Amazon.comWith financial and visual help from world-renowned painter (and jazz fan) Roy Lichtenstein, alto-sax player Hayes Greenfield, his fellow musicians, and kid contributors happily transform a handful of nursery rhymes into jazz tunes. All the elements that make jazz what it is are here--spontaneity, color, texture, skewed phrasing, melody, and magic, to name a few. And the kids, who are perhaps more in tune with jazz rudiments than most adults, react with great passion and playfulness in this lively 1998 recording session. Richie Havens adds his distinctive voice to the proceedings, but vocalist Miles Griffith madly steals the show, tearing into "Blow the Man Down" like a man about to be blown down, and breathing new life into the immortal standards "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star," "This Old Man," "The Muffin Man" and others. Ranging from the sublime and beautiful to the madcap and capricious, Griffith is, as the liner notes declare, "a totally up cat"--just like the disc. Delightful and instructive. --Martin Keller