Theme Music From “The James Dean Story”

Chet Baker & Bud Shank

Hagiographic melodrama all but suffocates the 1957 James Dean documentary for which these recently rereleased Leith Stevens–composed recordings serve as incidental music, music made even more incidental by the documentary’s inevitable talkiness. Their Dean-specific titles aside, however, the performances breathe freely when heard on their own. Chet Baker was at the top of his cool-jazz, trumpet-playing game, and, whether playing flute (“Fairmont, Indiana”) or saxophone (the others), Bud Shank added suggestive textures. There’s nothing classic or definitive. But there’s nothing merely incidental either.

He Was The King

Freddy Cole

The concept: Freddy Cole has a go at songs recorded by his legendary older brother but sings them in his own way atop refreshingly different arrangements. Consider, for instance, “Funny (Not Much).” Nat gave it the formal, satiny treatment, strings included. Freddy treats it casually, allowing the saxophone as much space as his relaxed, grainy voice. Whether in the end one prefers Freddy’s or Nat’s “Mona Lisa” or “It’s Only a Paper Moon” is beside the point. That Freddy prefers Nat’s is the point of the title tune.

When You Wish Upon A Star

Bill Frisell

No matter how singular a sound Frisell gets from intertwining his crisp guitar with Eyvind Kang’s plaintive viola, TV and film sources as incongruous as Alfred Hitchcock (“Psycho”), Gary Larson (“Tales from the Far Side”), Walt Disney (the title cut), and the Cartwrights (“Bonanza”) can’t help feeling like eclecticism for eclecticism’s sake. Of course, locating and expressing the unity underlying apparent diversity is one of a jazzman’s job descriptions. Locating and enlisting singers as adaptable as Petra Haden when nothing but the human voice will do is another.

Music Of Weather Report

Miroslav Vitous

Miroslav Vitous’ bass anchored Weather Report during its first three years (1970-1973), a time of rapidly shifting sands in the jazz world. On this album, Vitous revisits two of that period’s Weather Report songs (“Seventh Arrow,” “Morning Lake”), one from the post-Vitous Alphonso Johnson period (“Scarlet Woman”), and two from the post-Johnson Jaco Pastorius period (“Birdland,” “Pinocchio”). The goal isn’t to resolve unfinished business but to blow on still-glowing embers. The achievement isn’t fire but occasionally flying sparks and continuously fascinating smoke.

Encore

Marian McPartland, who passed away in 2013 at the age of 95, was best-known to many jazz fans as the affable and knowledgeable hostess of the long-running NPR show Piano Jazz. But she was also an accomplished pianist, a prolific recording artist, and a gifted composer. It’s the last of these identities to which the pianist Roberta Piket particularly calls attention on her latest album, One for Marian: Celebrating Marian McPartland (Thirteenth Note). Of course, in remaining faithful to her heroine’s virtuosic touch, Piket calls attention to McPartland’s elegant musicality as well.

Accompanied by a gently swinging quintet on seven of the numbers and accompanying the singer Karrin Allyson on another, Piket evokes McPartland’s spirit with such fidelity that listeners might believe they’re hearing alternate renditions of these songs by McPartland herself. They might also mistake Piket’s two originals (the title track and “Saying Goodbye”) for McPartland compositions, so seamlessly do the former blend in with the latter. —A.O.