Archie Shepp's St. Louis Blues

Surprise album of the season: a summit meeting of three of the original free-jazz gods?Shepp, Richard Davis and Sunny Murray. They're in what might be the autumn of their years, just sitting down and jamming, mostly on some old blues standards. The pace is relaxed, but the playing is intense. Shepp's the leader and even lends his vocals to the opener, W.C. Handy's "St. Louis Blues." It's almost a B.B. King-style blues the way Shepp renders it here, and that sets the mood for the whole album.

Track 2, a Sunny Murray composition called "Et Moi," is a samba-like construction, with Shepp adding some snake-charmingly mad coils of full-throated tenor-sax blare. This ain't hot air, though, and the combination of Murray and guest percussionist Leopoldo Fleming creates a constantly moving monorail of rhythm underneath. Davis is superb throughout?snapping his bass with grand fingersful of string-pulling majesty. His command of his instrument has only grown more astounding as the years have gone by.

The same can be said about Shepp and Murray. Archie Shepp was one of the figureheads of free jazz, and as such his music was sometimes radical to the point of self-indulgence. But even when wanking off a bit, his music was still convincing on some level. What this album proves is that Shepp has always been more of a cosmic blues cat than a straight-up powerhouse player a la David S. Ware. With age comes wisdom, and Shepp now seems better equipped to just go with the flow, even blowing blues twists like the Sonny Rollins-ish solo at the end of the trio's version of Kenny Dorham's "Blue Bossa."

There's a 10-minute version of "God Bless the Child" here, with an extended intro revealing the influence of Lester Young (though Archie has always maintained that his man was Johnny Hodges). Davis solos before Shepp croons once again. He ain't no Billie Holiday, but he's better than Mae West. Davis' sole tune as composer, entitled "Total Package," is probably the most "free" track on the album: 12 minutes in length, it strides along at an elephant-walk tempo with lots of rolling percussives and beautifully stated lines by Shepp. Davis uses a lot of bowed technique on this composition, which gives it a weird Middle Eastern flavor.

This album is a terrific example of teamwork, probably the best trio record since Odean Pope's Ebioto two years ago. Shepp doesn't worry about playing "out" or "in"?his maturity as a player cuts through all such categories, and if I were certain he ever really went anywhere, I'd call this a "comeback" of the first order. These are not young guys and they're not playing young men's music?i.e., anything remotely within the same stratosphere as hiphop?but they are capable of a kind of passionate embrace of the world that sometimes seems all but dead in this gilded age.