By Michael Ullman

A stirring trio date featuring John Scofield on guitar with Vicente Archer on bass and Bill Stewart on drums.

John Scofield, Uncle John’ s Band (ECM)

Uncle John’s Band — the album’s title comes from a Grateful Dead tune, not from Scofield family lore — turns out to be a trio date featuring Scofield on guitar, of course, with Vicente Archer on bass and Bill Stewart on drums. (Anything with Stewart on it is bound to be good.) The stirring collection opens unexpectedly with Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man,” as if the guitarist were telling us he wouldn’t be held to bebop tunes. Scofield isn’t the first jazz person to record this classic. In 1965, Gerry Mulligan put his version on an LP with the dubious title, “If You Can’t Beat ’Em, Join ‘Em.” The title, which may not have been of Mulligan’s choosing, suggests that the leader was ambivalent about the venture. Born in 1951, 24 years after Mulligan, John Scofield is from another generation and he’s wholly into this piece. In the notes, the musician says, “I was 13 when the Byrds’ version of this Bob Dylan tune was a hit and that’s the version that inspired me.”

Scofield’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” emerges from a background of buzzing guitar sounds, over which he plays a suggestive introduction that barely suggests the melody, while Stewart is heard, cymbals and then tom toms. Then, after almost two minutes Scofield goes into tempo and plays Dylan’s song in a cheerily recognizable way. Like Dylan, the guitarist is a great melodist. Yet in his solo he immediately steps outside the expected chord sequence: throughout these two discs the improvisations are free or free-ish. Scofield’s harmonic wanderings fascinate here; but so do his various ways of stating the melody. Bassist Archer solos and, for a second, he sounds like Charlie Haden as he patiently traverses a scale, taking care with each step.

The collection includes a few originals, such as “The Girlfriend Chord,” along with bop classics and standards drawn from varied sources. They play Neil Young’s “Old Man” and Matty Malneck’s ’30s hit “Stairway to the Stars.” In his notes, Scofield goes out of his way to praise Dexter Gordon’s version of “Stairway” on Our Man in Paris. He plays the ballad quietly and with a minimum of virtuosic fuss: he seems intent on making the melody even more beautiful than when it was written. After his initial statement he doesn’t run away from the written melody — he takes it an octave higher before gently improvising. Almost as impressive is Scofield’s way with the Leonard Bernstein classic “Somewhere,” which starts as a duet with the bassist, with Stewart way in the background. Scofield’s careful way with the song’s rhythm — as well as his handling of the overly familiar, sometimes sentimentally rendered melody — is remarkable. His pauses are as dramatic as his chords. Again, the guitarist eschews virtuosity for a calmly etched melody. It’s wonderful.

Guitarist John Scofield in action. Photo: Michael Ullman

Among the bop standards on the album is “Ray’s Idea,” which Dizzy Gillespie had in his live big band repertoire for years. Miles Davis recorded the tune for Blue Note with his All Stars on April 20, 1953. Scofield plays the jumpy melody in unison with his bassist until the bridge, which really sounds like a release. His solo is pure bop, with some intriguing double stops in the middle. Stewart’s short solo is also welcome. “Budo,” written by Miles Davis, was recorded by the trumpeter in the late ’40s in an arrangement by John Lewis. Bud Powell, from whom the A section came, recorded it later in 1951. By then it was sometimes called “Hallucinations.” In Scofield’s uptempo rendition, Stewart shines in a full chorus solo. The drama of “Old Man” taps into a 24-year-old contemplating an elderly person (who doesn’t get a word in edgewise). He feels sorry, not for the old man, but for himself. Perhaps he has a good reason:

Old man, take a look at my life, I’m a lot like you
I need someone to love me the whole day through
Ah, one look in my eyes and you can tell that’s true

Scofield’s version is dignified. It begins with one of his enticingly oblique introductions. His statement of Young’s melody, with its repeated accent on “old man,” is almost unadorned until the solo, when, once again, Scofield taps into his harmonic smarts.

“TV Band” is among the album’s originals. In the notes, Scofield draws our attention to the drummer: “The groove is an example of a classic Bill Stewart straight eighth note feel.” The track “Back in Time” sounds like it was taken from a cowboy movie. Then, touchingly, Scofield dedicates his “Nothing Is Forever” to his late son.

Michael Ullman studied classical clarinet and was educated at Harvard, from which he received a PhD in English. The author or co-author of two books on jazz, he has written on jazz and classical music for the Atlantic Monthly, New Republic, High Fidelity, Stereophile, Boston Phoenix, Boston Globe, and other venues. His articles on Dickens, Joyce, Kipling, and others have appeared in academic journals. For over 20 years, he has written a bi-monthly jazz column for Fanfare Magazine, for which he also reviews classical music. At Tufts University, he teaches mostly modernist writers in the English Department and jazz and blues history in the Music Department. He plays piano badly.