Mal Sharpe channels Satchmo -- no joke!

Imagine my surprise when I got a phone message from Mal Sharpe, renowned and infamous man-on-the-street prank interviewer, thanking me for playing a track from his band's new CD, Firecracker Baby, on my KPFA radio show.

The song was "Joe Louis Stomp," a tune composed and first recorded by trumpeter Bill Coleman in the 1930s. Sharpe wrote his own words for the song, and after fine solos by Leon Oakley on cornet and Dwayne Ramsey on clarinet, in his affable voice Sharpe runs through an account of the legendary boxer's knockouts ("Joe Louis in one, Joe Louis in two ...") and slips in a pivotal bridge: "Friday night fights were my childhood delights."

I worked the song into a set for two reasons: It reminded me of the Count Basie recording of Buddy Johnson's "Did You See Jackie Robinson Hit That Ball?" And it took me back to a time when our family would gather around the black and white TV on Friday nights and watch the Gillette Blue Blades–sponsored bouts.

""Holy mackerel! That's the first time I've ever had a lyric on the air," enthused Sharpe, best known to some for his mercurial and notorious comic partnership with Jim Coyle in the early 1960s, to others for his Sunday night radio show on Jazz 91, KCSM, 91.1 FM.

But Sharpe's also no slouch on the trombone he plays when he leads his sardonically monikered Big Money in Jazz, whose new CD takes its title from a nickname Louis Armstrong says he earned for being born on the 4th of July.

Recorded live at Yoshi's in Oakland on the 4th of July, 2007, and paying homage to Satchmo in the repertoire and between-song stage patter, the swinging trad-jazz collection features pianist Si Perkoff, soprano saxophonist Richard Hadlock, bassist Marty Eggers, drummer Carmen Cansino, guitarist Clint Baker, the Dynamic Miss Faye Carol on vocals, guests Roger Glenn (flute) and John Coppola (trumpet) and a host of cameo appearances by Bay Area stalwarts.

This 4th of July/Louis Armstrong weekend, Big Money in Jazz celebrates the release of Firecracker Baby with a "Coast to Coast" CD release party that starts in San Francisco at the Savoy-Tivoli and wraps up across the Golden Gate Bridge in Sausalito at the No Name — perfect musical accompaniment for "Struttin' with Some [Independence Day] Barbecue."