Terry Gibbs: Main Stem

DC's Duke Ellington and Brooklyn's Terry Gibbs deserve to be honorary Mainers. After all, Maine's motto Dirigo ("I lead") fits Ellington and Gibbs in excelsis, albeit in different ways. Whereas Duke herded cats finicky, skittish, unreliableTerry was an Iditarod musher, pointing his team of slavering dogs through gale-force winds across icebound trails. Their objective, however, was the same: to swing you madly. Reviving Duke's "Main Stem" (1942), Gibbs spotlights Ms. Moran, himself, Perkins and Candoli in a riffing blues as relentless as lobstermen fishing off the Georges Bank. Do not get in their way. (And remember: no clams allowed.)