Sweet Georgia Brown (Solution No. 3,267)

I was glad to see 26a/7d: it gives me a reason to link to one of the best jazz performances I've ever listened to.  I first heard it when I had a jazz show on the campus radio station and we got the whole set of Montreux '77 recordings from Pablo Records.  Oscar Peterson must have been the fastest of all the great piano players, and Ray Brown, one of the few people who could keep up with him, was his regular bassist.  Festival producer Norman Granz brought in Europe's fastest bassist, Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen, for this very unusual set with no drummer.

I remember the whole piece, and some of the other tunes from this series, almost 35 years after I first heard them.  A few years ago, I looked online for it so Sabers could hear what the giants can do with a bass, and was delighted to find out that not only was an mp3 available, there was video too! Unfortunately, the audio balance of the videos is muddier than the original LPs and loses some of the basses: seek the latter out if you want the best sound.

Click "play" for the pyrotechnics: these guys utterly destroy the piece.  Oscar takes it out of the starting blocks with each of the bassists accompanying in turn, then hands it off to Brown with a nod.  Even at that breakneck pace, Brown nails the rhythm precisely.  NHØP takes over and plays even faster in his solo, Oscar showing his accompanist's sense throughout, like Basie with eight times the notes.  Oscar then vamps a little to let the audience catch its breath, and then he finds another gear.  The visuals during that chorus are great: Niels is standing there astounded, Ray's grinning, and you see the strain on Oscar's face as he takes it to the absolute limit.

The last choruses are a call and response where Oscar gives each of the bassists the same accompaniment to work from, though by this point the cutting contest is over, with the only knockouts being on the piece.  Ray looks at Niels, Niels looks at Ray, and they must be saying to each other that Oscar is still the champion.  

Hey Trazom, you have a classical answer to this?  

Oscar Peterson (p), Ray Brown (b), Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen (b): "Sweet Georgia Brown," recorded at the Montreux Jazz Festival, Switzerland, 1977.   

More videos from Montreux '77

• Count Basie: Trio Blues (with Ray Brown and Jimmie Smith: listen to Benny Carter remarking at the end: "We can't follow that, Bill [Basie]!") 
• Oscar Peterson Jam: Ali and Frazier (so named after Basie likened the cutting by all the players in that piece to the blows landed in legendary boxing trilogy)

On to this week's puzzle and solution, which I didn't get quite as fast.  

Degree of difficulty (by standards of this weekly puzzle):  average. Looks hard at first, but steady work and an open mind will see you through.

Political content: 7d

Musical content: 1a, 4d (clue), 26a/7d

solution and explanations below the fold

Legend: "*" anagram; "~" sounds like; "<" letters reversed; "( )" letters inserted; "_" or lower case: letters deleted; "†" explicit in the clue, “^” first letter or letters, “{“ relocated letter or letters

Across

1a	COM(I | C OPE | R)A	I (†) + COPE (“deal with”) + powe^R^ (last letter indicated by “last vestige of”) contained in (“externally”) COMA (“blackout”)
6a	A | BET	A (†) + BET (“wager”)
9a	T(*INF)OIL	TOIL (“work”) containing (“around”) *FIN (anagram indicated by “broken”)
10a	*TAPIOCA	*I COAT PA (anagram indicated by “bizarrely”)
12a	*HEAPS	*PHASE (anagram indicated by “difficult”)
13a	F(REEL)UN | CH	REEL (“dance”) contained in (“in”) FUN (“good time”) + CH (“church”)
14a	MIG | RATED	MIG (“fighter plane”) + RATED (“assessed”) MiGs are named for Artern Mikoyan and Mikhail Gurevich, the founders of a Soviet aircraft design group.
16a	<TIDE<S	<EDIT< (“clean up”, reversal indicated by “in retrospect”) + ^S^wift (first letter indicated by “the beginning of”)
19a	A | (BY) | SS	A (†) + SS (“shortstop”) contains (“buried”) BY (“near”)
20a	AR(M)RESTS	ARRESTS (“collars”) containing (“restricting”) ^M^ovement (first letter indicated by “at first”)
22a	*DUSKINESS	*SUN-KISSED (anagram indicated by “phantasmagorical”)
25a	_PSY CH_	narcole_PSY CH_allenges (hidden word indicated by “essential aspect”)
26a	GEORGIA	See above, cross reference to 7d: BROWN Great reference!  Did you know Sweet Georgia Brown had lyrics? Look 'em up: they are so emblematic of the Roaring Twenties.
27a	*THIN | AIR	*HINT (anagram indicated by “deceptive”) + AIR (“song”)
28a	<NUTS<	<STUN< (“stagger”, reversal indicated by “back”) Not a particularly original cluing.
29a	SKIN | *N(E)R BOX	SKIN (“hide”) + E (“ecstasy”, I assume this is slang for the drug) contained in (“in”) *BRONX (anagram indicated by “bughouse”) A Skinner box is the classic psychological experiment apparatus where a rat gets food or an electric shock by pressing a lever.  Used to study conditioning behavior.

Down

1d	C | *ATCHY	^C^old (first letter indicated by “front”) + *YACHT (anagram indicated by “wrecked”)
2d	MEND | A | CITY	MEND (“improve”) + A (†) + CITY (“metropolis”)
3d	CROSS | DRESSING	CROSS (“irate”) + DRESSING (“Russian or Italian” salad dressing)
4d	PI(L)AF	PIAF (French singer Edith Piaf) containing (“embraces”) bre_L (last letter indicated by “final”)
5d	ROTTER | DAM	ROTTER (“no-goodnik”) + DAM (“mother”)
7d	BROW | N	BROW (“forehead”) + N (“northern”)
8d	TEA CHES | T	TEACHES (“instructs”) + ^T^rainees (first letter indicated by “leader”)
11d	~PULITZER PRIZE	~PULLET SURPRISE (homonym indicated by “talking”) Too clever to qualify as a groaner.
15d	<TRA< DE_MARK	<ART< (“illustration”, reversal indicated by “bring up”) + DE_n_MARK (“European nation”, omission of N indicated by “lacking new”)
17d	*DITHYRA(M)B	*BIRTHDAY (anagram indicated by “unusual”) containing ^M^usical (first letter indicated by “opening”) Huh.  I guessed the word from its intersecting letters and the (easy) wordplay, but I thought it had something to do with the poetic meter.  Turns out the dithyramb is a hymn to the god Dionysos.
18d	<_CAR | DI | GAN<	NAG (“horse”) + I’D (†) + RAC_e (omission of last letter indicated by “almost”), reversal of the whole thing indicated by “backwards”
21d	THORAX	Pun on “Thor ax”
23d	SH | OUT	SH (“be quiet”) + OUT (“scram!”)
24d	S(IT) IN	IT (†) contained in (“suppressed by”) SIN (“trespass”)