etnobofin

Ow!
Trombone Heaven: Frank Rosolino and Carl Fontana [Buy]

Dawn, with trombone jetstreams running through the brain

The annoying tune in my head this week is Ow!, a live version performed by Frank Rosolino and Carl Fontana in Vancouver, just 13 days after I was born. It’s one of those many Gillespie-Parker reworkings of I’ve Got Rhythm, the single tune that makes George Gershwin one of the great pop writers ever.

It’s probably because the tune uses the I’ve Got Rhythm changes that makes Ow! particularly sticky inside my slightly-lethargic-in-the-leadup-to-Christmas brain. You can sing Moose the Mooch and Oleo to it, even if you don’t want to. Darn that teenage spongiform bebopilitis.

Fontana and Rosolino were two of those instrumentalists who were deeply respected by musicians but never quite had the star quality to become household names. They worked together a few times, but this Vancouver live date (recorded on the spur of the moment) is probably the only recorded document of them playing together.

The recording will be released for the first time ever in January 2008 as Trombone Heaven, perhaps an appropriate title given that both trombonists have now joined the great jam session in the sky. It’s one of those unpretentious jazz releases that does exactly what it says on the label – bop trombone titans, playing standards, nailing it every inch of the way, swinging their asses off. The liner notes are unusually informative too.

And just for kicks, on Youtube, Frank Rosolino as a cool cat on Jazz Scene USA in 1962.