Why is Pirate Troubadour Roaming the Seas of Improvisation?”
THERE was a time when Papo Vazquez, an Afro-Puerto Rican trombonist, did not understand jazz. Blame it on John Coltrane, whose classic 1961 album, “Live at the Village Vanguard,” landed in Mr. Vazquez’s record collection when he was 14. “That was the second jazz record I ever owned,” Mr. Vazquez, 51, said at his apartment here. The first was J. J. Johnson’s “Blue Trombone.” Jimmy Purvis, a trumpeter Mr. Vazquez met in the North Philadelphia neighborhood where he grew up, had given him both albums. “That first record he gave me blew my mind,” Mr. Vazquez said. “Then he gave me Coltrane, and I put it on and I said, ‘What is this? I better start studying.’ “I had high esteem for Jimmy. He was my man, you know? I looked up to him. So I said, I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt. I’m going to understand this.” And so he did. Outside jazz circles, Mr. Vazquez — voluble, rotund and given to belly laughs and salty language — is mostly unknown. Even in Westchester, his home turf, Mr.
