Three Little Bops is a 1957 Looney Tunes cartoon directed by Friz Freleng, with voices by Stan Freberg and music by jazz composer/trumpeter Shorty Rogers. It is a takeoff on The Three Little Pigs, told as a hip, jazzy musical.
I discovered an amazing track entitled Trapped in a Dream by jazz trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire. In this article on San Francisco Bay Area jazz musicians, David Rubien writes:
Akinmusire – a graduate of Berkeley High School’s renowned jazz program with degrees from the Manhattan School of Music, the University of Southern California and the Monk Institute in Los Angeles – seems to be the most academically inclined of the bunch, but the opposite is true. He’s actually an iconoclast who’s thrived just because he’s made everyone come around to seeing things his way.
The thing that strikes me about Trapped in a Dream is how the music really suits the name of the song. While I am listening to it, I feel like I am dreaming. There are flashes of insight: at times the chords seem to be leading somewhere purposeful, but then return back to the comfort and lull of a deep dream-filled sleep. The way it ends is with a hypnotic drum sequence which suggests to me that I am soon going to wake up and face reality again.
Anyways, tonight I practiced for about half an hour on the tune Ceora. I hadn’t had a practice for almost a whole week, so for a good part of the practice I was focusing on getting some fluidity and strength back into my fingers while soloing. A few more hours and I will be getting back into things again.