Movin' on

If O'Farrill has eluded personal attention, his compositions are impossible to ignore. The harmonic bravura of his charts makes them instantly recognizable. His skyscraper chords rest on a foundation of low-register reeds and trombones, then stack up saxophones and trumpets until they tower over the listener like the Chrysler Building. In a pensive mood, he turns to the Ellingtonian hues of muted trumpet and smooth unison saxophones, but again he fills out chords with an almost obsessive attention to harmonic detail. He's not as strong a melodicist as Ellington, but give him a melody to rework and his imagination runs wild. The album's high point is "Variations on a Well-Known Theme," a mischievous arrangement of "La Cucaracha" that morphs the Mexican folk tune into pastiches of Ellington, Mancini, TV themes, and 12-tone art songs.

The line-up assembled by O'Farrill's son, pianist Arturo Jr., is more than a match for the charts. Saxophonist Mario Rivera flaunts his flinty Ben Webster romanticism on the bolero "En la Obscuridad" ("In the Darkness"). Trumpeter Michael Mossman lights up "El Loco Blues" with an aggressive high-register solo. Trombonist Papo Vasquez, with his velvety tone, sounds especially suave on "Get Me to the Church on Time." O'Farrill's return to the studio is a highlight among this year's Latin-jazz issues, ranking with the best recorded work of his long career.

As a teenager in the late '30s, the Cuban-born composer succumbed to the swinging charms of Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, and Tommy Dorsey while attending a Georgia military school. His family expected him to become a lawyer. But after falling for jazz, he had other plans. "I quit law school and joined an orchestra," he explains on the phone from his New York home, "much to my family's chagrin."

As a fledgling composer and trumpeter in Havana in the early '40s, O'Farrill was not drawn to the music of his native island. "The music was very backwards as far as orchestration was concerned. There were no interesting harmonies. I found Cuba very boring. I tried to become a jazz musician, but it was impossible because the Havana bands were only playing commercial music. I joined a small group of jazz fans who got together on Fridays to jam. One of us brought back some Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker records from New York and we all flipped."

In 1948, O'Farrill fled the jazz backwater of Havana for the center of the action in New York. In quick succession he became a staff arranger with composer/bandleader Gil Fuller, scored a hit in 1949 with "Undercurrent Blues" for Benny Goodman's short-lived bebop band, and penned charts for Stan Kenton and Count Basie.

For Machito, O'Farrill wrote several commercial boleros for singer Graciela. His more adventurous "Gone City" caught the attention of record producer Norman Granz and led to Machito's recording O'Farrill's "The Afro-Cuban Jazz Suite" with Charlie Parker in 1950. "The soloist was originally supposed to be [trumpeter] Sweets Edison. But at a break during the session, Sweets came up to me and said he just wasn't getting it. So that's when Granz called Bird."

From 1950 to 1955, O'Farrill led a modestly successful Latin big band that recorded for Verve, but his heart was not in bandleading. When rock killed the big bands, he returned to Cuba for two years, then moved to Mexico City, where he worked in television and with a commercial dance band. In 1965 he returned to the States for a gig in Las Vegas. Before leaving, he detoured to New York, renewing his ties to the jazz world. With an arranging job for Count Basie in hand, he moved his family back to New York, where he has lived since.

Today, O'Farrill's meat and potatoes is writing jingles for the Hispanic TV market. But he's also kept his hand in Afro-Cuban jazz. In 1975, Machito recorded his Afro-Cuban Jazz Moods (Pablo) with Dizzy Gillespie. "Tanga Suite" appeared on Mario Bauzá's 1991 CD Tanga (Messidor). On November 30, Jazz at Lincoln Center premiered a work for Wynton Marsalis. At 74, O'Farrill's still excited to be growing artistically and enthused about the young talent he discovered as a result of his new recording.

"It goes to show," he says, "you shouldn't only rely on the things you already know."