A very special 75th

The clean-picking Detroiter Kenny Burrell was born in 1931 and cut his first record with Dizzy Gillespie in 1951. The mighty Duke Ellington named him as his favourite guitarist and, listening to his 1975 Ellington is Forever album, it's not hard to understand why.

From bop beginnings with a string of Savoy and early Blue Note albums, Burrell became one of jazz's most recorded artists.

From Billie Holliday to John Coltrane, Milt Jackson and Art Blakey to Sonny Rollins, Jimmy Smith to Freddie Hubbard, if you search through the gamut of jazz, you will find Burrell's name and brilliance continually appearing and reappearing with the geniuses of the music.

At his birthday bash, Burrell is hosted at Yoshi's Jazz Club in Oakland, California, by the veteran orchestral wizard Gerald Wilson, from Shelby, Mississippi, but who, like Burrell, spent his boyhood in Detroit.

The young Wilson became arranger and composer for the Jimmy Lunceford Orchestra, before packing his bags and moving to California, working for Benny Carter and forming his own orchestra, which made a number of significant early 1960s albums for the Pacific Jazz label.

When Wilson combines with Burrell, there is over 160 years of jazz expertise between them, which soon becomes apparent on this album's opener Viva Tirado, an expression of Wilson's fascination for bullfighting, in which Burrell joins with bravado, soloing with a romping rhythm section and a whole orchestra behind him.

On Stormy Monday Blues for the Count, Burrell salutes two heroes - bluesman and guitarist T-Bone Walker and the greatest swinger of them all, Count Basie. He unexpectedly sings on the former and plays the blues with ease and aplomb.

Wilson's sombre and darkly soulful tune Romance is played with a Brazilian tinge, with Burrell soloing throughout, plucking nothing but beauty from his strings.

Having paid homage to Basie, he moves on to Ellington with three of the Duke's charts. First up is Love You Madly, followed by Sophisticated Lady, beginning unaccompanied. When the orchestra enters, its chords and colourings are in total harmony with Burrell's flickering phrases. Don't Get Around Much Anymore is hard enough to believe when you hear Burrell move up and down his strings and pick out new pathways from a tune played a million times before.

Wayne Shorter's Footprints begins the small group performances, with bassist Roberto Miranda providing a swilling rhythmic undertow. The sublime melody of JJ Johnson's Lament follows and Burrell is joined by the most eminent of jazz flautists Hubert Laws.

Hearing flute and guitar perform this tune with such quietude and gentle passion, through the hands and breath of such masters with only a suggestion of bass and brushes behind them, gives an unforgettable jazz moment.

All Blues, from the Miles Davis classic album Kind of Blue, continues the virtual hush of the music, as Burrell, Miranda and drummer Clayton Cameron play the theme just above silence.

The calm finishes and the bluster of A Night in Tunisia follows, with organist Joey de Francesco joining the trio with Laws and two blasting saxophone voices, altoist Jeff Clayton and tenorist Herman Riley.

De Francesco begins his solo with a raucous and effervescent salvo, waking the ghost of the tunes composer Gillespie and setting the audience on a rampart edge for I'll Close My Eyes, a celebration of another ex-Burrell confrere and the pioneer of bop organists Jimmy Smith.

As the familiar lines of Take the A Train, Ellington's signature tune wows the audience and ends the evening, you know that this is one party you don't have to miss - just get the record, give a health to an age-defiant Kenny Burrell and start grooving.

CHRIS SEARLE