Archives for May 2014

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Paul Desmond died 37 years ago today. Every year, as the anniversary approaches, my cerebellum senses it and the brain starts dialing up episodes. Playwright Jack Richardson (1934-2012) got it right when he spoke at the memorial service about what it was like to be Paul’s friend:

I found him the best company of anyone I’d ever known in my life. I found him the most loyal friend I’ve ever had in my life. I found him the most artistic person I’ve ever known in my life. His leaving will make this planet a smaller and darker place for everyone.

Rereading that, I recalled Richardson, Desmond and me ambling through Greenwich Village, talking and laughing in some anonymous bar, sitting in The Guitar listening to Jim Hall, hailing cabs at two in the morning. And every day, I remember Desmond and the cats because I recently took out of storage a painting that now hangs on a wall of our music room. It triggers the memory of a conversation at our house in Portland, Oregon, in 1965. This is the painting.

Here’s the story as it appeared in Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond.

During the Portland visit, Paul joined my wife, infant son and me for lunch at home—a late lunch, of course. He gazed at a large painting on the living room wall, an oil by Barbara Jones of four cats stalking a mouse, and said, ‘Ah, the perfect album cover for when I record with the Modern Jazz Quartet.’ I pointed out that the mouse was mechanical, with a wind-up key on its side.

‘In that case,” he said, ‘Cannonball will have to make the record.’

In truth, Desmond admired Cannonball Adderley, and the feeling was mutual. In a Down Beat blindfold test, Adderley referred to Desmond as ‘a profoundly beautiful player.’

Paul did eventually record with the MJQ, on Christmas night, 1971, at Town Hall in Manhattan, a few blocks down Sixth Avenue from his apartment. He and John Lewis had been mutual admirers and dining companions for years, but had never before performed together. Here are a couple of excerpts from my Down Beat review of the concert.

Desmond has recorded frequently with Percy Heath and copiously with Connie Kay. When he walked on stage their faces lit up in proprietary grins. Lewis also seemed to be anticipating the occasions, crouching over the keyboard, hands at the ready. Milt Jackson looked vaguely skeptical, but that expression is chronic.

…Then came the piece that should have lasted forever, a blues, “Bags’ Groove.” Desmond applied long lines and that remarkable sense of when to change pace and came up with his most interesting solo of the night, swinging hard. When his solo had ended, there wasn’t an immobile foot in the house.

A recording of the full MJQ-Desmond concert has been in and out of circulation, with CD copies and LPs sometimes going for as much as $130. It now seems to be available both as an MP3 download and a CD.

Years ago when we were discussing his friend and musical companion of decades, Dave Brubeck summed it up for a lot of us:

“Boy, I sure miss Paul Desmond.”

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After Herb Jeffries died on Sunday in Los Angeles, headlines around the world remembered him for his career as a singing cowboy in a succession of low budget 1930s Hollywood movies.

Herb Jeffries dies at 100; Hollywood’s first black singing cowboy—The Los Angeles Times

Herb Jeffries, ‘Bronze Buckaroo’ of Song and Screen, Dies at 100 (or So)—The New York Times

Appreciative listeners are more likely to recall Jeffries as the singer who worked with the Earl Hines Orchestra, then joined Duke Ellington when the classic Blanton-Webster edition of the band was taking shape. With Ellington, he recorded “Flamingo.” The record, with its remarkable Billy Strayhorn arrangement and a lovely Johnny Hodges interlude, became a hit in 1941. It remained on juke boxes and radio play lists for decades.

“Flamingo” became a trademark and calling card for Jeffries. Over the years, he was prevailed upon to remake the piece in film shorts, including this one with the Ellington band and decoration by a couple of pseudo-Caribbean dancers. Subsequent performances did not match the seductive power of the original recording.

Jeffries led a full and varied life in the United States and in the 1940s in France, where he owned night clubs in Paris. From the well-balanced New York Times obituary:

Over the course of his century, he changed his name, altered his age, married five women and stretched his vocal range from near falsetto to something closer to a Bing Crosby baritone. He shifted from jazz to country and back again, and from concert stages to movie theaters to television sets and back again.

To read the whole thing, go here. For the L.A. Times obit, which concentrates on Jeffries’ movie career, go here.

The matter of his ethnicity was a source of speculation throughout Jeffries’ career. He most often claimed that his mother was Irish and his father was a mixture of Sicilian, Ethiopian, French, Italian and Moorish and that his birth name was Umberto Alexander Valentino. The question of his degree of blackness seemed to be a source of some amusement to him in an interview around the time of his 100th birthday last fall. It had to do with his role in the production of Ellington’s 1941 musical Jump for Joy. It takes the video a while to get to the interview and Jeffries a while to get through the story, but patience will be rewarded.

Herb Jeffries, RIP

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With hardly a week going by in which we don’t lose a venerable musician, it may be natural to wonder whether the art form will wither. That is unlikely. New players emerge and enrich the music. It is rare, however, that they emerge quite as young as Kojo Roney of the Philadelphia Roneys. He is the son of tenor saxophonist Antoine and a nephew of trumpeter Wallace. He plays drums. He is nine years old. He recently sat in for Al Foster at the Village Vanguard in New York. Although the rest of the group is muffled in this video, young Mr. Roney is not. The piece he plays with the unidentified musicians is Victor Feldman’s “Seven Steps to Heaven.”

One observer at the Vanguard speculated that Kojo Roney is channeling Tony Williams (1945-1997), who made the original recording of “Seven Steps to Heaven” with Miles Davis in 1963. It will be interesting to see how Kojo develops.

This piece first appeared on Rifftides on Memorial Day, 2011.

There is someone I think of every Memorial Day, and many other days. Cornelius Ram and I were among a collection of young men who accepted the United States Marine Corps’ bet that we weren’t tough or smart enough to wrestle commissions from it. It quickly became apparent to everyone, including the drill instructors charged with pounding us into the shape of Marines, that Corky Ram would have no problem. He was a standout in the grueling weeks of officer candidate competition and then in the months of physical and mental rigor designed to make us worthy of those little gold bars on the collars of our fatigues. After high school in Jersey City, New Jersey, he had served a hitch as a Navy enlisted man, and then got a college degree before he chose the Corps. He was two or three years older than most of us, and a natural leader. He could tell when the pressure was about to cave a green lieutenant exhausted from a 20-mile forced march with full field pack or demoralized after a classroom test he was sure he had flunked. Corky knew how to use encouragement or cajolery to restore flagging determination. He helped a lot of us make it through. The picture on the left is how I remember him from that period.

Unlike most of us who served our few years and got out, Corky made the Marine Corps his career. He served two tours in Viet Nam. Here is the official 5th Marines’ Command Chronology of what happened to him and another officer on his second tour in January of 1971, as the war was slogging to its demoralizing conclusion:

“On 10 January Major Ram (2/5 XO) and Captain Ford (E Co., CO), while attempting to aid two wounded Marines, were killed by a 60mm surprise firing device.”

There’s a bit more to the story. Major Ram, Executive Officer of 2/5 Marines, and Captain Ford (of Glen Rock, NJ), Commanding Officer of Echo Company, were overhead in a command helicopter when they spotted the wounded Marines in the open and in the path of oncoming enemy troops. The helicopter pilot, convinced that the open area was mined, refused to land in the vicinity of the wounded Marines and instead put down at a distance. Major Ram and Captain Ford exited the helicopter and began to cross the open area toward the wounded men. The pilot was right – the area was mined, and both Major Ram and Captain Ford died as a result. At least one of the two wounded Marines survived; he visited the Ram family several years later and described the circumstances.

Corky Ram was one of 13,085 Marines who died in hostile action in Viet Nam. I knew others, but he was the one I knew best. More than once, I have stood gazing at his name on the wall at the Viet Nam Memorial in Washington, DC. When Memorial Day comes around, he symbolizes for me the American service men and women who have died in the nation’s wars. What we and all of the free world owe them is beyond calculation.

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Reports that the veteran pianist Frank Strazzeri had died began circulating a couple of weeks ago. They were impossible to confirm until now. Strazzeri died at 84 on May 9 in his hometown, Rochester, New York, but he spent most of his career in Los Angeles. He moved back to Rochester in late April following a final engagement at the Glendale club Jax, where he often played in his final years.

After attending the Eastman School of Music, in 1952 the 22-year-old Strazzeri worked as house pianist at a Rochester nightclub, accompanying visiting performers including Roy Eldridge, J.J. Johnson and Billie Holiday. He moved to New Orleans in 1954 and played traditional jazz in bands led by Sharkey Bonano and Al Hirt, but his main interest was in bebop. Soon, he went on the road with Charlie Ventura, then Woody Herman. At Herman’s suggestion, he settled in Los Angeles in 1960. Like many L.A. jazz musicians, Strazzeri used his skills to work in recording and television studios while also playing with a cross section of jazz artists, among them Bill Perkins, Art Pepper, Terry Gibbs, Bud Shank, Louis Bellson and Chet Baker. When filmmaker Bruce Weber was producing the Baker documentary Let’s Get Lost, the trumpeter designated Strazzeri to supervise the music.

I was extremely surprised when I was asked to do the film,” Strazzeri told Bill Kolhaase of The Los Angeles Times in 1993. “(Baker) played with hundreds of piano players. But I think he felt an alignment with me, a buddy thing, that made him feel comfortable. I used to break him up quite a bit. He lived on the sad side of life, you know, the doom-and-gloom thing. So I’d crack jokes and make him smile.

Strazzeri also played for Joe Williams, Maynard Ferguson, Les Brown and—Elvis Presley. Surprised? He toured several times with Presley in the early 1970s and struck up a friendship with him based on a mutual interest in karate.

When I brought it up, Strazzeri told Kolhaase, he said ‘Wait here.’ He came back in his karate outfit, and we spent the whole night talking about it. He showed me how he could kill me. And when I got up the next day, there was an envelope with $300 in it tucked under my door. Every time I talked with him he’d give me money.

Strazzeri’s primary source of income, however, was from his music, which continued long after his work with Presley. Among the colleagues with whom he worked most closely was saxophonist and flutist Bill Perkins. They recorded together on several occasions in, among other settings, Strazzeri’s sextet Woodwinds West. For the liner notes I wrote for their album Somebody Loves Me, Perkins told me,

His choruses are classics in melody. When we were playing together at Dino’s in the early days, I taped most of what we did. I’d go home and listen to the tapes. My intention was to listen fox myself; that’s human nature. But I would find that I was riveted to his solos. I kept thinking of the early Lester Young because, like Pres in those days, Frank never repeats himself. He has the gift of beautiful melody. I never get tired of listening to him.

There are few videos of Strazzeri. Here’s one. He has the first solo on his composition “Relaxin’,” filmed at Spazio in L.A. in 2010 with trombonist Steve Johnson’s Jazz Legacy. George Harper is the tenor saxophonist, with Jeff Littleton, bass, and Kenny Elliott, drums

From the 1973 Strazzeri album View From Within, this is his classic “Strazzatonic.” The all-star sidemen are named on the album cover.

Trombonist Johnson reports on his blog, Strazzeri told him that following the death two months ago of Jo Ann, his wife of 63 years, it was his dream to return to Rochester and be among family members.

Frank Strazzeri, RIP

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Gregory Herbert, one of the most talented saxophonists of his generation, was born in Philadelphia 67 years ago this month. After a brief engagement with Duke Ellington when he was 17, Herbert spent four years as a music major at Temple University in his hometown, concentrating on alto saxophone, clarinet and flute. In 1971 he joined Woody Herman’s Herd, that perpetual incubator of young talent, and began to specialize as a tenor saxophonist. Based on his work with Herman, conventional wisdom in the jazz community was that Herbert had the potential for a long, influential career. This piece from a 1974 concert in Zurich, Switzerland, presents some of the evidence. Richard Evans’ arrangement of The Temptations hit “I Can’t Get Next To You” begins with Herbert and fellow tenor men Gary Anderson (on the left) and Frank Tiberi, then devolves to Herbert as the featured soloist.

After he left Herman, Herbert worked with the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra, Chuck Israels’ National Jazz Ensemble and Blood, Sweat & Tears. He made memorable recordings with Jones-Lewis and Israels and with Harold Danko and Chet Baker. When he died in Amsterdam of a drug overdose in 1978, he was 30 years old.

This Herman album features Herbert on “I Can’t Get Next To You” and other pieces including his passionate solo on “Tantum Ergo,” Alan Broadbent’s memorial tribute to Duke Ellington.

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Rifftides reader Ted Arenson writes in response to yesterday’s posting about bees and a piece of bee-oriented music:

How about Hamp and the Ellingtonians great recording of “Buzzin ‘Round with the Bee?”

That’s a fine reminder of the many all-star sessions that Lionel Hampton recorded for RCA Victor in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Victor usually listed the records as by “Lionel Hampton and His Orchestra,” suggesting a studio full of musicians. In fact, the bands were combos of as few as six and no more than ten players. They included a cross section of the most prominent jazz artists of the period and helped to overcome the reluctance of major record companies to combine black and white musicians in the studios.

With thanks to Mr. Arenson and at the no doubt small risk of soliciting a tsunami of suggestions about jazz pieces having to do with bees, we bring you “Buzzin’ ‘Round With The Bee.” Lionel Hampton, vibes and vocal; Cootie Williams, trumpet; Lawrence Brown, trombone; Johnny Hodges, alto saxophone; Jess Stacy, piano; Alan Reuss, guitar; John Kirby, bass; Cozy Cole, drums.

Readers with sharp eyes may have noticed that the record label lists Mezz Mezzrow on clarinet, but he is nowhere to be heard on that track or on “Whoa Babe” and “Stompology,” the other two from the April 14, 1937 session. The Mosaic label has a five-CD box of Hampton’s Victor sessions from 1937 to 1941, amazingly not yet sold out. To see my Jazz Times review of the set, go here.

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This morning a man came to the door, introduced himself as Francisco and said he was cutting the neighbors’ lawn. The neighbors were away. “Do you know about bees?” Francisco said. “Let me show you.” We walked over to a tree and there were two huge clumps of bees hanging from a branch.

Francisco said, “When I was a kid, one time I was out playing and disturbed a nest of bees and they started to come after me. We lived near a river, and the only way I could escape them was to jump in the river and come up once in a while to see if they were still there. Finally they went away. There’s no river around here, so I wondered if you knew who to call.”

I gave him a suggestion, and before long an old man arrived with what looked like a box—an empty hive. The apiarist recruited the queen, and soon, to Francisco’s relief, the hundreds of bees began assembling on it. By late evening, this is how it looked.

Tomorrow, we hope, the beekeeper will be back to take his captives to a new home.

If you think that telling you this story was an elaborate excuse to play a Duke Pearson recording from the 1960s, good guess. Here’s Pearson (1932-1980), piano; James Spaulding, flute; Joe Henderson, tenor saxophone; Freddie Hubbard, trumpet; Ron Carter, bass; Mickey Roker, drums: “Sweet Honey Bee” from the album of that name.

Some of you may have forgotten about Pearson or have yet to encounter him. Go here for a biography and here for a generous representation of his work

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Joe Wilder, admired for his trumpet tone, range, stylistic flexibility and for his elegance as a musician and person, is gone. Wilder died at the age of 92 last Friday in New York. Despite his modesty and disinclination to assert himself, his skill put him in demand by big band leaders including Lionel Hampton, Count Basie, and Benny Goodman, as well as a wide range of Broadway and television producers. Among the dozens of musicians with whom Wilder recorded were Coleman Hawkins, Dizzy Gillespie, Gil Evans, Tom Talbert, Charles Mingus, Tadd Dameron, Carmen McRae and Terence Blanchard.

Here is an impression of Wilder’s impact in performance from a review I wrote For Texas Monthly of the 1980 Midland, Texas, Jazz Classic, which was packed with New York musicians of the first rank. The full piece appears in Jazz Matters: Reflections on the Music and Some of its Makers.

Joe Wilder, a trumpeter whose studio obligations have kept him off the street for twenty-five years, is famous among his peers for a tone so lustrous that he has been engaged to play as few as four bars because only his sound would fulfill the demands of the arrangement. But Wilder is also a first-class improviser. If his soloing can sometimes seem too controlled, too smooth, he can surprise you with explosive quotes like the snatches of “Moose The Mooche” woven into his solo on “Exactly Like You” and with his plunger work on “Cotton Tail,” in which he evoked Cootie Williams’s days of glory with Duke Ellington.

Here is Wilder in 1956 with Hank Jones, piano; Wendell Marshall, bass; and Kenny Clarke, Drums.

Joe Wilder, RIP.

For extensive obituaries, go here and here.

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The winter of 2013-2014 was relatively mild in the Pacific Northwest. Still, there was plenty of snow in the Cascades. It is melting and filling the rivers, not to overflowing, but with water high and fast enough to pull trees out of the banks.

Here, you see the Yakima River at noon today carrying one of those trees southeast toward the Columbia. The National Weather Service reports that the Yakima is near flood stage in the river canyon between the towns of Yakima and Ellensburg, but no evacuations have been ordered for the few people who live there. So why even mention it? Because it’s a pretense for presenting Jimmy Rushing’s classic one-sided converation with a swollen river

Rushing’s accompanists were Dave Brubeck, Paul Desmond, Eugene Wright and Joe Morello. The track is from this album. For another recent Rifftides encounter with Rushing, go here.

Unrelatedly: happy Mothers Day to Rifftides readers and all you mothers.

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Jerome Kern (pictured) wrote his last song nearly 70 years ago, but the freshness of its melody, hipness of its harmonies, surprise of its extended form and charm of Oscar Hammerstein II’s lyric make it seem perpetually new. Jan Clayton sang the new song, “Nobody Else But Me,” for Kern’s and Hammerstein’s 1946 Broadway revival of their 1927 masterpiece Show Boat. Lou Dinning had the vocal in Paul Weston’s popular early recording. Among the countless musicians entranced by the piece since then have been Sarah Vaughan, Stan Getz, Tony Bennett, Bill Evans, Jimmy Raney, Joe Pass, Irene Kral with Junior Mance, and Pinky Winters with Lou Levy and Monty Budwig.

A visit to YouTube can turn up versions of the piece by amateurs posting home videos as well as performances by seasoned professionals. In the latter category, one of the most recent features the team of Wesla Whitfield and her pianist husband Mike Greensill. It was filmed at last fall’s Allegheny Jazz Party, with guitarist Howard Alden, tenor saxophonist Harry Allen and bassist Kerry Lewis sitting in. They include the verse, a wonderful idea.

Whitfield and Greensill made “Nobody Else But Me” the title song of a 2006 CD.

While we’re at it, let’s listen to one of the great instrumental versions of Kern’s song. Here’s Stan Getz with Jimmy Rowles, piano; Bobby Whitlock, bass; and Max Roach, drums.

That Getz album includes some of his best work from the mid-1950s, with a variety of stellar sidemen.

Have a good weekend.

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It has been slightly more than two years since the Rifftides staff has alerted you the invaluable work of Mr. P.C. He is a counselor to musicians who takes to the web to address problems that are often so sensitive that his clients find it necessary to use clever pseudonyms (“Ted,” for instance) to protect their livelihoods and reputations. “Mr. P.C.,” of course, is not a pseudonym. It is the given name of the Seattle pianist “Bill Anschell,” which is a pseudonym. Here is an exchange from Mr. P.C.’s most recent posting.

Dear Mr. P.C.:

Philosophical question for you: How can I be more like myself than I am?

I was at a rehearsal before a high-profile gig, and the bandleader took me aside to tell me I was playing fine, but needed to ‘play more like Ted.’

Is this even possible? —Ted

Dear Ted:

Of course it is — you just need to start copping your own licks! Listen to all your recordings of yourself and pick out your best lines. Transcribe them, learn them in all 12 keys, and you’ll be playing more like yourself in no time.

Of course if you sound too much like yourself you may wind up stealing your own gigs, which can cause resentment and self-loathing. That, of course, is what disguises are for.

There is hardly a need to point out how invaluable that kind of advice can be to a troubled working musician. To read all of Mr. P.C.’s May column, go here.

Here is “Bill Anschell,” with his frequent partner Brent Jensen playing curved soprano saxophone. The bassist is Aaron Miller. The tune is Rodgers and Hart’s “Have You Met Miss Jones?” from a 2009 workshop concert at Brigham Young University Idaho.

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Gwen Terry told me today that at 93 her husband continues “as a tribune of survival.” The trumpeter, singer and NEA Jazz Master continues to confront his mobility and vision problems at home under ‘round-the-clock care paid for in great part by fans and admirers. For details about how to help, go here. To the left, we see Mrs. Terry congratulating her husband last fall on his induction into Lincoln Center’s Neshui Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame. She said today that his physical difficulties and an embouchure out of shape from a long layoff have made it impossible for him to play. Gwen reports that he is receiving visits from colleagues and admirers and that he is teaching students who come to CT world headquarters in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, from all part of The United States and Canada.

“My back hurts after I sit up for a few hours,” Clark said recently. “But I do the best that I can to get up every day for as long as I’m able, especially when friends come to visit.”

Dozens of trumpeters have advanced technique, but from his earliest days as a professional, it was apparent that there was much more to Terry than formidable chops. He saturated his music-making with his personality. Count Basie and Duke Ellington, great nurturers of individualism, cherished that quality in the young Terry. After he became a mainstay of the Tonight Show band on NBC-TV millions discovered it. Among them was John McNeil, a distinctive trumpet stylist who came to maturity in Terry’s wake. Here’s McNeil on CT:

As the BBC host Humphrey Lyttlelton predicts in the half-hour clip you’re about to watch, Terry’s association with Bob Brookmeyer in their quintet developed from their already tight friendship into a one of the most beloved modern jazz partnerships. In 1965 they were guests on the BBC-TV program called 625. The rhythm section is British—Laurie Holloway, piano; Rick Laird bass; and Alan Ganley, drums. The proceedings include a visit from Mumbles, the character CT introduced in a 1964 recording with Oscar Peterson.

For the latest Clark Terry blog entry, see his website. For the most recent Rifftides post about John McNeil, go here. I also recommend a visit to McNeil’s website.

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Smalls Jazz Club is in the eighth year of its most recent incarnation as a bastion of uncompromising jazz in New York City. A couple of blocks down 7th Avenue from the Village Vanguard, a couple up from The Garage, it is in a part of Greenwich Village that may be as close as we’re going to see to a 21st century equivalent of the 52nd Street of the 1940s and ‘50s. In addition to presenting established musicians—Jimmy Cobb, Ethan Iverson, Jeremy Pelt and Peter Bernstein, among others—Smalls’ primary resuscitator, the pianist Spike Wilner, seeks out rising young players. Tonight, for instance, guitarist Avi Rothbard, tenor saxophonist Tivon Pennicott and bassist Spencer Murphy will lead successive groups, with Murphy playing after hours until the unspecified closing time.

Smalls produces CDs and live video performances streamed on the internet. Among the 40 CDs in its Live At Smalls catalog are three recent ones by Johnny O’Neal, David Berkman and Frank Lacy, all recorded at the club.

O’Neal is a Detroit pianist who made a splash in New York in the 1980s, then was largely unheard from for a couple of decades until his comeback in 2010. Self-taught, he is often mentioned as having technique that compares with Art Tatum’s, although there are no overt Tatum references in his CD. What grabs the listener as O’Neal’s Live At Smalls recording opens is his grainy singing of “The More I See You,” impeccable in swing and intonation. Elsewhere in the album, his vocal performances are less even. It’s O’Neal’s pianism that carries the day. The album includes a delicious exercise in dynamic variety and keyboard touch on “Blues For Sale,” an intriguing version of Walter Davis’s “Uranus,” a reflective unaccompanied “Goodbye,” and energetic compatibility with bassist Paul Sikivie and drummer Charles Goold in a medley of Roberta Flack’s “Where is the Love” and Stevie Wonder’s “Overjoyed.” O’Neal’s fierceness and execution are absolute in his solo on Billy Pierce’s “Sudan Blue.” Wilner acquits himself nicely as he sits in on piano to accompany O’Neal’s vocal and to solo on “Tea For Two.” O’Neal wraps up with “Let The Good Times Roll,” a title that sums up the collegial feeling of the album and his connection with the audience. O’Neal was featured in a recent New York Times profile.

Pianist David Berkman’s album for Smalls has the recognition advantage of featuring trumpeter Tom Harrell as a sideman, but it’s not Harrell’s star quality that accounts for the group’s success. It is Berkman’s musicianship and the interaction that he, Harrell bassist Ed Howard and drummer Jonathan Blake achieve. On the trio piece “For Kenny,” Berkman’s fluidity, energy and harmonic intensity make it clear that this relatively unknown Clevelander who teaches at Queens College in New York is in the top tier of contemporary pianists. His compositions “Ghost Wife” and “Small Wooden Housekeeper” are demanding vehicles that stimulate Harrell to intriguing, and frequently witty, harmonic solutions. Berkman and Harrell make their unaccompanied duet on “Body and Soul” an intimate conversation that Harrell seasons by working a quote from “The Gypsy,” of all things, into a place where it might not be reasonably expected to fit. It is refreshing to hear a contemporary group bring bebop verve to John Lewis’s “Milestones” and lace it with new harmonic daring.

Trombonist Lacy is one of the most flamboyant practicioners on an instrument that lends itself to blowsiness, but in his Smalls CD he is relatively restrained at the helm of a sextet of bright young New Yorkers. That is not to say that Lacy doesn’t burst forth with keenly placed blurts and blats, as in his harmonically rich “Spirit Monitor,” but at times he is downright lyrical. His colleagues in the front line are tenor saxophonist Stacy Dillard and trumpeter Josh Evans, both impressive for enthusiasm and command of their instruments. Dillard switches to soprano sax for an exotic, chancy solo on “Spirit Monitor.” Reaching high enough that he occasionally shows a bit of strain, Evans nonetheless manages logic and continuity in his flow of ideas on “Carolyn’s Dance,” which features Lacy’s granular voice in the passionate lyric to his love song. The rhythm section is Theo Hill, piano; Rashaan Carter, bass; and Kush Abadey, drums. According to the evidence here, Abadey is a listening drummer who designs accents and off-beats in reaction to the ideas of the soloists. In his solo on Joe Bonner’s “Sunbath,” Lacy manages to meld impressions of desperation and self-assuredness, after which Hill, unfazed by the contradiction, constructs a piano solo of quiet serenity. Without succumbing to crass imitation, Evans evokes Freddie Hubbard on Hubbard’s “The Intrepid Fox.”

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All day, we had fierce winds, grey skies threatening rain—and then at sunset:

An evening like ours might have made Jimmy Rushing feel a little better about things than when he recorded this with Count Basie in 1936:

Basie, piano; Lester Young, tenor saxophone; Jo Jones, drums; Walter Page, bass; Freddie Green, guitar. You’ll find it in this comprehensive package of early Basie.