FRESH HEIRS

By BRUCE HANDY

It's the jazz equivalent of stunt casting: Verve has just released an album that teams Nicholas Payton, a 23-year-old Wynton Marsalis protege, with Doc Cheatham, a slightly older trumpet player, one who cut his teeth with the likes of Ma Rainey and Cab Calloway. Doc 's 91. The tunes here are standards, many of them--like Black and Blue--part of Louis Armstrong's repertoire; all are played in a straight-ahead New Orleans style. But one's suspicion that the result might be dutiful and dull, the musical equivalent of a five-part series in the New York Times on wage stagnation, proves groundless. Doc Cheatham & Nicholas Payton rescues its idiom from both the dead end of strict revivalism and the cornier precincts of Dixieland, reinvesting it with swing and individuality and reminding us why this sensual, pleasurable music was once called "hot." What we have here, believe it or not, is 62 minutes of great make-out music. This is intended as a high compliment.

What a nice change of pace it is to hear two trumpets playing together in a small-group context. They share lovers' murmurs here, a joke there, sometimes joining for a ripe, plangent phrase. The nonagenarian demonstrates lungs, the whippersnapper sly wit (and an occasional bent for theatrics); both have a sweetly teasing way with a melody. Cheatham's talk-singing on 10 of the 14 tunes may be an acquired taste. On the continuum of singing horn players, he's probably closer to Dizzy Gillespie than to Armstrong, but listeners with generous ears will be charmed.

--By Bruce Handy