*** Bennie Wallace

SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME

(enja)

Twenty years ago, on albums like The Fourteen Bar Blues, tenor-saxophonist Bennie Wallace mixed a reverence for the jazz tradition with a bruising feel for the avant-garde. He whispered "Chelsea Bridge" in Ben Webster's breathy vibrato but found sharp angles and dramatic silences that, on his original compositions, opened out into dramatic three-way dialogues with (typically) bassist Eddie Gomez and drummer Dannie Richmond. Lately, including on this new Gershwin tribute, he's hewed to the standard songbook.

Wallace is still a great, huffing romantic, and despite those Dolphy-esque angles and leaping intervals, on a tune like "Nice Work If You Can Get It" it's clear that he's more interested in caressing the melody swing style than working over the chord changes bebop style. In the best avant tradition, he employs brawn and bravado to force accidents -- a botched grace note takes on a glowing, painterly smear. Which makes it all the more dramatic when he drops from shout to hush in a flash and holds it. And on "It Ain't Necessarily So," driven by drummer Yoron Israel's 12/8 rhythm, he kicks up an R&B furor. Some of us might still yearn for the free-form, piano-less spareness of this Chattanooga native's early work, but when the keyboard man is Memphis's Mulgrew Miller, it's hard to complain. The bassist is Peter Washington.

-- Jon Garelick