Who says that studying the classics can't be fun? Certainly not Scott Hamilton, whose new release Across The Tracks explores tunes written by hallowed names like Duke Ellington and sounds like this saxophonist and his friends enjoyed great fun along their way.

Hamilton often accompanies Rosemary Clooney through the American Songbook so he knows Jazz classics, and his tenor style distills the relaxed yet strong approach to swing from predecessors Ben Webster and Zoot Sims, straight-up blues riffing that might still be mainstream Jazz if not for the bop revolution. Sonny Stitt's "Deuces Wild" opens and establishes the prototype with its round of blue solos between Hamilton, Gene Ludwig on organ and Roomful of Blues guitar ace Duke Robilard.

Robilard and Hamilton actually shared a blues bill way back in '69 (each in different bands), and you can't cut a guitar solo much tastier than Robilard's slice in Duke Ellington's solid groove "Cop Out." "Sweet Slumber" couldn't be more sweet or dreamy, with each solo drifting cloudlike into the next and Hamilton turning in his definitive ballad performance. The leader's "Something for Red" cooks up a little hotter, his tenor honking and shouting almost like soulman King Curtis.

Across The Tracks is also Hamilton's first release recorded by another jazz classic, Rudy Van Gelder, who captures the best of both worlds. It feels like a jam session, but sounds studio perfect.

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Ron Carter is better known for his work on other peoples' records but Where? is when the bassist first stepped out as a leader.

Arranged to feature Carter's cello and bass plus soloists Mal Waldron (piano) and Eric Dolphy (flute, bass clarinet, alto sax), Where? was recorded in mid-1961 and even this newly remastered Rudy Van Gelder edition sounds tethered to its very transitional jazz time. In fact, it originally appeared on the fledgling New Jazz label, and Carter wrote in its notes: "There's a new era in music and I'd like to feel that I'm a part of it."

The air of Where? is refined and intellectual, and RVG's sound although warm often turns dry to brittle. Although you can't legitimately call this "chamber jazz," much of it sounds like that. The sonorities of cello and bass clarinet in the ridiculously metered, serpentine opener "Rally" may sound somewhat odd but they match almost perfectly. Carter's "Bass Duet" with George Duvivier sort of clears the air, two relaxed pros casually sharing a comfy groove.

The sound of Carter's bowed solo in the title track sounds aimed in two directions: backward to fiddles played at backwoods jugband hoedowns and forward to electric violin pioneered by jazz fusioners. Dolphy's alto digs into his bop bag to open "Softly, As In A Morning Sunrise" and his verses after Carter's solo, cast between Charlie Persip's crackling drum breaks, soar with Bird-like freedom.

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Bags' Groove is a Mount Rushmore of pre-1960 modern jazz, recorded in two 1954 sessions that brought Miles Davis together with leading jazz conceptualists Sonny Rollins, Horace Silver, Thelonious Monk, Milt Jackson and the pristine rhythm engine of the original Modern Jazz Quartet, bassist Percy Heath and drummer Kenny Clarke.

Actually, Bags' Groove is two great albums. The second one first: Its last five tracks were recorded in June '54 and feature Rollins and Silver with Davis and the rhythm section. Rollins' power blossoms as saxophonist and composer, as he contributes three originals that all became famous ("Airegin," "Oleo" and "Doxy").

But it's the release's first two tracks, two takes on Milt "Bags" Jackson's eponymous bop freeway jam, which elevate Bags' Groove from great to legendary. These are the famous Christmas Eve '54 sessions that swap Silver and Rollins out, and Jackson plus Thelonious Monk in. Ira Gitler's liner notes quite openly explain, "This is the session where Miles asked Monk to lay out during his [Miles] choruses." Monk sounds furious, not accompanying Davis at all in either take, and fumes through his first solo as if gnawing the knuckle of a grudge. He sounds more relaxed and expressive, or at least less miserable, in take two.

Consider for a moment all the versions of "Bags' Groove" (one of the world's largest retail websites, for example, offers more than three hundred). So it's no small thing to write that these two versions, on this installment of the RVG series, are the most historic and the two best.

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The longer you listen to him unravel ream upon ream of intellectually and emotionally inspired music on Settin' The Pace (Prestige), the more your words seem useless. Sooner or later, one simply seems to run out of things to think and say and write about the amazing John Coltrane.

He commands a finely tuned machine on Settin' The Pace. Pianist Red Garland's trio with drummer Art Taylor and bassist Paul Chambers was a first-rate ensemble, and helped 'Trane cultivate the lushly, almost epically, romantic Soultrane earlier that year. This one begins where that one ends, luxuriating through the opening ballad "I See Your Face Before Me," which Garland seems to build upon the structure of "Willow Weep for Me." Coltrane's tenor loved romance -- listen to his tender but not mushy unaccompanied playing at its close.

Their energetic, inquisitive exploration of "Little Melonae" reexamines each musical fragment until Coltrane sounds sated, certain that all possibility has been exhausted. Jaunty and blue yet somehow oddly curious, this Jackie McLean melody apes the music of Monk. This same high voltage pulses in "Rise 'n' Shine" through Chambers, who more or less maintains a quarter note sprint throughout.

"By the Numbers," the bonus track on this new RVG edition proves worth the wait. 'Trane lays out for the first half of the twelve-minute blues stroll. Garland probably plays more notes in the first half of this one song than on some entire albums he cut with Miles Davis.

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