Joe Sullivan, Whiskey Jack Waltz

It's not like the world is a new place everyday when we wake up. But, five days a week, give or take, I find three new recordings of music that's worth hearing, that makes the world new, at least for me. So I wake up each day and talk about them a little so that you might have new things to check out.

Here's one that perhaps is easy to miss. It's trumpetissimo and jazz composer-tunesmith Joe Sullivan, with his quintet album Whiskey Jack Waltz (Perry Lake Records 003). This is changes-oriented, evolved mainstream jazz of a good sort. Joe has a trumpet sound closer to Diz than Miles, if you had to choose, or Fats and Freddie more that Joe Smith, but really it is his sound: pinched in a pleasing sort of way, expressive and bell-on.

He is joined by a game quintet of Lorne Lofsky, electric guitar, Andre White, piano, Alec Walkington, bass, and Dave Laing, drums. They all have drive and finesse; White and Lofsky have good solo presence along with Sullivan.

Nine tunes Sullivan penned set the table for a nice musical meal, so to speak. And Joe Sullivan's trumpet speaks to us lucidly, sparklingly.

If you get excited by good trumpet players, now's the time. Joe Sullivan has a brass proudness that his tunes and the band forward with grace and grits. Well-done!