Fred Wesley: Comme Ci Comme Ça (Antilles)

LIKE HIS fellow James Brown alumnus Maceo Parker, trombonist Fred Wesley returns to the jazz of his youth to prove that there is life after JB. But where Maceo's alto-sax albums echo the organ-based soul- jazz sound of Jimmy Smith or Brother Jack McDuff, Wesley's octet on this, his third jazz set since 1988, reinvents the classic post-bop Blue Note sessions of a J.J. Johnson (most obviously, since he defined the form for trombonists) or even Lee Morgan. Wesley's consistently intelligent and evocative arrangements suggest just where the genius lay in making each of Brown's one-chord vamps sound different.