You’d think an electric bebop band led by a serious drummer would make a lot of noise, but the four guitarists and two saxmen with Paul Motian on his ECM release Garden of Eden—and joining him at the Village Vanguard through Sunday night—do otherwise. They have all the might to roar, but apportion it throughout arrangements of Mingus, Monk, Bird and Motian’s own compositions to evoke mystery and create a cool, easy space.
The strings (Steve Cardenas, Ben Monder, Jakob Bro, guitars, and Jerome Harris, too, though his is a bass) knit a transparent web; the horns (Chris Cheek and Tony Malaby), blowing burly solos or sighing together, are caught within it. Motian’s drums set the tone, often abstractly. He’s not a heavy back-beater. He’s more like a painter with percussion. His sticks on cymbals sound like sharp blades clashing; his kick-drum pounds under a crescendo like a big beast rushing up behind you. His time is so good that he doesn’t have to prove it. So he gives the rhythms air, allowing (rather than forcing) richer things to happen.
Or is that the art of producer Manfred Eicher? Garden of Eden is the perfect record through which to savor the famous ECM audio style—as recorded right here in gritty New York, the result is eclectic rebop in a resonant hush: substantial music that’s a pleasure to listen to.

If you listen to interviews with Jelly Roll Morton, what you hear is your disreputable
favorite uncle, fondly recalling his days as a roué: “Kaiser’s, the Red Onion, Spanos:
These were honky-tonks…dirty, filthy places…gambling wide open…a lot of
rough people…really dangerous to anybody that would go in and didn’t know what it was all
about.”

“They always had a broken-down piano.… After four o’clock in the morning,
all the girls that could get out of the houses, they were there. And the girls would start, ‘Play me
something, boy, play me some blues.’ I’d start playing this way.”

Listening to him on records, Jelly Roll then institutes a bluesy melody
with a pretty flourish over insinuating syncopation and a steady footbeat. His voice rises in its
winsome, salty plea:

“Let me be your wiggler, until your wobbler comes.

Let me be your wiggler, until your wobbler comes.

Then tell your wobbler what your wiggler done.”

Morton’s Complete Library of Congress Recordings by Alan Lomax,
has been available before, but not in such unexpurgated, celebratory form as the piano-shaped
boxed set now issued by Rounder Records. These seven CDs contain the eye-witness tall tales of the
jazz composer (an eighth features interviews with his colleagues), which estimable annotator
John Szwed calls “a recitation of Homeric proportions.” In spontaneous yet steady-rolling cadences,
Morton delivers detailed memories and vivid exaggerations of Rocket Johnny, Skinnyhead Pete,
Old Florida Sam and Buddy Bolden (“They claim he went crazy because he really blew his brains out
through that trumpet!”). Morton discusses tough boys and sweet women, funeral marches and swells’
parades, Spanish tempos and the publishing business. He vamps as he raps, illustrates his ideas
with tricky little figures, unfurls full performances of his songs including “Winin’ Boy,” “The
Crave,” “Jelly Roll Blues” and “King Porter Stomp.”

A boxed set this big can be intimidating and probably isn’t the right
introduction to an ancient icon’s music. For the Morton essentials, find the single disc Jazz
Classics in Digital Stereo edition of his Red Hot Peppers blasts circa 1926 (engineered by
Robert Parker, these sound as close to new recordings as anything you’ll ever here from the era),
or J.T. Davies’ restorations of his 1923 piano solos. Yet Lomax’s Library of Congress recordings
present Jelly Roll Morton as if he was alive. Slip on any disc, give him half an ear and he’ll draw you
in. Like many old relatives, he does go on, he can be exhausting, his “facts” are dubious. But his
stories are irresistible, and beyond their entertainment value and their delight to lovers of
Jelly Roll and jazz, they have a strong connection to us today.

One reminder of this came with the appearance in town of one of the huge
talents of whom Morton is a forebear: Allen Toussaint, the elegantly soft-spoken New Orleans exile
who performed an intimate solo piano set at Joe’s Pub a couple weeks ago. Stranded in New York since
Hurricane Katrina but saying he likes it here, Toussaint offered a cabaret-like survey of his best-known
work, starting with his breakthrough, “Java.”

“I was 17,” he explained to me recently after rolling through the jaunty
tune, “and I showed it to Al Hirt, who showed me how to make money with it. I liked that.”

Toussaint composed “Workin’ in a Coal Mine,” “Southern Nights,” “Lady
Marmalade,” showcases for various Meters and Neville Brothers, Irma Thomas and the Dixie Cups,
“The Dating Game” theme and at least one melody immortalized by Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass.

Toussaint is a mainstream entertainer, yes—so was Fats Waller,
so is Stevie Wonder—but truly one with musical genius. He tossed off fancifully funkified
references to 19th-century classical repertoire, and an evocation of the late New Orleans rag
and rumba-boogie masters Tuts Washington and Professor Longhair. He demonstrated, subtly, how
American music still feeds on elements Jelly Roll Morton stirred together 100 years ago. Give thanks
I say, and hope it lasts another 100 years.

James Carter/Cyrus Chesnut/Ali Jackson/Reginald Veal

What’s looking like an emerging jazz supergroup
hits what’s looking like the current headquarters of the Manhattan jazz scene; those happy circumstances,
and the buzz surrounding the quartet’s recent album, Gold Sounds, make this a “must-see”
show. The inspired coupling of four well-regarded rebop traditionalists with the song catalogue
of alt-rock gurus Pavement has been both praised and mocked (especially in light of the jazzmen’s
admission that they hadn’t really heard lo-fi impresario Stephen Malkmus’ esoteric band before
a canny music producer suggested a cover album). This was an artistic crapshoot that could have
gone either way, but thanks to the bluesy gusto and imaginative soloing of leaders Carter and Chesnut
(paired with a hard swinging rhythm section) this combo turns out to be anything but a one-shot novelty
act.

When Carter’s tenor rumbles and squawks around Chesnut’s shimmering
organ chords, you’re not stuck in an early ’90s dorm room; you’re at the Vanguard a decade earlier,
listening to David Murray and Don Pullen storm the ramparts of musical imagination and come back
with some serious booty. There are only eight numbers on Gold Sounds, so it’s an educated
guess that Carter et al. will bring some intriguing new material to stir in with the mosh classics.
Iridium, 1650 Broadway (at W. 51st St.), 212-582-2121; Weds. & Thurs. 8 & 10; Fri. & Sat. 8, 10 & 11:30, $27.50–$30 (plus $10/person min.)