1942.” In this Jazz Legends compilation of Earl "Fatha" Hines-led big band recordings you will find some great trumpet soloing on "Congaine" and a great trumpeter on "Skip the Gutter," Louis Armstrong. Meanwhile, stride-rooted Fatha gets his both solo, on "Blues in Thirds" for one, and with the band, as on "Pianology," and shows why he was probably a better pianist than Basie and Ellington and in a league with Fats Waller. But you want it because for every Armstrong, Skeeter Best and Billy Eckstine on the cuts, there are several good musicians you've never heard of who play with aplomb in Hines' wake as on "Madhouse" and "Bubbling Over," which will surely get your feet moving. "Boogie Woogie on St. Louis Blues" is a classic that does just what the title implies and "Jelly, Jelly" is a killer blues big band style. I like the later stuff on the disk better, but it's all good.

Follow the links to my suggestions for disks featuring the bands of Jay McShann or Glenn Miller or Claude Thornhill or Chick Webb or Benny Goodman or Fletcher Henderson or Billy Eckstine or Andy Kirk.

Awake on the Trane

Like Monk CDs, I keep wondering when I will hit my limit on Coltrane CDs and say "that is sufficient." But I had been meaning to pick up "Newport '63," Impulse, for some time now and when I saw it recently for a bargain price at the wondrous Jazz Record Mart in Chicago, on a stop before attending a Donald Harrison performance at the Jazz Showcase, I bit and I'm glad I did.

Elvin Jones is missing (Roy Haynes drums instead, hardly a terrible imposition) but the rest of the great quartet with Jones, Coltrane, McCoy Tyner and Jimmy Garrison is there for three extended live cuts, including a version of "My Favorite Things" where Tyner really shines and Coltrane plays the song with noticeable differences from the famous Atlantic disk where it's the title tune. Coltrane makes a memorable run through “Impressions” on “Newport” as well. The final track, “Chasin’ Another Trane,” comes from a Village Vanguard session with Reggie Workman substituting on bass and Eric Dolphy added on alto. The two horns, as you can imagine with Coltrane and Dolphy in tandem, are an improvisational feast. Great music to help me keep awake through the jet lag from my London foray.

Now that's art

Let me tell you, for an older gentleman Roscoe Mitchell can still bring it. Sonny Rollins is the only other jazz senior citizen I've seen who's still got as much stuff.

I caught Mitchell with the Art Ensemble of Chicago at the Jazz Cafe in London's Camden section last night. One of the best half dozen performances I've seen, ever. They did everything from an improvisational piece that sounded like it was based off an African chant to kind of a funky acid jazz-like thing with clever quotes of Miles Davis' "Jean-Pierre." This while employing an impressive array of instruments. Saying they had all the bells and whistles (and a lot of saxes, drums and flutes, too) would be literally true. The youngish trumpeter Corey Wilkes is an able replacement for the late Lester Bowie and even did a Roland Kirk thing, blowing his trumpet and flugelhorn at the same time to fine effect. The place was packed, a real contrast from when I saw, say, Henry Grimes or Joe McPhee in the States last year and the audience struggled to reach a dozen. Folks were straining to get a good look at the stage and some people even danced, not something you see at every avant-garde jazz set.

The Jazz Cafe looks to me to be the prime spot in London, better than Ronnie Scott's (closed for renovations right now anyway) or Pizza Express Jazz, although the jerk running the door opened it late and left a line of customers standing in the freezing cold. The Cafe had Dr. Lonnie Smith and Lou Donaldson last week and has several shows coming up I wish I was going to be here to see. They serve a nice meal, if a little expensive, as well and eating gets you a good seat.

Greek to me

From my hotel's coin-operated Internet terminal in windy and cold London, where it may rain today but there's always a warm pub around the corner and a proper room-temperature beer.

After I arrived Friday, I took the tube to Islington and made a bit of a hike to hear Greek saxopohonist Dimitri Vassilakis and his trio at the Vortex Jazz Club. Dimitri is obviously familiar with Sonny Rollins. I liked his original stuff better than the standards he covered. It's a little odd hearing a Greek guy do "Moanin'" and sing as well as play a song that obviously has roots in spirituals and the black church. He improvised off it nicely, however.

Saturday, I found a used copy of Miles Davis' "Star People" at Ray's Jazz for £5, which thrilled me. Sunday, I bought what is probably an illicit Bunk Johnson CD for £2.99 at the Petticoat Lane Market. I feel a little bad about that. Then again, Bunk's long gone so I don't think I'm taking food out of his mouth. He probably didn't get paid when he made the recordings either, more is the pitty.

Tonight, I think I'll Tube up to the Jazz Cafe and see the Art Ensemble of Chicago, ironic given that I can drive a couple hours and see them in Chicago whenever.

Bye, bye

Off to London for vacation, not taking a computer, don't intend to get near one for a week, although I might try to find a machine to use Saturday, the first birthday for this little Web log. But maybe not.

One last thought before I hit the road. "Herman's Heat, Puente's Beat," Evidence, is great music to pack by (that's Woody and Tito, it should go without saying).

Musicianer's musicianer

I just finished "Treat It Gentle," the autobiography of New Orleans jazz great Sidney Bechet (that's ba as in bath and shay as in sashay), which I spied cruising a local bookstore last year.

The book from Da Capo Press is a nifty look at the roots and initial growth of jazz from a guy who was there pretty much at the beginning and who was probably second only to Louis Armstrong in his worldwide stature among early jazz musicians, or "musicianers" as Bechet refers to them. It reads easily, kind of folksy for the most part like Mark Harris' baseball novels the Henry Wiggen's books ("The Southpaw," "Bang the Drum Slowly," et al), which are old favorites of mine. In contrast, the section on his grandfather, a musician and slave named Omar, is mythological in nature and like a short work of classical literature on its own.

Bechet also is notable for cutting a niche in jazz for the soprano sax, which Coltrane and others made so much memorable use of later. He played clarinet as well.

For an excellent Sidney Bechet CD compilation, try "Sidney Bechet: Centenary Celebration 1997," from Louisiana Red Hot Records. The cuts Bechet recorded from 1924-43 are heavy on the New Orleans sound with a heaping helping of the blues and lots of wonderful improvised flourishes. If you think of Sidney as a sax-playing Satchmo, you're not far wrong.

Gal power

I first read about drummer Sherrie Maricle and her all-woman big band Diva in a column by Nat Hentoff, who raved about the group, which led me to its Web site to buy its 2002 CD "Live in Concert." Now I'm listening and relistening to "TNT: A Tommy Newsome Tribute" with Diva working music by composer and arranger Tommy Newsome of Tonight Show fame, another disk my buddy Carl Abernathy gave me for Xmas. (What Newsome and Diva do with "The Surrey with the Fringe on Top" is priceless.)

If you like big band music, you have to pick up something from Diva and either of the aforementioned disks will do. Put 'em in the big band era and these gals would have had a lot of other bands running scared. Put it another way, Chick Webb didn't have anything over on Maricle, as a drummer or a band leader. About the only complaint I have is that they place such an emphasis on stellar group play, and brief soloing in the context of it, that individual players I know could really let loose don't often get the chance. But that's really a compliment on my part, both to their skill as a group and individually.

Blue me

Besides Swing is in the Air, a wonderful jazz podcast (it isn't limited to swing despite the title), the other podcast I never miss is The Roadhouse from Tony Steidler-Dennison. Tony puts out a professional-quality show even though it's home produced and he seems to have more blues recording labels on board providing material every week. They should get on board. It's a great place to hear marvelous blues, from some of the bigger names, yes, but mostly from a lot of fine artists I've never heard of anyway and whose disks I probably wouldn't have picked up otherwise. (Candye Kane and Watermelon Slim come to mind.)

Miles rocks

Anybody who thinks it odd that they're inducting Miles Davis into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame tonight hasn't spent enough time with his electric music, which includes so many diverse elements that it's probably unclassifiable but could comfortably fit in either jazz or rock in my opinion. I love the stuff and get chills up and down my spine listening to it sometimes.

And I think it's massively cool that Miles Davis is going in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, at the same time as Blondie and the Sex Pistols no less.

Groovy Red

While I think "Soul Junction" with Coltrane is an excellent Red Garland CD, I like "Red's Good Groove" with baritonist Pepper Adams, who's every bit of Gerry Mulligan on "Take Me in Your Arms" and "Excerent!," even better. The group on the Jazzland disk, which also includes trumpeter Blue Mitchell and bass and drums legends Sam and Philly Joe Jones, just strikes me as extremely compatible every time I play this, does some fine soloing and excels in its ensemble play. A gem.

Life's little pleasures

I love puttering around home slowly on Saturday morning listening to my weekly podcast of Swing is in the Air from CKCU community radio in Ottowa, Canada, and host Jacques Emond. Jacques, for whom this is clearly a labor of love, usually concentrates on the music of different artist every show. (Today it was Texas tenorman Booker Ervin, guitarist Barney Kessel is up next and Lucky Thompson and Tommy Dorsey have been past subjects.) But sometimes he does shows highlighting, for instance, good CDs he found in the bargain bin or the music of artists who died in the past year. You get to hear just a wonderful variety of tunes. Ought to be in every podcast-savvy jazz fan's arsenal.

Duked

If somebody forced me to list my favorite album-length works of jazz, I'd undoubtedly put, among other things, Coltrane's "A Love Supreme," Mingus' "Black Saint and the Sinner Lady" and Duke Ellington's "Far East Suite" in the lineup. I probably wouldn't put "Don't Be Afraid: The Music of Charles Mingus" from Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra on the list, but I think of all three as I listen to the recent Palmetto disk.

"A Love Supreme" because Marsalis and his band reinterpreted it last year in fetching fashion, uncovering an infrequently discussed truth about Coltrane in the process: underneath those "sheets of sound" of his was a sense of swing essential to the nature of his music in my view. Likewise, I think they reveal something fundamental about the music of Mingus in "Don't Be Afraid," by dragging the Ellington inside it to the forefront. Mingus revered Duke, there was always a lot of Ellington underlying his music and, again, that element was essential to the music's nature. It's fascinating, to me anyway, to hear it brought out by as skilled a collection of jazz musicians as you'll find today, the modern equivalent, as much as we have one, of Ellington's bands. Think of it as "Duke Does Mingus."

I hear Ellington clearly in the two pieces of "Black Saint" that they do, and I hear some of Ellington's Latin-inflected pieces in "Tijuana Gift Shop," which I wish they had explored at more length, and "Los Mariachis." They let loose and have some fun with "Don't Be Afraid, the Clown's Afraid Too," as did Mingus, while "Meditation on Integration" is the piece on which they get closest to the edginess of a Mingus band playing Mingus music.

They never get too close, however. If you want that, there's always the Mingus Big Band, which tends to play in the master's style. If you want to hear Mingus differently, try this. The music was great to begin with and, even if I prefer the original, the musicianship from the LCJO is, as always, outstanding. Enjoy it, then pick up Mingus' own big band classic "Let My Children Hear Music" and dig the contrasts, and the similarities.

Red Trane

For Red Garland and Coltrane playing together (outside of the first great Miles Davis quintet, of course) I'm a fan of "Soul Junction," Prestige, which also includes Donald Byrd on trumpet, albeit it in a decidedly supporting role.

The recording was done exactly two months after Coltrane recorded "Blue Trane" and he shows some of the same stuff here, noticeably on "Birk's Works." But this is Red's date and he uses it to perambulate plenty, particularly on the title track and on "I've Got It Bad (And That Ain't Good)," which makes it a better disk to check out Garland than his partners.

Nonstandard

It is more accurate to say I don't need any more standards CDs with fairly straight renderings of songs like "Summertime," "A Night in Tunisia," "All the Things You Are," or "You Don't Know What Love Is." (Not intended to be an exhaustive list.) If I pick up a standards disk these days, I want to know it's going to be substantially different than what I've heard before. That's not always easy to determine, but if it's an improviser like Sonny Rollins, you've got a pretty good sign. There's nothing standard about Jean-Michel Pilc doing "St. James Infirmary" on his solo CD "Follow Me," let me tell you. The instrumentation is telltale as well. I might spring for another Bill Charlap standards session if he was accompanied by an alphorn quartet, or bagpipes.

This doesn't mean I'm against drawing on jazz's tradition, but jazz has a lot of tradition to draw on, much of which isn't drawn on enough. The other day, I listened to a good rendering of Mary Lou Williams "Zodiac Suite" from pianist Geri Allen and her Mary Lou Williams Collective. I happen to have a CD of Mary Lou Williams playing the "Zodiac Suite," from Smithsonian Folkways, that I like. But the Allen group's version, on the Mary label and titled "Zodiac Suite: Revisited," offers a fresh perspective on the music, which is hardly overplayed.

I think no less than Wynton Marsalis kind of agrees with me on this line of thought, despite being a diehard traditionalist. Which is why he's had the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra recasting stuff like Coltrane's "A Love Supreme" and some of the music of Mingus the last couple years (and recasting it in an interesting manner in both cases, I might add).

Friends of Bill

The only Bill Charlap CD I had before I bought Charlap's "Written in the Stars" wasn't a Bill Charlap CD at all, but a disk with the pianist accompanying trumpeter Brian Lynch, uncreatively titled "Brian Lynch Meets Bill Charlap," Sharp Nine. It's also a standards disk and reminds me of nothing more than the Red Garland trio playing with John Coltrane, minus Coltrane and plus Lynch, which makes for a nice changeup when you want to listen to some good jazz well played but not overly taxing on the brain.

Standard setting

A few weeks ago, I was drunkenly telling my buddy Carl Abernathy I didn't need any more "standards" CDs, so the next day I bought "Written in the Stars" from Blue Note with pianist Bill Charlap and his trio, Washingtons Peter and Kenny on bass and drums respectively, playing, you guessed it, a bunch of standards.

What the heck, I didn't have anything with Charlap leading and it turns out there's nothing still about "In the Still of the Night," which the pianist and Peter Washington improvise with great alacrity, on this disk. While these may be standards, they're not the standards you tend to hear on every other standards disk, say, "Summertime." The guys make a touching ballad of "The Man That Got Away," for instance. That quiet interlude and one or two others aside, much of what they do is propelled by an undercurrent of advanced swing, like "Where Have You Been?" and "Lorelei," which are swinging and bluesy at the same in the classic mold of Count Basie, Jay McShann and other Kansas City greats.

Charlap isn't as far toward the outside as I like my favorite current piano players, Jean-Michel Pilc and Brad Mehldau, for example. But he's certainly a beautiful, creative, intricate and proficient pianist and the misters Washington are perfect teammates for him. It's something like listening to Oscar Peterson with Ray Brown and a drummer instead of a guitarist and playing that good, even standards, is hardly, well, standard.

Raison d'etre

Champagne and caviar, yeah right. I'll take Gerry Mulligan's Concert Jazz Band having at "Blueport" Dec. 11, 1960, in the Village Vanguard, third disk in the wonderful box set from Mosaic. Beer and a pizza to go with it would be nice, too.

Protest soundtrack

Protest music is easier to do with lyrics than instrumentally, as anybody who's ever listened to Billie Holiday sing "Strange Fruit" ought to know. Which only serves to make the way Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra gets its point across with "Not in Our Name" more impressive to me.

On track 4 in particular, I think the message is as clear as if there were words in the discordant, militarized, funereal rendering of "America the Beautiful" opening a medley that then shifts to a more soaring, hopeful and jazzy take on the song before moving into a rousing interlude of "Lift Every Voice and Sing," with a definite New Orleans influence, and Ornette Coleman's "Skies Over America."

Don't worry, "Not in Our Name," Verve, isn't a polemic. You get interesting, even fun music, too, mostly arranged by pianist Carla Bley. The title track is a wonderful, Spanish-inflected modern big band piece. Check out the reggae beat and clever quotes of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" on "This Is Not America," a collaborative composition from Pat Metheny and David Bowie no less. On "Blue Anthem," a military tattoo slides into a soulful blues and a great sax solo by Tony Malaby, I believe. It also could be Miguel Zenon. The funky, bluesy version of "Amazing Grace" makes me want to get down. Nice bass and guitar by Haden and Steve Cardenas.

If you think the U.S. is currently acting the way it should for some reason (and you're wrong for so many reasons if you do) this is still an excellent disk. Since there are no words, you can more easily ignore the message (although you shouldn't) and enjoy the tunes.

The right stuff

I always thought "The Right Stuff," book and movie, were cool because it gave the pre-astronaut rocket pilots like Chuck Yeager, who stuck their necks out and probed the boundaries of space in relative obscurity, their due. Not that I'm not a fan of John Glenn and, later, Neil Armstrong, et al. As a space program junkie, I am. But credit where credit is due.

I'm a fan of Ornette Coleman as well, avant-garde Coltrane, Archie Shepp and my man Albert Ayler. But listening again to Sonny Rollins' "Freedom Suite" this evening reminds me that Mr. Rollins was pushing the outside of the envelope in the '50s, well before anybody talked about "free" jazz. Talk about your righteous stuff.

(One of) my favorite things

"Sweet and Lovely" from "Benny Carter, Dizzy Gillespie, Inc.," Pablo, came up on the Shuffle walking home for lunch and compelled me to pull the CD out. OK, it's guys hanging out and playing not some heady, intellectual concept disk. But what guys, what playing and what a pleasure. Besides Benny and Dizzy you get Tommy Flanagan on the piano and Joe Pass on guitar. Al McKibbon on bass and Micky Roker on drums ain't bad either. "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen" is another great cut.

Cool in New York

I raved about Donald Harrison, Ron Carter and Billy Cobham on Harrison's disk "Heroes" recently, so when I saw "New York Cool," a live reprise released last year by Half Note, I snapped it up. Good move.

You can't do "Body and Soul" better than Coleman Hawkins, so why not make it kind of a bossa mambo thing? Interesting improv by Harrison, complimentary bass from Carter, who gets a little William Parkeresque on his solo, and a great rendition of a Latin drum machine from Cobham. Harrison goes Coltrane on "I'll Remember April," which made me think of "Chasin' the Trane" in places, and Cobham pounds out a pretty good Elvin Jones, too. They also do a memorable job of abstracting "Star Eyes." Harrison epitomizes blues saxophone playing on "Blues for Happy People."

What really strikes me is how this isn't just a showcase session for the saxophonist, although Harrison gets his share of the spotlight and should, but a real team collaboration with the bass and drums as much the headliners as the horn. Considering the guys behind them, why not? Excellent.

Big Banding ... oops

I was thinking about including reedist Marty Ehrlich's "News on the Rail," Palmetto, in a post on good modern big band disks I've encountered lately, but then I noticed it's ONLY a sextet. It just sounds like a big band, probably in part because of the multi-instrumental duty the players take on (Howard Johnson takes honors by playing baritone sax, tuba and bass clarinet, with standout bari work on "Keeper of the Flame"), which gives this group an unusual, as well as full, sound.

I'd rate it creatively with Jamie Baum's CD "Moving Forward, Standing Still", which I really like, except more toward the bass end of things instrumentally and more toward the outside musically, although not excessively so. Think Eric Dolphy and Mingus and you're close. But there are places where it neo-swings as well like "Seeker's Delight," where James Zollar (trumpet and flugelhorn) gets in some quality solo time. The disk is laced with interesting sounds, like what appears to be interplay between a harmonica and the tuba on the title track. The former, I suspect, is pianist James Weidman doing double duty on the melodica, not something you often hear in a jazz recording. In an overall sense, the drums and bass seem to be more part of the front line than just a rhythm section. You're not going to listen to this and think you've heard it all before.

Now's the time

The Gerald Wilson Orchestra's "In My Time," Mack Avenue, is exciting modern big band music with great ensemble playing and prominent solos played like jazz should be played in 2006 instead of the '30s.

"Sax Chase" is so hot I feel like I need asbestos earmuffs to listen to it. Especially notable is the three-part suite "The Diminished Triangle," with its middle section, "Ray's Vision at the U," making use of "In a Sentimental Mood" in a way that drags the blues out of it and featuring some wonderful piano from Renee Rosnes (who's great on Miles Davis' "So What," too, and really throughout). The closing interlude, "Blues for Manhattan," swings like Tarzan and has wonderful horn solos by Sean Jones on trumpet and Ron Blake tenor sax (like Rosnes, also excellent elsewhere in the session), as well as Russell Malone on electric guitar.

The leader is a legend, his arrangements are fab, the musicians are among the best of today and there's not a subpar track on the disk. Another Xmas gift from my buddy Carl Abernathy, who's got good taste except for his Jimmy Buffett fetish. (Inside joke, I made that up.)

My new piano pal

"My New Old Friend," Cryptogramophone, has pianist Alan Pasqua leading with Darek Oles on bass and Peter Erskine on drums, a very compatible trio. The liner notes say it's intended to give the listener a place to rest for a bit and the lineup and playing are peaceful for the most part. I can see myself putting it on when I don't feel good and just want to sit quietly, although some tunes, like "Stick Slap," get lively. The songs are mostly Pasqua compositions, a few standards ("Smile," for instance, done beautifully) and at least one cover, "Wichita Lineman," I never figured to hear as a jazz tune. They make a nice ballad of it.

Pasqua, probably better known as a keyboardist for a variety of rockers, is a technically proficient jazz pianist in the Bill Evans mold who, at least on this, sticks mostly inside the lines and doesn't need to do anything else to be impressive. One of the better piano trios I've heard lately.

Goold goodness

I touted tenor saxophonist Ned Goold in writing about Harry Connick's excellent no-singing disk "Other Hours." "Gooold," Amosaya Records, puts Goold in sax-bass-drums trio and lets you hear plenty of him and probably is one reason why the CD makes me think of Sonny Rollins, because there's just about nothing I like better than Mr. Rollins in a trio.

Goold has some Sonny Rollins in his sound, too, although it's a sound all his own. And he has the same propensity to go places in his solos you didn't expect, with abstract but logical flights, and the same kind of ability to get back home and leave you wondering how he did it.

The lineup is mostly Goold's stuff with a few not overly played standards the guys really have fun with, including "Sonny Boy" and Monk's "Epistrophy," the only one you're likely to recognize right off. The improvising on "Hazmat" and "Michael vs. Mikan" (which I assume refers to a couple hoopsters named Jordan and George) is especially tasty, but it's all good. I really like this disk.

New flamenco sketches 2

I saw Chick Corea and the group of largely Spanish musicians he's been playing with, and is calling Touchstone, at the Ravinia Festival outside Chicago last summer. It was one of the best sets I saw in 2005. The improvising was strong, the musicianship outstanding and the musicians clearly sympathetic. While founded on Spanish themes and the flamenco, rhumba and tango forms in particular, the music was less overtly influenced by them and wider ranging than, say, Jerry Gonzalez's "Los Piratas del Flamenco," which I liked anyway. When Corea said they had a recording in the process, I knew I would be buying it.

I've given the two-CD "Rhumba Flamenco" two listens and there are two things I like about it. It reminds me of the Ravinia concert musically. ("Touchstone," the song not the band, lasts 22 minutes and includes some great interplay between Corea, Jorge Pardo on flute and Carles Benavent on electric bass.) And I bought the disks directly from Chick Corea's Web site, which is the only way to get them at present. No scummy Sony or other big record companies involved, which is fine by me.

Corea really sounds inspired and the instrumentation, with both drums and percussion, is interesting. Makes for a heck of a beat. Eight of the 10 tunes in the collection of European concert recordings are over 10 minutes, lots of room to make cool music, and these guys do. Benavent is the Spanish Jaco Pastorius on "Zyriab (de Lucia)." I'm not a big flute fan, but Pardo could change my mind, with his inventive solo and comping on what's a speedy run through "You're Everything," for instance, and his front-and-center role on "Mallorca." His playing is just so jazzy and it fits so well in this context. I'm not even sorry he doesn't get the saxophone out more and he's excellent on that instrument, too. "Kalimba" features a nifty duet between percussionist Rubem Dantas on thumb piano and Corea on the big version. Well worth it and you get the added pleasure of knowing the musicians receive most of the money.

Children of Miles electric

Alan Parsons Project and Bugge Wesseltoft, classical piano licks with synthesizers, a voice as instrument more chant than scat, an electric bass and strings with a hip-hop drum beat, Monkian pianism, screaming (kind of) electric guitars, "Tubular Bells," a bit of the Jimi Hendrix, bluesy piano and churchy organ, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Nina Simone, whistling, disco reggae, rocky soul, Joe Satriani, heck, even some moments of fairly recognizable jazz.

Things I heard, among other things, on Burnt Sugar's "Blood on the Leaf, Opus No. 1," one of the CDs Philip Freeman suggests as an extension of Miles Davis' electric music in his excellent book "Running the Voodoo Down." The group, which includes Vijay Iyer, self produces and you can find its disks through its Web site. I'd take the trip if I were you because "Blood on the Leaf" gets more interesting every time I listen to it. Exciting stuff.

Experience counts

On "Young Warrior, Old Warrior," Mapleshade, baritone saxophonist Hamiet Bluiett lays down a free run here and there, but mostly travels on or near the line between in and out with a sometimes sextet that sounds like it got a lot out of playing together. Their reading of Dizzy Gillespie's "Blue 'N Boogie" has a relentless groove straight out of Gerry Mulligan's Concert Jazz Band and that's high praise from this writer.

There's some Mingus in the disk, too, like "Bari-ed Treasure," not surprising since trumpeter and longtime Mingus sideman Jack Walrath wrote the piece for Bluiett, according to the liner notes. It's an excellent showcase for the big horn and the guy behind it, and Walrath gets some as well. "Blues in F and G" captures the essence of hard times, like these, employing nothing more than Bluiett's horn and Keter Betts' legendary bass. Bluiett lets loose on the free duet "Jimmy and Me" with equally legendary drummer Jimmy Cobb. My buddy Carl Abernathy gave me this for Xmas and it was a good choice.

Bounce with the flow

I saw Terence Blanchard in concert at Purdue University a few weeks ago and commented to my buddy Carl Abernathy at one point that Blanchard and his band had a real Miles Davis' electric era kind of thing going, albeit it an extending of some of the ideas Miles laid down not by any means a knockoff.

You can hear it in his latest CD "Flow" as well, for instance where he plays off the guitarist Lionel Loueke's vocal African chant, which serves as the main instrument on the introduction to "Wadagbe" and remains part of the ensemble in the body of the song. As an electric guitar player, Loueke is hard rocking but with touch like former Davis guitarist Mike Stern. Add in various electronic flourishes, bass and percussion, and a saxophone that sounds like a snake charmer's horn and you get, in sum, a sound theater for Blanchard to work his trumpet magic in, as Davis did with his electric bands. Likewise the title track, done in three movements spread around the disk.

Everything on "Flow" isn't a heady musical experiment, however. A lot of it is straight-ahead modern jazz, although more advanced than most and never entirely conventional. Take "Benny's Tune," a lovely ballad that seems to have roots in "My Ideal;" "Wandering Wonder" or "The Source," hard boppy runs with electric touches and some great Blanchard solo work and comping (and powerful piano playing by Aaron Parks on the latter); and "Harvesting Dance," which works off a Spanish-inflected Derrick Hodge bass groove to create something like an electro-acoustic bullfight theme. Kicking drums from Kendrick Scott, too.

I think "Flow" and its 2003 predecessor "Bounce" say that Blanchard has to be considered among the most creative band leaders, as well as trumpet players, working today. Herbie Hancock, himself a musical searcher for decades, didn't produce this (and play on two cuts) for the exercise.

Busy, busy

I am overly busy in real, as opposed to virtual, life but hope to get some music listened to and some new posts done in the next couple days.

Meanwhile, I attended the Robert Glasper Trio's performance at the Jazz Showcase in Chicago over the weekend and learned two things.

The Jazz Showcase is a nice place to hear and see jazz. And Robert Glasper is very good live. The guys played about an hour and a half a set and did, effectively, four songs, which made for lots of really cool improvising. If you get a chance to see them, do it.

Keep an ear on Glasper

Word is Robert Glasper employs subtle hip-hop influences in his music, but I don't hear much of it on "Canvas," his new CD from Blue Note/EMI. However, I'm not disappointed, although I bought the CD to see what he did with hip-hop, because I do hear lots of strong and inventive piano playing and creatively improvised, impressively complex jazz without the discordance that sometimes accompanies the free variety of said.

Mostly playing acoustic piano in a trio with bass and drums, Glasper reminds me of McCoy Tyner. But he nonetheless has his own sound down and seems to me to be as adept as younger lion big hitters like Bill Charlap and Brad Mehldau. His playing on his own songs is muscular and intricate at once, as are the compositions themselves. "Enoch's Meditation," for example, ranges from funky to classical and I think I might even hear those rumored hip-hop touches underneath it. Check out "Jelly's Da Beener," where he flips seamlessly between blistering straight-ahead play and the avant-garde. Impressive. He switches to a rollicking electric piano on Herbie Hancock's "Riot," the only composition not Glasper's, which has saxophonist Mark Turner (he's on two tracks) and the pianist improvising in tandem as well as ear-catching solo runs. This is a young guy to keep an ear on and "Canvas" is a fine place to start.

X marks the spot

"Moods: Playing with the Elements," from Trio-X and CIMP is an odd duck, a free jazz CD that's quiet (I can barely hear it in some places) and melodic but still a vehicle for flights of improvisation by Joe McPhee, who plays tenor sax, flugelhorn and pocket trumpet, bassist Dominic Duval and drummer Jay Rosen.

Their version of "Stella by Starlight" is the perfect example of what I'm talking about. A jazz fan who preferred conventional playing would easily recognize the standard in some sections, and probably be impressed by the musicianship, while a free jazz fan would likely get a kick out of the trio's improvising off the song, which takes it in a number of creative but logical directions. A fan of both, like me, is in hog heaven. The rest of the disk is equally interesting and, although the moods it does a good job evoking aren't what you would call uproarious, I don't see it becoming boring through plenty of listens.

Lou's due

Other than iTunes downloads of his big hits, I didn't have anything from Lou Rawls before the great singer passed away last month. Recently, I rectified that by buying "Stormy Monday," a reissue of a 1962 Blue Note recording with Rawls backed by my man Les McCann and his trio at the time, including the super bassist Leroy Vinnegar.

I like the disk for both Rawls and the band. Although this is near the outset of his career, he sounds just like, well, Lou Rawls and his voice may even sound fresher than it was later. The song mix incorporates mostly blues and jazz standards, among them the title track, "God Bless the Child" (a song I'll now think of in terms of Billie Holiday and Lou Rawls), swinging versions of "Willow Weep for Me" and "'Taint Nobody's Bizness If I Do" and a bluesy "I'd Rather Drink Muddy Water." The gospel-tinged "A Little Les of Lou's Blues" features fine interplay between Rawls and McCann's piano and Vinnegar's walking bass is a perfect compliment to Rawls' singing all the way through. A gem.

Two guys with saxes

I bought "Travesia," from David Sanchez and Columbia, for $7.99 at my local used CD store when I saw it featured both tenorman Sanchez and altoist Miguel Zenon, two younger sax players whose CDs "Coral" and "Jibaro" were among my favorites last year. "Travesia" is a mix of standards and compositions from Sanchez and Zenon rendered as modern hard bop with, for the most part, only a taste of Latin jazz.

"Prince of Darkness" is done Jazz Messengers-style. But the saxophone soloing is more Wayne Shorter with Miles Davis (it's Shorter's song for Davis' second classic quintet, after all) than Shorter with Art Blakey's crew, which is to say at the border of the outside (and sometimes over it). "La Maquina" sounds Latin bluesy in places and has touches of Ellington, along with more excellent sax solos. "Paz pa Vieques" by Sanchez starts out like Latin bop and includes some nice interplay between he and Zenon, as do Zenon's "Joyful," which cooks, and several of the other songs on the CD. The standard "Ill Wind" gets a mildly avant-garde reading in a lengthy Sanchez solo. Nice piano and bass throughout, from Edsel Gomez and Hans Glawischnig respectively, but the saxes rule (check out the fetching solo work on "No Quiero Piedras en mi Camino" and "Pra Dizer Adeus," two very different songs).

It's a five-year-old disk that I would characterize as mostly controlled risk, but these guys already were showing the stuff I think places them near the top of the younger lions list. I wouldn't be unhappy if I had paid full price.

The Brazilian Ellington

A plug from Joe Moore at JazzPortraits prompted me to pick up "Choros & Alegria," a collection of previously unrecorded pieces from and supervised by notable Brazilian composer and arranger Moacir Santos. The disk consists of mildly Latin-inflected large group play, often Ellingtonian or movie score-like in scope with an undercurrent of touchstone sounds associated with better-known Brazilian songsters like Gilberto and Jobim.

The music is excellent, but the musicians (not one, with the exception of a guest spot by Wynton Marsalis, what you would call famous, at least outside Brazil) are the highlight to me. In sum, this CD gives great horn, for example the memorable trombone playing on "Now I Know," some Pepper Adams-reminiscent baritone sax on "Another Thing" and nice saxes and French horn work on "Paradise," a ballad that fairly channels the melancholy of lost love. Marvelous saxophone soloing on "The Lemurians" as well, and some ear-catching trumpet and Spanish-tinged guitar elsewhere, the latter not too far from being in a league with Kenny Burrell or Wes Montgomery. "Route" is a thoroughly modern big band piece, the kind of thing you might get with the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra. Thanks for the tip Joe.

Plug in

Here are five good ways, or 10, to start appreciating the electric music of Miles Davis.

"In a Silent Way," not too big a shift from the late '60s free-leaning acoustic explorations of his great Shorter-Hancock-Carter-Williams quintet. I rate it with "Kind of Blue" as his masterwork. One theme throughout his career is the importance not of playing all the notes but only the important notes. Here's the apex.

"A Tribute to Jack Johnson," what happens after "In a Silent Way." Get in the car, slip it into the CD player and start driving. I could get across Kansas on the groove and probably find something new in the music every listen.

"Live at the Fillmore East, March 7, 1970: It's About That Time," think they can't do the kind of stuff they did on "Jack Johnson" live? Think again. This is my favorite live Miles electric disk, although there are other good ones. ("Agharta" is number two, and since it comes later, 1975, you get a better fix on the music's advancement. You won't go wrong with either.)

"We Want Miles," I like the trumpeter whose subtle touch is legendary with Mike Stern, a rocking electric guitarist whose touch can nonetheless be likewise delicate and whose creativity is often off the charts. "Jean-Pierre" might be my favorite Miles electric tune.

"Tutu," the logical extension of where he'd been heading since 1969. Marcus Miller laid down pretty much everything else electronically and Miles recorded over it. Both of them did a marvelous job. Great trumpet playing from Davis and the thing in sum is accessible, even danceable at intervals.

Don't deny yourself the experience, however. Be sure to check out "Bitches Brew" and "On the Corner," too. I think they're the two disks most loaded with the elements of his electric period, but also dense and less accessible as a result, meaning they take more work to really appreciate.

I'm a freak, I love "Doo-Bop" as well (which is Miles meets hip-hop, briefly, because he died a few months after recording it in 1991). Guy could play, end game or not.

For a sampler of what he was getting to the last couple decades of his life try "Live Around the World." On the song "Amandla," he drags jazz into the 21st Century. The version of "Time After Time" rates with Miles acoustic versions of "My Funny Valentine." It makes Cyndi Lauper's pop rendering, on which it's based, look anemic, and I like Cyndi Lauper's pop rendering.

Tune in Teo

Teo Macero, the producer and (truth be told) collaborator on a lot of Miles Davis' stellar electric recordings, also was a pretty good tenor saxophonist before he moved behind the scenes. Check out "Teo Macero with the Prestige Jazz Quartet," a 1957 session on which he plays with a Stan Getz-like sound. The disk has good stuff from Mal Waldron on piano and Teddy Charles on vibes as well. I downloaded it from emusic, for my money the best of the legal download services from a jazz perspective.