INTERVIEW/PROFILE: 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.”...

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