"Listen to Those Zsounds"

Once upon a time, the jazzman's capital was New Orleans; later came Chicago and Manhattan's 52nd Street. Today, the liveliest center of developing jazz is California, where a cluster of youngsters, still mostly in their 20s, are refining the frenzies of bop into something cooler, calmer and more coherent.

The West Coasters include such names as Drummer Shelly Manne, 33, Trumpeter-Arranger Shorty Rogers, 29, Saxophonists Gerry Mulligan and Stan Getz, both 26, Pianist Dave Brubeck, 32. At the top of the list stands a skinny (5 ft. 9 in., 135 Ibs.) 24-year-old ex-Army trumpeter named Chet Baker. He was voted the country's best jazz trumpeter in year-end popularity polls by both Down Beat and Metronome.

A New Lingo. Working last week with his own quartet (trumpet, piano, bass, drums) in a Los Angeles jazz joint called Zardi's, Chet kept his tempos up, his rhythm hard-swinging. His program consisted mostly of cool-jazz originals such as Maid in Mexico and Soft Shoe, but also included such rich-chorded pop tunes as Funny Valentine and All the Things You Are. Trumpeter Baker stood with his body motionless, his ears bent for the counterpoint of his sidemen, his eyes tiredly closed.

There was nothing tired about his playing. Instead of the brassy blare that comes from ordinary trumpets, Chefs horn usually sounded something like a clarinet with a frog in its throat--intimate, soft, agile. Starting at fast tempo, he doubled it to play his rapid-fire arabesques, never muffed a note right down to the pointedly abrupt ending.

Out front sat the dedicated fans of the new music, most of them also in their 20s They listened in hushed silence, with half-closed eyes, while the music tumbled along. Like the musicians, the crowd talks a new lingo. Instead of "dig that crazy riff," the new generality is "listen to those zsounds." Rather than admire strange chords, the cult discusses "playing a line." Everybody is aware of "healthy music" and "new conceptions. "

Anything but the Obvious. Chet Baker never had a trumpet lesson in his life, flunked out as a junior college music major. He taught himself the trumpet in junior high school when he wanted to join the band, later played in Army bands in Berlin and San Francisco. He played with a few California combos before he made his big splash with Gerry Mulligan's quartet in 1952 (TIME, Feb. 2, 1953).

Baker and his California colleagues revere such "early moderns" as Negro Bop-sters Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie ("Yard-bird") Parker and Thelonius Monk. But they are far more interested in their own ideas than in merely imitating onetime models. In this, jazz historians may decide, the California youngsters are repeating the role of the white Northern musicians who 30 years ago picked up the original New Orleans variety and turned it into something called Dixieland.

Chet Baker is not worrying about the historians. If there is a guiding idea behind his playing, it is simply "to get away from the obvious. We try to play different things that fit together," he says. He likes Los Angeles because "this is where the new sounds are coming from." He is a happy man: "When I'm up there blowing some new conceptions and I see the audience likes it, it's a gas. That's good enough for me."

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