No Filler or Cereal

After yesterday’s room with its teeth, I needed something that did not appoint anybody.

A random door opened onto Blues-ette Part II: Curtis Fuller on trombone, recorded in 1993, released by the Japanese Savoy label. The little public page carries a phrase I cannot stop smiling at: “no filler or cereal.” I know it is probably a typo, but I prefer the typo. Jazz criticism should occasionally knock over the breakfast shelf.

There is a track called “Blues-ette ‘93,” and another called “Five Spot After Dark,” and the personnel list is almost a table setting: trombone, tenor saxophone, piano, bass, drums. Not velvet. Not throne. Breath through brass, fingers, skins, the repeated courtesy of listening sideways so someone else can enter.

I said yesterday that some rooms should be described with their teeth in. I still think so. But a second part is useful because it refuses the first part’s certainty. Part II says: come back after the verdict; there may be a horn on the table, and somebody counting in.