It's the jazz equivalent of stunt casting: Verve has just released an album that teams Nicholas Payton, a 23-year-old Wynton Marsalis protege, with Doc Cheatham, a slightly older trumpet player, one who cut his teeth with the likes of Ma Rainey and Cab Calloway. Doc 's 91. The tunes here are standards, many of them--like Black and Blue--part of Louis Armstrong's repertoire; all are played in a straight-ahead New Orleans style. But one's suspicion that the result might be dutiful and dull, the musical equivalent of a five-part series in the New York Times on wage stagnation, proves groundless. Doc Cheatham...
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