to Each His Own 1946

Homer thinks maybe they should stop at his Uncle Butch's saloon for a drink before they get home. "You're home now, kid," the older man Al tells him. Three military veterans have just returned to their hometown of Boone City, somewhere in the Midwest, and each in his own way is dreading his approaching reunion. Al's dialogue brings down the curtain on the apprehensive first act of William Wyler's "The Best Years of Our Lives" (1946). Seen more than six decades later, it feels surprisingly modern: lean, direct, honest about issues that Hollywood then studiously avoided. After the war years of patriotism and heroism in the movies, this was a sobering look at the problems veterans faced when they returned home.

Count Basie was among the most important bandleaders of the swing era. With the exception of a brief period in the early '50s, he led a big band from 1935 until his death almost 50 years later, and the band continued to perform after he died…

Now why do you suppose they called him '"Lockjaw"'? Just listen. Eddie Davis based much of his style on the tough extremities of Ben Webster's gritty gutbucket tenor sax. Picking up where Ben left off, Jaws would growl, shriek and rock in ways that landed him on the cusp between bebop and rhythm & blues. Over many years he developed into a mature performer who was capable of great subtleties. We are fortunate to have this opportunity to hear his earliest recordings as a leader. Some of this stuff is startling. "Surgery," a smooth, searching, walking blues, exists in the same harmonic/thematic realm as Boyd Raeburn's quirky study for big band, "Tonsillectomy." The piece called "Lockjaw" is more of a muscle tussle, and "Afternoon in a Doghouse" is a simple finger-pop bop groove…

Fire up the popcorn popper! These feel-good movies will set just the right tone for family downtime during the holidays.

Most Ben Webster albums on the market today seem to be reissues from his magnificent autumnal years, majestically lush or bearishly brusque. It's good to have a chronological sampling of Webster's work from the mid-'40s, in order to appreciate exactly how he developed into the Ben Webster of 1959 and 1969. After popping up on early big band swing records by Bennie Moten and Willie Bryant, Webster came into his own as the first really exceptional tenor saxophonist to be featured with Duke Ellington's Orchestra. What we have here is the post-Ellington Ben Webster. His tone has gotten bigger and wider, grittily sensuous and invariably warm like a pulse in the jugular…