The Glenious Inner Planet: The Glenious Inner Planet (2010)

C. MICHAEL BAILEY,

C. Michael Bailey

Senior Contributor since 1997

...wants to know if Gene Harris is playing "Summertime" in Heaven...

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Published: September 29, 2010

The Glenious Inner Planet: The Glenious Inner Planet

Track review of "Blue Rondo a la Raad"

This is not yourt parent's Dave Brubeck Dave Brubeck
1920 - 2012
piano . For that matter, if you put Brubeck in the Telepod from the 1958 film The Fly, with the spirit of Shawn Lane Shawn Lane
1963 - 2003
guitar, electric , and teleported them into the future, that might come closest to describing this "Blue Rondo a la Raad." Brubeck is replaced by Chris Cortez Chris Cortez
's precisely reverberated electric guitar. Paul Desmond Paul Desmond
1924 - 1977
sax, alto morphs into Woody Witt Woody Witt
b.1969
saxophone , and the festivities are started by bandleader Glen Ackerman, who is the product of a gamma-ray irradiated Eugene Wright Eugene Wright
b.1923
bass, acoustic . Joe Morello Joe Morello
1928 - 2011
drums ? He is played by Joel Fulgrum on this episode of Gilligan's Bikini Atoll.

Cortez and Witt dance during the head arrangement, before Cortez rips out the wires for a full-bore Shawn Lane extravaganza. This is as far from 1959 and Brubeck's classic Time Out (Columbia) as one can get. But the spirit of jazz remains. Witt's roaming alto solo skates across the cosmic funk poured out by Ackerman and Cortez. Ackerman's solo is cogent and melodic, reminiscent of Shawn Lane's partner in crime Jonas Hellborg Jonas Hellborg
. An excellent tribute to an original, 50 years on.