Steel City pianist pays tribute to a forebear on 'Tone Paintings: The Music of Dodo Marmarosa'

Craig Davis, a current fixture as a jazz pianist in his native Pittsburgh, works with the veteran bass-drums

"Tone Paintings" erects a memorial.

team of John Clayton and Jeff Hamilton to recall the inspired melody-rich bebop style of Michael "Dodo" Marmarosa on a new release from the Steel City label MCG Jazz.

"Tone Paintings" takes its title from a modernist composition of Marmorosa that receives an attractive interpretation here from the trio. There are 11 tracks in all, indicative of the creative range of a pianist whose notable early career ended in obscurity. 

Davis made a personal discovery of Marmarosa while exploring Pittsburgh's rich heritage in jazz pianists, including Mary Lou Williams, Errol Garner, Ahmad Jamal and Billy Strayhorn. "Here's this guy who was boppin' with Bird and he was pushing the envelope at the same time," Davis said of the pianist who played with Charlie Parker and others in advancing jazz in the most appealing way in the 1940s.

Two adjacent tracks suggest some of the Marmarosa range sympathetically absorbed by Davis and his sidemen. The reflective title piece is followed by the peppy "Battle of the Balcony Jive." Davis' fleet manner works hand in glove with the Clayton-Hamilton team. The drummer's often feathery-light touch allows also for brisk flights of fancy, and the bassist's command of the mainstream idiom on his instrument is absolute.

Evenly divided contributions animate the one Davis original, "A Ditty for Dodo." It's a ballad, with an  introspective cast similar to the disc-closer, "Dodo's Lament." As usual in this kind of piece, Hamilton shows he's a master of brushes. 

Also notable is the suave "Gary Departs," over which the trio simply glides like vintage Fred and Ginger. "Compadoo" is a deft contrafact on an old song that's a favorite for such treatment, "Sweet Georgia Brown." The saluted bop pianist's essential style is celebrated in the contrasting fashion that two of his titles suggest: "Dodo's Bounce" and "Dodo's Blues."

All told, this is a tribute album that falls within such releases without ossified museum reverence. But still, the achievement of Marmarosa is worth the museum niche it gets here.