Jazz Records

New Orleans Rhythm Kings: Tin Roof Blues (Riverside). Chicago style--blary, jagged, and rough around the edges--by one of the two bands (along with King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band) that ruled the North and South Sides in the old days. Put on wax in the early '20s, these performances are a reminder that the King of the Kings was the late Clarinetist Leon Rappolo, whose solos in such numbers as Tiger Rag and the title song (also known as Jazzin' Babies) are taut as a bent bow.

Al Cohn: Son of Drum Suite (RCA Victor). A sequel to the unpredictably popular Drum Suite album of several years ago. Composer-Saxophonist Cohn coaxes six drummers (on snares, cymbals, tom-toms) into a sort of illustrated seminar on the art of drumming--from brush technique to rim shots. Cohn wraps his lessons into a number of his own big-band compositions with such variety and skill that listeners can forgive a little too much tick, thump and shu-u-sh.

Tough Tenors: The Johnny Griffin and Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis Quintet (Jazz-land). Two saxmen of the hard-bop persuasion trade heated solos like a couple of alternately firing spark plugs. Most successful combustions: Funky Fluke, a scrambling exercise in sheer speed, and the old favorite, Tickle Toe.

Don Randi Trio: Feelin' Like Blues (World Pacific). A first recording by a 24-year-old pianist who can clout the keyboard with macelike power or spin out feathery right-hand phrases with impressive speed. All the numbers--Summertime, Blues for Miti, Cheek to Cheek--not only swing but bounce, suggesting that Randi would be wise to reach occasionally for the soft pedal.

Out of the Cool: the Gil Evans Orchestra (Impulse). The finest arranger in jazz puts some of his melodic and rhythmic tricks on display in five selections, including his own long (15-min.) La Nevada, and his arrangement of John Brooks's haunting Where Flamingos Fly. The moods vary, but the effect is always an intricate crosscurrent of sound stirring to restlessly shifting rhythms.

Byrd in Flight: Donald Byrd (Blue Note). Byrd has two voices: he can jab out his message with agility, brilliance and exuberance, or he can build in long, open-throated lines, as expansive as any now coming from a trumpet. Both are well served here in such numbers as Little Boy Blue and his own composition, Lex.

The Moanin', Groanin' Blues: Ida Cox (Riverside). One of the classic blues singers displays the supple style, the subtle sense of inflection and phrase, with which she compensated for her lack of the bellows strength of, say, Ma Rainey. Her quarrel with men in these 1920s recordings is unrelenting.

Toshiko Mariano Quartet (Candid). A husband-and-wife team--Saxophonist Charlie Mariano and Japanese Pianist Toshiko Akiyoshi--in one of the year's most successful exercises for small combo. Akiyoshi has developed into a pianist of extraordinary fire and fluency, and Mariano displays--particularly in his remarkable reading of Deep River--a warm, lyric tone that flows like honey from the horn. Nothing in the album is better than Akiyoshi's own Long Yellow Road, a wistful musical memory of the long, straight roads back home in Manchuria.

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