*** Ray Brown

SUPER BASS

(Telarc)

Brown's trio with John Clayton and Christian McBride puts the bass up front and keeps the music down low on this delightfully unusual CD recorded live at Scullers last year. The results are brisk and remarkably varied in texture and color. And as you might expect from three men who routinely provide jazz bands with rhythmic propulsion, this line-up swings like the dickens. Brown's dark, unsweetened-chocolate tone gives his bent-note blues a rounded mellowness on "Blue Monk" and full-bodied pop on "Mack the Knife." Former Count Basie sideman Clayton gets a steely twang that makes his pizzicato stitchery stand out against Brown's melancholic cello-like arco on their duet version of "Lullaby of Birdland." And the precise, melodic playing of wunderkind McBride occupies a mid-way point: his walking duet with Brown on "Bye Bye Blackbird" is a model of musical collaboration and mutual regard. Two dapper tracks feature pianist Benny Green and drummer Gregory Hutchinson, but the bassists still steal the show.

-- Ed Hazell