An Evening of Magic was made on the tour for the album that preceded it — Mangione’s chart-topping record Feels So Good — and it features the same band. Chuck’s band on this record is, to my ear, the best he ever had. These five guys — Chuck on flügelhorn and electric piano, Chris Vadala on saxophones and flute, Grant Geissman on guitar, Charles Meeks on the bass, and James Bradley, Jr. on drums — work together in that way that every great band should. They anticipate each others’ moves, breathe as one, and constantly find new heights during both the solos and the ensemble passages. The quintet is augmented by an orchestra, but it’s the five-man unit that forms the heart of this recording. I still find it just as thrilling as I did in the late 80s when I bought those cassettes.

I’ve seen Mangione twice in concert. Once was a 25th reunion show of the Feels So Good band, and they were just as good the second time around. I saw him again at the Eastman Theatre in his hometown of Rochester, NY, during a massive production in the mid-’90s that included many of his bandmates from years past. Also a thrilling show.

For many “hardcore” jazzheads, admitting a burning passion for Chuck Mangione just isn’t cool. I think a large part of that stems from the fact that Mangione became a household name with the song “Feels So Good,” which hit #2 on the Billboard 200 in 1978. The album itself was #1 on the Billboard Jazz Albums chart the year before. (Remember when there was a Billboard Jazz Albums chart? Me either.) In subsequent years, Mangione has appeared everywhere from Magnum, P.I. to King of the Hill. And while those appearances seem good-natured, it always feels to me like there’s a bit of condescension, a knowing wink, happening too. (“Aren’t we ironic? It’s Chuck Mangione, people!”) It’s so rare for jazz to become popular that there must be something wrong with it, right?

The thing is, sometimes popular music is also good music. In the case of “Feels So Good,” Mangione wrote an immediately singable melody, and Grant Geissman crushes his guitar solo in one of my all-time favorite performances. I like my music in all shapes and sizes, and one of those shapes is melodic. I’ll get crazy to a free-blowing workout any day, but I also love a solo so melodic that it could be a tune on its own. That’s what Geissman achieves on “Feels So Good.”

“‘Feels So Good’ is a beautifully written composition,” drummer Jae Sinnett told me recently. Sinnett is an active musician, educator and broadcaster who played a series of shows in 1988 with Mangione. “If it were released today, however, it wouldn’t be a hit in my view. Not because of lack of commercial appeal, but because it would be considered too hip for today’s commercial radio formats.”

Mangione himself is an underappreciated soloist. The guy can really play his horn, and I’ve seldom heard anyone sound as powerful and as lyrical on the difficult flügelhorn as he does. His range alone is impressive — he sounds just as comfortable at the extreme top end of the horn as he does when playing in the flügelhorn’s more natural middle register.

Trumpeter and bass clarinetist Matt Lavelle agrees: “He’s a great flügelhorn player, and composer, too. Feels So Good was my first ‘trumpet’ record as a kid.”

He’s also one of those writers from whom melodies flow like water down a mountain. He writes gorgeous ballads (see “Bellavia” or “Chase The Clouds Away”), brings the funk (“Hill Where The Lord Hides” or “Fun And Games”) and throws down some up-tempo tunes, too (“Main Squeeze” is a prime example). And he’s never confined himself to the standard quintet format. His film soundtrack Children Of Sanchez is a fully-orchestrated tour de force that’s every bit as memorable and tuneful as his small-band hits.

To the casual pop radio listener in the 1970s, it probably seemed as though Mangione materialized from thin air. From a jazz perspective, though, nothing could be further from the truth. Mangione’s jazz chops came through rigorous study and bandstand dues-paying. Mangione’s father took him and his brother Gap (now a successful pianist in Rochester, NY, with whom I’ve done several radio interviews) to see every name act who came through town. He formed a friendship with Dizzy Gillespie that lasted all of Gillespie’s life. Mangione’s first band with Gap, The Jazz Brothers, included straight-ahead stalwarts such as drummer Roy McCurdy (later wth Cannonball Adderley), saxophonist Sal Nistico (later with Woody Herman’s Herd) and bassist Steve Davis (who plays bass on one of the most famous jazz recordings of all time, John Coltrane’s “My Favorite Things.”) When Mangione left Rochester, his first stop was playing with Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers.

Mangione may have moved his music in a more electric, commercially successful direction, but he didn’t do it at the expense of the music itself. His compositions are filled with interesting harmonic devices and strong melodies, and his improvisational abilities on his instrument are beyond question. In fact, I debated even writing this paragraph, because there’s really nothing to explain or justify. Mangione’s music is worthy of respect and rewards repeated listening. And it’s fun as hell, too. (I know — more salty language.)

Finally, an apocryphal story about the pronunciation of Mangione’s last name. Someone once told me about hearing Chuck on the radio. The interviewer asked, “Is it man-JONE or man-JONE-ee?” To which Chuck replied, “Is it spa-GET or spa-GET-ee?” ‘Nuff said.

I talked with Sirota about Seize the Time for my show, The Jazz Session. (That interview will air later this year.) During the interview, Sirota mentioned that he believes many critics ignore or dismiss — or simply miss — his music, instead talking about his politics and nothing else. His comment, coming as it did 25 minutes into an interview where I’d done nothing but talk about his politics, initially made me regret the direction of the conversation up to that point.

After a few moments’ thought, though, I told Sirota that while I think the album is powerful musically, I think it’s even more powerful socially because we live in an age where explicit political statements are vital to our survival. I’m happy to have another CD of smart, fun music to listen to. I’m even happier to turn people on to an artist who puts his social awareness where his drumsticks are.

In the 1960s, jazz artists made socially aware music, much as their counterparts in other genres did. I’ll give some specific examples in a minute. To be fair, such music has never completely disappeared, although “conscious jazz,” to coin a term, has ebbed and flowed in the same way as political engagement in this country.

When I think of conscious jazz, a few names instantly spring to mind: Max Roach, Abbey Lincoln, Charles Mingus and Charlie Haden are some of the big ones from the 50s through the 70s. Of more recent vintage, a standout example is In What Language? by Vijay Iyer and Mike Ladd , a brilliant and scathing critique of immigration and racial politics in post-9/11 America.

Here are several records and songs that took a stand. Please note that this list is nowhere near exhaustive. (It’s just a starting place for exploration.

Billie Holiday, “Strange Fruit”

This is perhaps one of the most daring performances of its era. The lyrics by Abel Meeropol are an unsparing and disturbing response to white-on-black violence in the American apartheid era. The titular fruit is in fact lynched black bodies hanging from Southern trees. For a black woman to perform this song in 1939 was an incredible act of courage. Sadly, it would still take courage now.

Sonny Rollins, Freedom Suite (Riverside, 1958)

“How ironic that the Negro, who more than any other people can claim America’s culture as his own, is being persecuted and repressed; that the Negro, who has exemplified the humanities in his very existence, is being rewarded with inhumanity.” So wrote the saxophone colossus, Sonny Rollins, in the liner notes of this seminal saxophone trio recording. Aiding Rollins on this record was another outspoken jazz master, drummer Max Roach. (Sonny Rollins joined me on The Jazz Session on Election Day 2008 to talk about Barack Obama, race relations and environmentalism. Listen to the show.)

Charles Mingus, “Fables of Faubus”

The Mingus catalog contains quite a few overtly political numbers, but this one is probably the most famous. Mingus wrote it to protest the racist governor of Arkansas, Orville Faubus, who used the National Guard to stop the integration of Little Rock Central High School in 1957. This song appears on what I’m going to go right ahead and call one of the greatest albums of all time: Mingus Ah Um (Columbia, 1959). The long-standing legend is that Mingus wrote lyrics to the tune but Columbia prevented him from recording them. In later years, it has been suggested (in liner notes and elsewhere) that Mingus penned the lyrics after the song had already been recorded. In any case, Mingus re-recorded it a year later with lyrics for the album Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus (Candid, 1960). (Other Mingus song titles of note: “Free Cell Block F, ‘Tis Nazi U.S.A.” and “Oh Lord, Don’t Let Them Drop That Atomic Bomb On Me.”)

Max Roach, We Insist! – Freedom Now (Candid Records, 1960)

Roach collaborated with Oscar Brown, Jr. for this 1960 recording, released at the same time and on the same label as the second Mingus album mentioned above. Abbey Lincoln sings several of the songs with Brown’s lyrics, including “Driva Man” and “Freedom Day.” The album also looks abroad on “Tears for Johannesburg.” Even the cover references the struggle with its sit-in photo.

Charlie Haden, Liberation Music Orchestra (Impulse! Records, 1969)

Haden, known for his sideman work with Ornette Coleman, came out swinging on his 1969 Impulse! Debut, Liberation Music Orchestra. The album contains songs from the Spanish Civil War, original compositions by Haden, Coleman and Carla Bley, and a programmatic piece called “Circus ’68 ’69” that was inspired by the chaos at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. (The Liberation Music Orchestra returns from time to time when things are at their worst. The band released Ballad Of The Fallen during the Reagan era, and Not In Our Name during W’s reign of terror.)

Julian “Cannonball” Adderley Quintet, Country Preacher (Capitol Records, 1969)

This album’s title track is Joe Zawinul’s tribute to Jesse Jackson. Jackson himself introduces the album, which was recorded live at Operation Breadbasket in Chicago. Operation Breadbasket was part of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and its aim was to better the economic standing of black communities. Jesse Jackson led the Chicago branch.

Chris Washburne & The SYOTOS Band, Land of Nod (Jazzheads, 2006)

Trombonist Chris Washburne and his latin jazz band SYOTOS recorded this album during the long national nightmare of W. In his liner notes, Washburne wonders whether we were all “just asleep” (hence the title), and he uses the album’s cover art effectively, too, with its depiction of a washed-out American flag. And song titles such as “Guantanamo” don’t leave much to the imagination.

Vijay Iyer and Mike Ladd, In What Language? (Pi Recordings, 2003)

This album uses a broad musical palette to tell stories of racism, profiling, immigration and misunderstanding. Mike Ladd’s lyrics and MC talents combine with Iyer’s daring and multifaceted music. For many American listeners, this album will provide an uncommon insight into the South Asian experience in this country. A must-hear.

One day I was in Mike’s room, high up in one of the dorm towers, sitting on the windowsill and looking out over the sunlit fields that ringed our small state school in northern New York. Mike said, “I’m going to put on a record for you and you’re either going to fall in love with it or never like it.” And he started “Coyote,” the first track on Joni Mitchell’s 1976 masterpiece Hejira. Given that I just referred to it as a masterpiece, you can probably guess which side of his challenge I fell on.

I was already a fan of big band jazz, and I’d started to get more into small-group jazz, largely under Mike’s tutelage. He also introduced me to people like Roky Erickson & the 13th Floor Elevators and The Band. Joni Mitchell was a new name to me, but I could instantly hear in Hejira a blend of the folk, rock and improvised musics that were the hallmark of that phase of her career.

When it came to recruiting personnel, Mitchell didn’t mess around. Hejira features a cast of jazz heavyweights, including guitarist Larry Carlton, clarinetist Abe Most, trumpeter Chuck Findley, saxophonist Tom Scott, vibraphonist Victor Feldman, and bassist Jaco Pastorius. A quick game of “jazz family tree” shows you how connected these players are to the jazz pantheon:

• Pastorius is a legend in his own right who is also famous for his time in Weather Report
• Findley has played with everyone from big band maestros Jimmy Dorsey and Doc Severinson (on The Tonight Show) to Miles Davis, Sarah Vaughn and Buddy Rich
• Feldman wrote “Seven Steps to Heaven” and performed on the Miles Davis album of the same name, just one highlight in career that includes time with Woody Herman, Shelley Manne and Buddy DeFranco. (And also with Frank Zappa and Tom Waits.)

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. What Mitchell got when she hired these players was a direct connection to an improvisational motherlode, and a cast of characters who were at home in a variety of styles. To my ear, it’s the contribution of Pastorius that is most notable and overt. His fluid playing, often at the intersection of the bass and guitar ranges, places the album in a completely different sonic context from many of the albums that came out around this time. Just listen to his briliiant work on “Refuge of the Roads” to get a feel for how Pastorius could contribute to the foundation of a song at the same time as he generated gorgeous melodic content.

Hejira‘s lyrics also include overt nods to jazz and the blues, most notably in the title track, with its reference to clarinetist and bandleader Benny Goodman, and in “Furry Sings The Blues,” with its evocation of W.C. Handy, a pioneering composer who wrote “St. Louis Blues.”

Just three years later, Mitchell made an even more overtly jazz-based album with bassist and composer Charles Mingus. Mingus once again draws on jazz musicians for its core band, with Weather Report members Pastorius, Wayne Shorter and Peter Erskine joined by genre-crossing pianist Herbie Hancock, who had last played with Shorter in Miles Davis’s band. Also on the album is percussionist Don Alias, another musician whose career spanned a variety of genres. Alias and Pastorius toured with Mitchell in support of the Mingus album.

For me, the highlight of Mingus is “Goodbye Porkpie Hat,” Mingus’s moving tribute to saxoponist Lester Young. Mitchell’s lyrics are masterful, painting a vivid picture of a bygone jazz scene and speaking fearlessly about the racial issues that plagued the club scene in Young’s time.

The tour for the Mingus album yielded what is, to my ear, one of the greatest live albums in any genre, 1980′s Shadows and Light. This album finds Mitchell in the stellar company of Pastorius and Alias, along with saxophone giant Michael Brecker, guitarist Pat Metheny and keyboardiat Lyle Mays. The music is uncompromising, featuring all of Mitchell’s lyricism and beauty alongside blistering solo performances by Brecker, Pastorius and Metheny. If you’ve got time for just one track, start off with “Black Crow,” which will have you doing the scrunched-up “jazz stink face” in no time as Brecker and Pastorius peel the paint off the stage with their fiery playing.

Mitchell’s music of this period is proof that improvisation — and the language of jazz — can play a vital role in popular music. If you’re looking for a gateway drug, any of these albums is a great entry point to dealing with heavyweight playing, and a little more digging into albums by the musicians in Mitchell’s bands will lead you to a treasure trove of music by acknowledged masters.

Durkin said the Los-Angeles-based Industrial Jazz Group started life as a trio and slowly grew from there as people subbed into the band and never left. The current incarnation is a 16-piece band that can — and does — play anything. Really anything. At the Pittsfield show on Oct. 15, the band tore through complex arrangements, stopped on a dime, brought the funk, made everyone laugh, and demonstrated tons of chops without showing off.

“It’s not really industrial, and it’s not really jazz,” writes Durkin on the band’s Web site. He said he chose the name years ago mostly because it sounded good, but he also mentioned that the name might serve as a barrier for some people. (See last week’s Jazz Don’t Hurt column for a discussion of this concept.)

It shouldn’t, though, because the IJG has something for everyone. And while it’s sometimes unfair to say “X sounds like Y,” the Industrial Jazz Group is definitely channeling the mustachioed ghost of Frank Zappa.

“On our way up here [to Pittsfield],” Durkin said, “some Zappa came on, and I said I think he’s the best musician who has ever lived in the whole history of the world. OK, that’s an exaggeration, but I really love Zappa. He’s my biggest influence.”

What Durkin has taken from Zappa, though, is not a slavish derivation, but rather an inspired desire to push boundaries, test the limits, and have a great time doing it. His arrangements combine hilarious lyrics with adventurous harmonies, finding room for both improvised and densely composed sections. Melody seems to pour off Durkin’s pen, and you find yourself singing along as if you’d known these tunes forever.

You really have to see the IJG to get the full experience. In Pittsfield, vocalist Jill Knapp was clad in a white jump-suit with black piping that looked like it had been hand-sewn on Michael Jackson’s spaceship, while vocalist Tany Ling wore a frilly red dress with a bow in her hair. Both Knapp and Lang were incredible performers, completely unafraid to give over their highly trained voices to the greater good of the music while also using their physicality and facial expressions to lend a narrative element to many of the songs. They spent all of one non-vocal tune sitting on the stage and updating their Twitter feeds, and another singing “why I oughta” while looking threateningly at one another and shaking their fists. (In a very classy move, Knapp also took a lot of time after the show to talk engagingly with some young teens and pre-teens who were in the audience.)

The brass section was as fun to watch as they were impressive to hear. The lead trumpeter was dressed in a leather jacket, fake dreads, jazz hat … and a full skeleton mask with a space cut out for the lips so he could play. One of the trombonists played both sets in a Speedo, a fact noted and commented upon at length by two young kids and their mom as they watched. (Child: “He took off his clothes!” Mom: “He’s silly, isn’t he?”)

The thing is, none of the theatrics were to cover for a lack of musicianship. If anything, the blend of visual and auditory performance made each element stronger, and the humor brought the audience in and helped make the farther-out sections of the music more easily digestible.

The Industrial Jazz Group is yet another example of creative and ferociously talented musicians deciding to ignore convention and follow their bliss. If they’re coming to a city near you, run, don’t walk, to see them.

To hear samples from the Industrial Jazz Group and an interview with composer Andrew Durkin, listen to The Jazz Session #98: Industrial Jazz Group.

Bonus video: Watch IJG trombonist and Speedo devotee Mike Richardson shave:

Jason Crane is the host of the online interview show The Jazz Session.

Sure, everybody knows what they think jazz is, and which particular elements music has to contain to qualify as jazz — swing, the blues, improvisation, etc. But put to the test, it turns out the word is extremely subjective.

From the list of three elements above (swing, the blues, improvisation), I would certainly eliminate swing and the blues as required parts of what I call jazz. First of all, defining a word like jazz with another word no one understands, such as “swing,” just makes the issue murkier rather than clearer. Many people would say “swing” refers to ding-ding-a-ding on the ride cymbal, or the same rhythm represented on some other instrument in the band. That would immediately eliminate much of the free jazz cannon, and just about all of the latin jazz world, to name just two “micro-genres.” (I think that’s a term I stole from Vijay Iyer.) Plus, much of the music being made today (and nearly everything I recommended in my Five Recent Jazz CDs for New Listeners piece, would also get the axe if swing — strictly defined — is a requirement.

Some people define “swing” as a feeling. But that’s just as ephemeral as the word “jazz,” and only serves to mystify folks. Saying something “swings” doesn’t seem very useful if it’s nothing more than a synonym for “kills” or “shreds” or “burns” or “cooks” or “rocks” or “grooves” in the sentence, “Wow, that music really _________.”

And what about the blues? Here we get into sticky territory. In my opinion, it’s important to differentiate the origins of the music from the requirements for its current practice. In other words, even if it’s true that jazz came from the blues in its earliest days, it’s also true that the music has been embraced by people all over the world for whom the blues is not a foundational music. Much of what has come from Europe, for example, is completely unrelated to the blues. But it’s certainly jazz, as far as I’m concerned. It might have been more challenging to separate jazz from the blues in 1950, but it’s extremely easy to point to examples these days.

What about improvisation? Of the elements I listed, this comes closest to a requirement in my book, but it still falls short. There are dozens — make that hundreds or thousands — of ballad performances on record that feature nothing more than a performance of the melody with no solos. Sure, some of these performances involve ornamentation or other flourishes that are improvised, but they don’t involve the kind of spontaneous composition that is the hallmark of what most jazz people would call improvisation. On the flip side, there’s music that features tons of improvisation, such as the Grateful Dead or Phish, that almost no one would classify as jazz. (Not least because they wouldn’t want to give the music the kiss of sales death that the word “jazz” usually carries with it.)

So where does that leave us? And why did I name my interview show The Jazz Session if I don’t even know what the word “jazz” means?

Taking the second question first: I named the show The Jazz Session because (a) it’s catchy, and (b) it helps a certain niche group of listeners find the show more easily. I didn’t mean it to be exclusionary, but I can certainly see how the name might have that effect.

As for where we’re at, having removed any useful means of recognizing what’s jazz and what’s not, I think that’s the entire point of this essay, and of my “Jazz Don’t Hurt” column. My contention is that we toss the definitions and requirements, and just find music that we each dig. My jazz doesn’t have to be your jazz, and vice versa. We don’t need to agree on the terms of the debate, or on the definition of the words. In fact, the more we worry about the definitions, the more we risk missing good music that gets hidden deep in the pigeonhole. I don’t think you should listen to Darius Jones or the records I recommended in the five CDs piece because they’re jazz records. In my opinion, you should check them out because each one is full of great music by musicians who have something to say.

I know that people — including me — will still use the term jazz. It’s sometimes a useful shorthand, and it’s going to be a long time before record stores are alphabetized from A to Z with no catergories. But I don’t think the word should be a gate to which you must hold a special key.

What is jazz? I don’t really know. And I don’t really care. And if you’re comfortable with not caring, too, I think we can have a lot of fun together discovering music here at Popdose.

Jason Crane is the host of the online jazz interview show The Jazz Session.

Saxophonist Darius Jones grew up poor in Virginia, son of a single mother, living either on his relatives’ farm or in a trailer. He also grew up rich, surrounded by a loving family and close to an uncle who loved music and played the saxophone by ear along with records by Grover Washington and Parliament.

For his debut statement, 31-year-old Jones wanted to tell his story. To talk about what it means to be poor and black and struggling and intelligent in this day and age. Jones has fit all that and more into an incredible recording that will make you sing, make you weep and make you marvel. You’ll marvel at the assurance shown by Jones as he navigates the rhythmic and harmonic landscape created by his trio partners, pianist Cooper-Moore and drummer Rakalam Bob Moses. Cooper-Moore and Moses are decades older than Jones, and they support him and also push him.

The church is never far from this music. And it’s the church of “joyful noise,” where both those words have equal weight. It’s the gospel according to the human voice, to the makeshift percussion instrument, to the two-note saxophone solo played by a young man whose horn was held together with rubber bands and fire. A young man who walked miles to take saxophone lessons that he couldn’t pay for. A young man who befriended the family that owned the instrument repair shop so they’d work on his horn and let him settle up when he could.

From the first seconds of Man’ish Boy (AUM Fidelity, 2009), the keening scream of Jones’ saxophone announces the arrival of an important new voice. Jones brings a strong sense of melody to the record on tunes like the gorgeous “Meekness.” And he brings a terrifying and beautiful abandon to the swirling, heavy-metal freedom of “Chasing The Ghost.” On the latter, Jones’ saxophone soars and dives as Cooper-Moore pins the needle with the electric diddely-bo, a one-stringed instrument with an African origin story and a strong Southern tradition.

Cooper-Moore and Moses had never recorded together — or even met — before making this album, so we have one more reason to be thankful to Jones. Both veterans are intense listeners, and their playing in no way belies their ages.

The best music tells you something not only about the musicians, but about yourself. Man’ish Boy is that kind of record. It’s not just good. It’s important. And we are the richer for its existence.

LISTEN: Darius Jones, “Chasing the Ghost” [streaming MP3]

Jason Crane is the host of the online jazz interview show The Jazz Session.

Vijay Iyer: Historicity (ACT, 2009)

There are a lot of things I like about pianist and renaissance man Vijay Iyer, but perhaps my favorite of his qualities is his unswerving commitment to speak the truth. That comes across when you listen to him speak, but it also shines through when you hear him play. Iyer is always in pursuit, always moving forward, always absorbing and reconfiguring improvised music. Oh, and his current trio kicks ass, if I may use a technical term. Start with the track “Galang” on his new record, Historicity. And turn it up loud.

• LISTEN: Galang [Trio Riot Version]

Fay Victor Ensemble: The FreeSong Suite (Greene Avenue, 2009)

Vocalist Fay Victor will amaze you. Her voice is strong and expressive, and her musical conception is unlike anything I’ve heard recently. Or maybe ever. This CD is divided into three large sections, and each of those sections is made up of vignettes and stories that will hold your attention lyrically as well as musically. The band is first-rate, feauting guitarist Anders Nilsson, bassist Ken Filiano and drummer Michael “T.A.” Thompson. From free improv to the blues to alt-rock and back again, The FreeSong Suite is easily one of my top 10 records of 2009.

• LISTEN: Joe’s Car

Terence Blanchard: Choices (Concord Records, 2009)

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Terence Blanchard began to use his public profile to advocate on behalf of his home city of New Orleans. He did this first with A Tale of God’s Will, his brilliant and moving recording documenting the devastation and the emotional response to it. On his new CD, Choices (Concord, 2009), Blanchard puts a more positive — but no less forceful — spin on the music, documenting the progress made by the people of New Orleans since the storm. Featuring spoken word from Dr. Cornel West and a killer band, Choices is a great bridge for your friends who are into conscious hip hop and for your activist friends.

• LISTEN: Byus

John Ellis & Double-Wide: Dance Like There’s No Tomorrow (Hyena Records, 2008)

Many of your friends may already have heard John Ellis (even if they don’t know his name) because of his years with guitarist Charlie Hunter. On this record, Ellis brings the funk with organ, sousaphone (!) and drums. The title of the record says it all: This is music that will reach your hips as well as your head. Ellis is a wonderful player, and he knows how to make fun, grooving music that never sacrifices intelligence on the altar of style.

• LISTEN: All Up In The Aisles

Kate Schutt: Telephone Game (ArtistShare, 2009)

Singer/songwriter Schutt is steeped in jazz, but not exclusively in jazz. And I already know this album works, because after Schutt appeared on The Jazz Session, a friend who is not a huge jazzhead bought the record and loves it. Schutt combines a love for stripped-down acoustic music with an adventurous spirit and an open heart.

• LISTEN: Take Everything

Jason Crane hosts the online jazz interview show The Jazz Session.