John Doheny and the Professors of Pleasure strike the perfect balance between pedagogy and practice. The Tulane music school Faculty Quintet offers a rundown of several jazz styles as well as a primer in how to approach playing them. Drummer Kevin O’Day, who contributes so much in the many hats he wears on the current scene, opens the proceedings with the march time intro to Alan Matheson’s sprightly “Jackson Square,” but he’s soon swinging the beat behind saxophonist Doheny, who takes the first solo with a lighthearted tone, and Frederick Sanders on a funky piano solo. O’Day plays great accents off of Sanders’ percussive mood and behind John Dobry’s guitar solo. Jim Markway’s confident, pocket-defining bass work frees O’Day to be as creative as he likes without worrying about the rhythmic foundation of the piece. The communication between bass and drums is an object lesson on how important the rhythm section is to the success of a jazz quintet, even though the rest of the players get the lion’s share of the solo spots. 

Each member of the group except O’Day has a composition on the set, with Dobry contributing two songs—“Padrino,” a hard bop set piece with a memorable theme and a spectacular multi-chorus climax of a drum solo from O’Day; and the stately ballad “Your Majesty.” Doheny wasn’t kidding when he titled his hard grooving R&B tune “A Greasy One,” turning to Sanders’ B3 organ for some oleaginous support. Markway’s “Halifax” is a strutting funk turnaround with a Monk-ish theme, an interesting change of pace with Markway driving the stop time beat on electric bass and Sanders wailing on electric piano. Sanders offers the anthemic “Big G’s Love,” a gorgeous funk fusion theme reminiscent of the Crusaders. 

The key to this album’s listenability is the sheer joy these highly qualified players brought to the studio. Unlike the snore-a-thon recordings offered by more tendentious jazz educators, these guys never sound bored of their own lessons.