Album of the Week, March 22, 2025
It’s a little unfair to judge any artist by one album, and we picked an atypical one to start with for Wynton Marsalis. As I said of Hot House Flowers, “there might be a pretty good quintet performance here, if we could just get the orchestra out of the way.” Black Codes (from the Underground) gives us that, and more—a sharply modern small group record consisting almost entirely of Marsalis’s compositions, pointed (at least in title) at forces that Marsalis saw as keeping black Americans down.
The band had some familiar faces in it—literally familiar, with the return of Wynton’s older brother Branford on tenor and soprano saxophone, and figuratively with Jeff “Tain” Watts behind the drums, Kenny Kirkland at the piano, and Ron Carter joining for one number. For the rest of the session, 18-year-old bass prodigy Charnett Moffett anchored the bottom end of the rhythm section. Moffett, a Philadelphia-born prodigy, joined his family’s band at age 8 for a tour of the Far East and at age 16 appeared on Branford’s solo debut, 1983’s Scenes in the City.
The point of departure for the sound of the album appears to have been the harmonic palette of Miles’ second quintet. Indeed, in the lengthy, all-caps liner notes by Stanley Crouch, we learn that Wynton had been listening to a lot of Wayne Shorter compositions: “In every era you have composers who stand out and who set up directions. Ellington and Strayhorn tower over everybody. Then you have Monk. Then Wayne Shorter. Right now, it is easy to see that Wayne took the music in a fresh direction because of his organic conception of the interaction of melody, harmony, and rhythm. … . Wayne Shorter knows harmony perfectly and, just like Monk, every note and every chord, every rhythm, every accent–each of them is there for a good reason.”
High praise, indeed, given that for much of Wynton’s professional life Shorter had been anchoring the most storied jazz fusion group around and had been engaging in the sort of “pressure of commercialism” that in Crouch’s mind reduced musicians to Roland Kirk’s “volunteered slavery.” Nevertheless, the Shorter influence is present throughout the album, alongside the inimitable stamp of the approaches of each of the musicians in the band.
“Black Codes” starts us off with a driving energy in 12/8 from the rhythm section, with Kirkland splashing Monk-like harmonies under the horns. Wynton and Branford play the opening melody in a frantic harmony, teasing a little rubato before shifting to a secondary theme. When Wynton comes in for his solo it’s with a high, piercing tone, accompanied by explosive blows in the drums. Wynton swings over Kirkland’s insistent, impeccably placed chords. His improvisation takes the form of long runs that bristle with unexpected flourishes at the corners. As Tain settles down we start to hear Moffett, who consistently digs at the action, leaning in with a dominant tone up to the tonic by way of the subtonic, repeatedly urging the action forward. When Branford comes in, by contrast, Kenny gives more space in the accompaniment to underscore his soprano lines, which tend to perch above the harmonies rather than dart among them like Wynton’s work. Kenny responds to the patterns in Branford’s solos with stabs of light, and takes a solo following the saxophonist’s recapitulation of the melody. There’s a huge bag of tricks at the pianist’s command—Hancock-like runs over left hand block chords, dancing moments of Jelly Roll Morton-inspired rhythms, moments of classical sonata, Stravinskyesque harmonics—and we hear them all here in a single absorbing conception. The band reprises the melody one more time, hits that rubato… and melts, glissandoing down a half step, as though slumping in defeat against the insistently oppressive codes. But there’s a pickup from the bass and the sound of the trumpet, echoing from the far side of the room, as if leading us out to another place.
“For Wee Folks” might just be that destination. Opening with the sounds of a ballad, the band changes direction into a minor swing that calls to mind Coltrane’s “Crescent.” Wynton and Branford take us back out of time, though, out of the swing and back into the ballad, before Branford takes a solo over the swing. Here he plays it safe on the lower end of the soprano sax, unspooling melodic lines that call to mind Wayne Shorter’s sound on In A Silent Way, but crucially minus the intensity of that masterpiece. Wynton plays tenderly, using rhythmic variation to take the same melodic directions into a more intense expression, before passing to Kirkland. Here the pianist uses some of that classical expressionism, alternating long lines with block chords that alternate between the right and left hand and pivoting through a long trill into a quietly meditative statement. Underneath it, Tain and Moffett keep everything on a simmer, with occasional pops of cymbal and tom from the drummer to signal the roiling energy kept just beneath the surface.
“Delfeayo’s Dilemma,” named for a younger Marsalis brother (#4 of 6, and the third of four to go into the family business as a trombonist and composer), begins with Branford and Wynton duetting in close harmony, exchanging runs with Kirkland on the piano. There’s more than a bit in the head melody that sounds like it was borrowed from Wayne Shorter, perhaps a faster track from Speak No Evil. But where that album’s Freddie Hubbard would have unleashed a piercingly pure glissade of notes in his solo, Wynton adopts a softer tone through his Harmon mute. The glissade is there, though, along with some off-beat asides. When Branford’s solo comes, it’s right in line with his brother’s approach, albeit with a greater use of sustained notes that heighten the suspensions and keep the energy moving forward. Kirkland, Tain and Moffett continually stoke the fires beneath, and when the trio moves forward into their solo moment it’s to a dazzling display of chromatic motion. When the horns return to the head once more it feels like the recap of Miles’s “Agitation,” albeit without the dizzying virtuosity of Tony Williams’s drums.
“Phryzzinian Men,” true to its name, gives us a melody in the Phrygian mode. The band’s energy seems to flow directly from “Delfeayo’s Dilemma” but gives us a more upbeat group energy, especially in Branford’s solo, which seems to play around the edges of the changes, giving a flavor of Wayne Shorter’s “Yes or No” melody. Kenny Kirkland gets the last word, repeating the striking modal broken arpeggio from the beginning into the fade-out into the next track.
“Aural Oasis,” one of the few songs on this album in a ballad tempo, opens in the same key as “Phryzzinian Men.” But this track sees Wynton and Branford exchange phrases in a wistful minor key over the piano, declaiming from minor into a hopeful major. Branford’s solo in particular is a standout, rooted in some of the chromatic joy of Shorter but with his own voice emerging through emotional intensity. This is one of Kirkland’s quiet moments, in a way that seems deliberately reminiscent of Shorter’s “Iris”—it’s even in the same key. But the band’s attentiveness to the music, their use of space—especially in Ron Carter’s bass line—and the emotive core of both brothers’ playing, lifts this above mere pastiche into a true highlight of the album.
“Chambers of Tain” takes us back to where we began, with a frantic opening that seems to recapitulate the opening “Black Codes.” But the Kirkland-penned tune gives Wynton the floor right away, and the trumpeter shows where he was pointing at the end of the opener—into a solo that blends swing, blues, and that impeccable technique into a statement of freedom. Branford’s solo seems contrarian, starting in a different mode but then soaring out of it when the key changes into a moment of affirmation. Underneath it Kirkland repeats the same pattern over and over again, leaving it to Tain and Moffett to drive the energy through continuous improvisation on the drums and bass. When Kenny takes a solo we get both the simultaneous rhythmic and chromatic improvisation and some thrilling frontal assaults on the chords, before Tain takes the final solo to drive things home into the final recap.
Black Codes (From the Underground) showed that Wynton not only had serious chops, he had something to say, and his band was uniquely positioned to help him say it. But that band wouldn’t be with him for very long. Several of them were already crossing over to more pop-oriented pursuits, joining up with alums from Miles’ band and Weather Report to support a newly minted solo artist who was ready to trade his old artistic direction for something more in line with his jazz roots. In fact, when they made the first recording with that artist, Wynton fired them from the band. We’ll hear that first recording, finally, next week.
You can listen to this week’s album here: