Gettin' to It

Christian McBride calls his teacher Ray Brown one of the few bassists whose time was strong enough to make drums feel unnecessary. On his 1995 debut Gettin' to It, McBride made that literal — a three-bass summit with Brown and elder statesman Milt Hinton carrying a track with no drummer at all.

Ray Brown died in 2002, yet his name still appears in the credits of the 2021 album Deciphering the Message — a record built not from new sessions but from re-edited vintage Blue Note tape, so a half-century-old bass take turns up on a release dated almost two decades after the player's death.

Roy Hargrove made his name in the early-1990s hard-bop revival as one of jazz's 'Young Lions,' with no real background in Latin music. Yet in 1997 it was Habana, a session with Cuban musicians, that won him a Grammy for Best Latin Jazz Performance.