Groovy and gospelish, jam-packed with full-blooded, thick tenor-titan sax runs and equally worthy caramel-lined soprano blasts backed by ticklish Fender Rhodes bolts and silken degrees of soulful guitars. Nope, I’m not talking about John Legend or Ty Tribett. Instead, it’s John Ellis I’m on about, an easy greasy saxophonist with the post-Bop heaviness of Dexter Gordon in his deep-down as well as some Fathead Newman in his up-tucked axe’s tempos. He’s dirty but not muddy, smoky but not charred. After spending mucho time within the acid-reflux-jazz of the Charlie Hunter Trio, Ellis is on his own slowly shuffling good foot with One Foot in the Swamp, an album of jivey rhythm-and-reds best reflected on the Sanford-and-sunny “Happy” and the N’orleans-ese “Sippin’Cider.” With Wulrlitzer/Rhodes rubber Aaron Goldberg and a host of other notables (Nicholas Payton, John Scofield, chromatic harmonicat Gregoire Maret and Jason Marsalis, Ellis’ live drummer), Ellis turns Swamp slow and preachy (“Work in Progress”), spacey and rhythmically askew (“Bonus Round”) and tango-bossa calm (“Ostinato”) without varying from his own horns’ density dynamics or dance-ability.

--A.D. Amorosi