One Track Mind: "Elegy," Herbie Hancock (1994)

NICK DERISO: A trill from Herbie Hancock, moving up and down on an acoustic piano might have been surprise enough. But next comes a persistent, oh-so distinctive tapping that could only be drummer Tony Williams, and then a nimble, casually funky bass line from Ron Carter.

Like a dream made real, Miles Davis' second great group -- with Wallace Roney stepping in for the fallen trumpeter -- steps out of the shadows to pay tribute to Davis in the tune "Elegy," from 1994's "A Tribute to Miles" on Qwest.

Still ahead is a quietly insinuating signature from saxophonist Wayne Shorter and (in a mirage-like turn) Roney, the apprentice who travelled with Miles late in his career.

Hancock did a series of limited engagements with this band in the wake of Davis' 1991 death, then issued this emotional tribute as part of his 38th album three years later -- winning a third Grammy along the way. The album also included two tunes from the tour.

As much as the record is about Miles, though, this song is about Hancock. His is the first sound you hear, strolling and then walking fast. Later, Hancock moves inside and outside of Shorter and Roney's romantically insistent chorus.

The quiet determination of Hancock (who dabbled in more mainstream pop sounds with and without Davis, but keeps things firmly in the pocket here) is what moves this song -- and the whole CD, really -- from the expected meloncholy and into a memorable celebration of cool.

We find in this "Elegy" not just the expected sorrow of loss, but also the knee-slapping joy of reunion -- and a perhaps not-so surprising need to return to the comforts of convention, of more familiar keyboard jazz, of home.

For all of Hancock's popular forays into post-bop and radio-accessible, synth-driven funk music, he retains his early gift for the melodic joys of straight-ahead playing. (After all, this is a guy who, as an 11-year-old, initially performed Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 5 with the Chicago Symphony.)

And so the familiar labyrinth of rhythm so closely associated with Hancock when he played for Davis in the 1960s along side Williams (who himself died unexpectedly from a heart attack in 1997) and Carter, gives way to something so simple and yet so perfect that it becomes instantly timeless.

"One Track Mind" is a weekly drool over a single song selected on a whim and a short thesis on why you should be drooling over it, too.

Peter Frampton, "Fingerprints" (2006)

NICK DERISO: Peter Frampton's first-ever instrumental release boasts a buffet-style diversity. And by refusing to settle into easy genre work -- you just knew this would be jazz(zzzzzzzzz)y, right? -- Frampton finally distances himself completely from a certain mid-1970s double live album.

Well, almost anyway. No, familiar keyboardist Bob Mayo doesn't appear. (He actually died of a heart attack on tour some years ago.) But Stanley Sheldon, the bassist on "Frampton Comes Alive!" is here. Only -- instead of feeling like they usually do -- these two collaborate on a lilting Spanish-inflected number called "Ida Y Vuelta," or Out and Back.

Indeed. The ramshackle blues of "Cornerstones" makes perfect sense with the addition of bassist Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts, originally from the Rolling Stones. Warren Haynes of the Allman Brothers Band spices up "Blooze."

Just when you get comfy in the baby-boomer nostalgia, however, Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready stops by for two songs -- playing a vintage 1959 Les Paul Gibson, no less.

The second is an improvised piece called "Blowin' Smoke," while the first is a cover tune that's as welcome as it is unexpected -- Frampton's surprisingly muscular run (with McCready and Pearl Jam drummer Matt Cameron) through Chris Cornell's "Black Hole Sun."

In the end, even the expected jazz stuff works. British saxophonist Courtney Pine adds some punch to "Boot It Up." The Django Reinhardt-inspired "Souvenirs De Nos Pères" is, in fact, inspired.

And Frampton's tribute to jazz guitarists, "Smoky," recalls in-the-pocket classicists like Wes Montgomery more than the sleepy schlock that reformed rockers usually begin recording once they, too, get lines on their face.

The Who, "Endless Wire" (2006)

NICK DERISO: In the brilliant, circular overture of synthesizer and riff that opens 2006's "Endless Wire" we find a triumph for what's left of the Who.

"Fragment," as a tune, is everything this band should have been doing instead of slowly but surely turning itself into a too-old streetwalker with its faded party hat on crooked.

It's simulaneously familiar, yet utterly new -- an echo that doesn't repeat itself so much as deepen -- in the cracks that encircle Roger Daltrey's voice, and the slowing of Pete Townsend's ever-turning windmill -- into something like a fine wine.

So, they go and mess it up later. OK. For "Fragments," and maybe even "Fragments" alone, they can be forgiven for continuing past the untimely deaths of the entire rhythm section. But only just.

Not that there aren't moments. This album's "Black Widow's Eyes" has a kind of broken beauty familiar to anyone with "Who's Next" on vinyl. "Two Thousand Years," with soaring violins and plucky guitar, also blows through like a brisk breeze.

But the now-inevitable mini-opera, more than two decades after the last original release from this band, sounds like the thing a Who album ought to have rather than something included as inspiration. Rote, rather than right.

Skip right to the remix of "Fragments," where bits of that remarkable construction from Track 1 are blown apart then put back together again. It's a nice metaphor for what's happened to the Who -- and far guttier than anything else on the second half of the album.