Contrafacts, as the New York state born 61-year-old baritone saxophone icon Gary Smulyan explains on his website, are when chord progressions are shared with other compositions. 

      Although rare these days, more or less standard practice as a tool in the first 20 years during and after bebop in the 1940s and 1950s and played still with love and skill by those who can, not only because contrafacts are extremely difficult to compose and remember, they require encyclopaedic harmonic and a certain scholarly knowledge however acquired of the song plus, in this piano-less instance, a damn good double bassist.

     The wittily titled Alternative Contrafacts just released on the Danish SteepleChase label sounds on paper worth your time. 

     Bassist David Wong and drummer Rodney Green are on the record with Smulyan, which was laid down in April last year and bookended by Mal Waldron and Coleman Hawkins pieces. 

     Less of a Spanish inquisition although the Smulyan chief weapon is of course “surprise... and fear...” this sounds like a pleasurable listening experience to seek out. Label site and playing samples.