This too-brief set took place at Jazz at Chautauqua on Sept. 17, 2011, at a time most jazz musicians would find uncongenial, but this trio transcended the early hour and the bright sunlight to create wonderful intimate music in honor of Ruby Braff.
Trumpeter Jon-Erik Kellso knew Ruby and continues to be inspired by his hot lyricism, but Jon-Erik has his own approach and sound, so his work is a soulful evocation, not an attempt to imitate the Master’s dips and whorls. Guitarist Howard Alden and bassist Frank Tate were the compact creative unit that embraced and supported Ruby in his final decades, creating small masterpieces from songs both familiar and unexpected. Ruby drew his “aesthetic vitamins” from jazz sources — Louis Armstrong and Lester Young — but also from Judy Garland and Fred Astaire — and imbued those songs and images with his own deep romanticism, ever surprising.
Here are three performances that summon up Ruby’s eloquence and strength while giving this creative trio of individualists more than enough room to be themselves.
A Mary Lou Williams composition from the mid-Forties, LONELY MOMENTS, always seems like music for a deeply introspective film:
Ruby said he learned the seductive Gershwin song DO IT AGAIN from Judy Garland’s recording. This performance epitomizes the lullaby-like quality of the song, drawing us ever closer:
And the set concluded with a Louis-inspired romp through a song Ruby was playing as far back as 1967, Don Redman’s NO ONE ELSE BUT YOU:
Beautiful creations at an early hour!