All in Jazz

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Permanent shuffle

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There’s nothing so radical going on in FATS WALLER & HIS RHYTHM: IF YOU GOT TO ASK, YOU AIN’T GOT IT! (Bluebird/Legacy; three CDs). Producer Orrin Keepnews created a more expansive chronological set for RCA/Bluebird in the ’90s — Waller recorded more than 300 sides in his short life (1904–1943). This is the portable Fats: a disc each of his original tunes, covers of Tin Pan Alley, and instrumentals-only. That might not be the best way to hear Waller — since the set isn’t chronological, you might as well load all three discs and hit shuffle. Which is just another way in which the iPod era makes a mockery of the compiler’s craft.

The set — abetted by Dan Morgenstern’s notes and photographs drawn from the Rutgers Institute of Jazz Studies, which he directs — transports us back to an earlier era even as the music punches through with startling immediacy. Here was the jazz musician as comedian/pop star, undercutting sentimental treacle with his winking vocals, trading barbs with the great trombonist Jack Teagarden on “(I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead) You Rascal You,” flying through his own hits (“Ain’t Misbehavin,’ ” “Honeysuckle Rose”) in his smooth stride or unfurling silken cascades of notes on “Numb Fumblin’ ” — the Harlem Dinu Lipatti. What’s more, with a cohort including guitarist Al Casey and the Armstrong–like phrasing of trumpeter Herman Autrey, Waller created some of the best small-group swing on record.

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And this set is bebop heaven. In later years, Stitt took his knocks as a Charlie Parker clone, and at first you mark every patented Parker lick as it passes by. But soon you’re caught up in Stitt’s originality — his authority on tenor (where you can hear his influence on Coltrane and Sonny Rollins, among others) as well as alto, his daunting speed, but also his soulfulness on ballads. A nine-disc Mosaic set from a few years picked up from where this set leaves off, but here he is as bebop’s first wave was cresting. In the early tracks you can hear the music’s links with swing, in the later its prototypical relation to R&B (sets with Gene Ammons), and the vocal ballads and novelty tunes in between. But this is just informing context for echt bop, especially on choice tracks where Stitt is jamming with Bud Powell, Curly Russell, and Max Roach.