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Brad Mehldau, Fred Hersch, Dan Tepfer, Jason Palmer, and Donny McCaslin front a busy week

Jazz

Fourth-quarter earnings

CLAVE! Francisco Mela’s previous CD was one of the best of 2006, and his latest is a frontrunner for 2008.

CHARLIE HADEN: FAMILY AND FRIENDS | RAMBLING BOY | Decca | Reading the jacket copy, you couldn't be blamed for thinking that jazz great Haden — born into country music as a member of the Haden Family and performing with them on the radio at the age of two — got bamboozled by a bunch of major-label suits and buried alive in guest stars for a gussied-up O Brother, Where Art Thou? But damned if this album doesn't carry through from beginning to end, honest and unsullied. Haden stays true to the music he heard in the Ozarks and performed professionally through his teens before running off to LA and reinventing jazz with Ornette Coleman. From the easy three-part-harmony swing of Haden's daughters on A.P. Carter's "Single Girl, Married Girl" — with its huffing harp and its tossed-off parable about single versus married life — through son Josh's "Spiritual," Haden & Pat Metheny's "He's Gone Away," and the darn-fool ditty "Old Joe Clark," this is an album that hews close to country-music truths about life, love, and death. Bluegrass and the church are always here, even when Haden breaks down for a duet with fellow Missourian Metheny. Dyed-in-the-wool country virtuosos like Vince Gill, Sam Bush, Ricky Skaggs, and Rosanne Cash provide ballast, but everyone here is with the program — it took me a couple of spins before I noticed that was Elvis Costello singing "You Win Again" and Jack Black singing about Old Joe Cook shootin' him through the arm with a .45.

CHARLIE HUNTER | BABOON STRENGTH | Spire Artist Media | Hunter has both lightened and weighted his attack since he emerged in the early '90s with his eight-string guitar, playing simultaneous bass and lead and conjuring a curious organ timbre as a shadow to his smooth grooves. These days he's back to seven-string, and favoring hard-blues licks and a heavy backbeat from his drummer, Tony Moss. That's okay. At a Bennett Alliance show at the Cambridge YMCA on December 7, he showed off the trio from this CD — lean and mean — with Moss and keyboardist Erik Deutsch. Hunter has no problem straddling the line between jazz and instrumental pop. In fact, his love of the well-crafted pop song has never been more apparent — the new disc includes a slow-groove tribute to Squeeze pop-rock songwriters Difford and Tilbrook as well as the straight-up "Heart of Glass" Eurodisco "Welcome to Frankfurt." Live and on disc, what impresses is the tightness of the band but also Hunter's playing — his deployment of wah-wah, distortion, and clean blues bite makes for deathless phrasing, downbeat oomph. By focusing his approach, he's opened new worlds.