Bob Dorough, Too Much Coffee Man (Blue Note)

If you’re of a certain age and you watched Saturday morning television on ABC as a youngster, you’re familiar with Bob Dorough. I would venture a guess that now and then his sprightly little ditties come to mind, say, for example, when you’re contemplating the preamble to the United States Constitution. It was Dorough who was responsible for the ever charming and popular “Schoolhouse Rock,” which recently merited a Rhino Records Boxed Set and a stage show. Too Much Coffee Man, his present collection of a dozen half-sung, half-spoken numbers is permeated with the humor and verve you would expect from the guy who made grammar and the legislative process appealing. Dorough and company (the alto saxophone of Phil Woods shines) span a variety of styles throughout, deftly moving from the late ’40s early ’50s bop idiom he came up in, to sparse ballads and even rousing Latin-inspired numbers such as “The Coffee Song,” which lyrically details the importance of the brew in Brazil (where “you date a girl and find out later she smells like a percolator”). For those of you who look to Dorough for educational purposes, advance to track 11 where he sets Webster’s Dictionary definition of love to music (“ Five, Tennis, love in tennis means no points, and you have nothing.” This is one catchy record, if not downright infectious, and I’d expect these tunes, too, to be imprinted on your brain, sidling themselves up next to “Conjunction Junction” with ease.