Don Redman: Chant of the Weed

Venture past this track's K-tel campinessAs-Seen-On-TV: All-time Smokin' Reefer Songs! Act Now! Supplies Are Limitedand you find the adventurous orchestration of pioneering big band conceptualist Don Redman, among the first to separate brass and reeds into sections and exploit their contrasting timbres. One of a handful to grasp the jazz band's orchestral possibilities only recently expanded by Ellington, Redman cultivates in "Chant of the Weed" a bumper patch of cleverly camouflaged, strangely evocative tonal and atonal colorations. In particular, devotees of the late-1930s Raymond Scott Quintette will detect an ancestral pungency. Smoke 'em if you got 'em.