" data-original-title="" title="">Marcus Shelby's latest big-band album, Transitions, is the evocative four-movement suite "Black Ball: The Negro Leagues and the Blues," which pays tribute to the all-black enterprises whose shining stars were barred from displaying their talents in the major baseball leagues until the great Jackie Robinson signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers and opened the floodgates in 1947.

Shelby's picturesque charts, which traverse the musical map from blues to boogie and barrelhouse to swing, deftly encompass the character and spirit of the four cities to which they are addressed: Pittsburgh, New York, Chicago and Kansas City, each of which was home to one (or more) of the teams that helped comprise the Negro Leagues, which flourished in the 1920s, '30s and into the '40s before the National and American leagues grudgingly unlatched an entryway for black players. More than that, Shelby's engaging themes stand firmly on their own as topnotch big-band jazz compositions whose thematic framework is inbred but subordinate.

"Pittsburgh," an irrepressible blues that epitomizes the city's fortitude and hard-nosed temperament, features crisp solos by trumpeter