Ginger Baker Coward of the County

It's one thing to be acclaimed as a great rock musician, but when the jazz guys start lining up to play with you, you know you got chops to burn! Ginger Baker's heralded, early-'90s collaborations with Bill Frisell had already established his jazz credibility, but on this record he took another step forward as a bandleader, enlisting trumpeter Ron Miles and bassist Artie Moore and a shifting group of local Denver musicians in the DJQ20 (Denver Jazz Quintet-to-Octet), and recording this marvelously eclectic 1999 gem. Rooted in hard bop, Coward takes unpredictable turns into funk, rock, free jazz and even a little country (witness the pedal steel on the title track), with excellent writing contributions from Miles.