wyntonmarsalis – Jarrett House North

Wynton Marsalis, Black Codes (From the Underground)

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:

Wynton Marsalis, Hot House Flowers

Album of the Week, March 8, 2025

The good thing about being the hot young artist on a major label is that the label will sometimes throw a lot of resources at your recordings. The bad news is that’s maybe not always the best idea.

Wynton Marsalis burst out of the gates as a performer, performing with Herbie Hancock, signing a contract with Columbia Records (Miles’ home) in 1982 at the age of 20 and releasing three albums—two jazz, one classical—in the first year. In 1984, the Juilliard-trained Marsalis was the first performer in history to win Grammy awards in both jazz and classical. His technique and sound were undeniably wonderful; listening to the early recordings, you hear the soul of Louis Armstrong alongside the virtuosity of a young Freddie Hubbard.

He also had strong opinions, and wasn’t shy about sharing them. And he brought additional voices to the fight along with him. The strongest voice standing alongside him was Stanley Crouch, a one-time poet, avant-garde jazz drummer, and civil rights activist (he worked for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee) turned fiercely neo-traditionalist jazz critic. Crouch felt that jazz fusion and avant-garde were ultimately empty, even phony, artistically and called for a return to more traditional jazz values. Marsalis felt the same, ultimately setting out a sort of manifesto for jazz. To be considered jazz in his eyes, the music had to have the following: the blues, the standards, swing, tonality, harmony, craftsmanship, and “a mastery of the tradition” going back to New Orleans times. The definition left out much jazz between 1960 and 1970 and everything from the fusion era; the albums I’ve reviewed from CTI and much of Coltrane’s work would be out of scope, as (notably) would all of Miles’ work starting with Bitches Brew. Wynton may have idolized Miles, but the reverse was not true; on meeting Wynton, Miles is said to have remarked “So here’s the police…”

With that as a background, Wynton’s third album feels deliberate, a sort of provocative retrenchment into standards, strings, and beautiful melodic playing, the polar opposite of Decoy. It could very well also have been Wynton deciding to record a standards album and the studio adding strings for commercial reasons; we’ll never know. At any rate, in addition to the orchestra there’s a proper group behind Wynton on the recording, and what a group! In addition to his brother Branford on tenor and soprano saxophones, the group featured Kenny Kirkland, who had played with Miroslav Vitouš before becoming Wynton’s pianist; Jeff “Tain” Watts, an often ferociously muscular (but here restrained) drummer from Pittsburgh who had gotten his professional start on Wynton’s first album; and the redoubtable Ron Carter on bass.

But all of that aside: how does it sound? Overall it’s beautiful, but careful. Hoagy Carmichael’s “Stardust” opens with strings backing Wynton’s note-perfect solo. Ron Carter’s bass begins the verse with a simple walking figure, but accelerates into something a little more adventuresome; he’s the only one of the quartet (Branford sits this one out) to come out of the background. Mostly we’re left to a reverie.

“Lazy Afternoon,” written by Jerome Moross and John La Touche for the 1954 musical The Golden Apple, is more band-forward. Kenny Kirkland takes a solo opening, setting up Wynton’s entrance. The trumpeter chooses a Harmon mute, the same that Miles used for much of his classic recordings, and the solo sounds deliberately evocative of Miles. The mood is abruptly changed by the swelling of the strings, who signal a change to a different space. Wynton plays a phrase or two on the unmuted trumpet, setting up Branford for a solo on the tenor which is considerably less pyrotechnic but more evocative than the work he did on Decoy. Ron Carter underscores the second verse with gravely chosen notes accented with slides and vibrato, descending to the lowest tonic as the strings reenter with a chromatic climax. The coda has Wynton playing pointillistic passages over a single harmonic from a plucked bass string. It’s among the more successful tunes on the session overall.

J. Fred Coots and Sam Lewis’s “For All We Know” gives us something roughly in between “Stardust” and “Lazy Afternoon.” There’s almost a duet between Wynton and Ron Carter being played out against the background of the orchestra. The string arrangement feels deliberate throughout, as though walking on eggshells in the adagio tempo, until suddenly Wynton and Carter break into a swing rhythm two-thirds of the way through, giving the tune sudden life. The strings try to get the last word, swooning into a major-key finish, but a portamento plucked note from Carter and a modal riff from Wynton close things out.

Leigh Harline and Ned Washington’s “When You Wish Upon a Star” is a welcome surprise: an uptempo introduction in the bass and drums, Tain finally given a little room which he uses to underpin the melody with massive snare hits and cymbal accents, and Carter providing a pedal point on the dominant and its octave. We’re not out of the lugubrious yet though, as the orchestra drags things down to a rubato with each entrance. On the third one, Wynton uses it as a way to switch to a hard-swung tempo that the strings punctuate rather than swamp. Branford takes a tenor solo that points up the rhythm, then swings into the strings and a sort of trading eights between the horns and Kenny Kirkland. If this kept on the same sort of boil as the opening it would be exhilarating, but the temperature cools down past a simmer as the musicians bring the work to a close. I’d love to hear a small-group reworking of this arrangement minus the strings and the rubato; the opening bars show just how much this particular group could cook when given the chance.

“Django” gets the same lento opening tempo as in the classic Modern Jazz Quartet version, but with just strings backing up Wynton’s introduction we don’t get the rhythmic imperative that drives the John Lewis classic until Carter, Kirkland and Tain swing into the verse. The band points up a tango-like rhythm under the solo, driving it forward to a climax and then a final orchestral swoon. Wynton gets the last word, as always, playing a tart tag.

Duke Ellington’s “Melancholia,” first recorded in a trio on his 1953 recording The Duke Plays Ellington, gets a muted introduction from Wynton leading into a rubato string section. There’s not much special going on here aside from some nice playing from Wynton throughout. “Hot House Flowers,” the sole original here, seems doomed to the same fate. There’s an orchestral swoon that’s interrupted by a series of puckish outbursts from the trumpet and drums, but we seem firmly stuck in low gear until about a minute and a half in when things get interesting. Carter and Kirkland propose a circling rhythmic figure that drives us forward to a bracing flute solo from Kent Jordan. Carter then takes a solo of his own, playing against the rhythm with a series of sallies, that circles to a conclusion with a final sting from the orchestra. As a composition from a 23 year old it’s highly promising start, and one wishes for more of it on this album.

“I’m Confessin’ (That I Love You)” starts with an orchestral jog into a swinging solo from Marsalis. Here the orchestra functions less as a blanket and more as a punctuation, with both Kirkland and Tain underscoring the melody. Wynton concludes his solo with a high stretto, leading into a solo for Kirkland. Kenny’s style is instantly recognizable, with block chords and runs in the right hand that give a percussive emphasis to the chord progressions while also making them more interesting with swerves into minor, blues, and modal moments. Branford takes a straightforward solo that swings its way around the melody before taking a run of off-beat hits. The band plays an intricate 12/8 interlude and then swings to the finish, with Wynton playing a 16-bar passage in triplets without a breath, and finishing with a run of deliberately breathless leading notes leaning into the submediant (6th) over Carter’s final pizzicato.

Hot House Flowers is a frustrating album. One can’t help but think there’s a pretty good quintet performance here, if we could just get the orchestra out of the way. But it’s not a bad way to hear why Wynton was both praised—that trumpet tone is extraordinary—and derided for what is ultimately an extremely buttoned-up sound. He would record far better records, and we’ll hear them soon. We’re going to give Miles one more word first, though.

You can listen to this week’s album here:

Herbie Hancock, Herbie Hancock Quartet

Album of the Week, November 9, 2024

In 1981, Herbie Hancock was still touring with the V.S.O.P. band—well, most of them. For a tour of Japan in July 1981, neither Freddie Hubbard nor Wayne Shorter were available. So for this record Herbie, Ron Carter and Tony Williams were joined by Herbie’s labelmate, a rising star of a trumpeter named Wynton Marsalis.

Wynton was born in New Orleans into a musical family. His father, Ellis Marsalis, was a pianist and music teacher who named Wynton after Miles’ former pianist Wynton Kelly. There was something in the water at the Marsalis household; Wynton’s older brother Branford became a jazz saxophonist (from whom we’ll hear more later), and his younger brothers Delfeayo and Jason played trombone and drums respectively. Supposedly, a six-year-old Wynton was at a table together with Clark Terry, Al Hirt and Miles Davis, when his father joked that the boy should have a trumpet too. Wynton went to school in New Orleans, became one of the youngest musicians admitted to the Tanglewood Music Center at age 17, and attended Juilliard.

From the beginning, Wynton’s technique was pristine; he could execute the crisp runs required for Baroque trumpet music as well as the post-bop jazz concepts that were part of his heritage from his father. This led to an interesting beginning to his career, where Sony marketed him as both a jazz and a classical artist. (We had a record featuring his performance of a Haydn trumpet concert in my house when I was growing up.)

Wynton’s technique is on full display on the opening track, a cover of Thelonious Monk’s “Well, You Needn’t.” (The blend of standards and Hancock compositions on the record leads me to imagine the musicians in the studio, trying to work out what Wynton could play from Herbie’s repertoire.) The arrangement is the one Miles’ first quintet played; the tempo is accelerated beyond even the faster tempos that he favored with the second quintet; and Wynton is on fire throughout, tossing off pristine runs and playing a series of sixth and seventh jumps precisely and almost casually. It sounds as though the band takes Wynton’s prowess as a challenge, with Williams especially laying down some fiery fills. Herbie responds to Wynton’s improvisations, but by the end the two musicians seem almost to be contending as Herbie goes into something of a Latin riff and Wynton throws off high descending glissandi. At the end Wynton stops time for a moment with a cadenza that, surprisingly, resolves into a blues ending.

“Round Midnight” is also given in the Miles arrangement (which leverages Dizzy Gillespie’s introduction to the tune), and Wynton channels the elder trumpeter, playing with a Harmon mute and generally playing it cool, except for a few tossed off glissandi. Herbie plays some abstract runs, and seems to try to move things along, but Wynton returns for a second run at the intro. His high trumpet part soars above Williams’ thunderous drums, though it lacks some of the urgency of Miles’ version. Herbie takes the solo, keeping it firmly in the second quartet’s idiom, with chromatic sweeps of chords driving through.

Tony Williams’ “Clear Ways” opens with a duet between Wynton and Carter, with the rest of the quartet joining soon thereafter. It’s a brisk number that wouldn’t have been out of place on E.S.P., with the opening Herbie solo featuring some Keith Jarrett-esque vocalizing in the background. Wynton’s solo is quick, crisp and pointed, and displays one of his limitations at this early stage of his career: while he is precise and fast in his improvised runs, he is innovating melodically but not improvising rhythmically. Carter’s solo, opening and closing with bold glissandos from the lowest string, similarly moves along with a sense of rhythmic inevitability without being at all predicable melodically.

“A Quick Sketch” is one of two Ron Carter compositions on the album, and is a completely different mood and color. More of a blues-flavored tune until Herbie and Wynton enter with descending chromatic scales, the tune is the longest one on the album and begins with an extended melodic introduction, followed by Wynton’s solo. Here he stretches out more, displaying greater rhythmic fluidity as Carter improvises on the repeated ground of the tune. Carter takes a solo on his own tune, and Wynton wraps up with a series of suspended notes that circle the tonic without ever landing there, at one point breaking into a quotation from Ted Grouya’s “Flamingo.”

“The Eye of the Hurricane” is the one Herbie Hancock work to repeat between the V.S.O.P. albums and Quartet. Wynton leads with another accelerated series of runs, but this time interrupts the string of sixteenth notes with other rhythmic patterns. The solo is oddly static, in that, while it is very busy, it ultimately seems to do nothing so much as circle around the central chord. Herbie’s solo builds in menace as it accelerates up until the “eye,” Tony Williams’ drum break, is upon the band.

“Parade” is the other Carter composition, and is restrained by contrast, opening with Herbie playing the tune as a free ballad. At about 2:30, the group enters, swinging into a gentle samba. Wynton plays a fiery solo atop the groove, urging the group forward, only to have it return to a reverie until the very end, where Williams and Carter pick up the double-time melody that Wynton began.

Herbie’s “The Sorcerer,” from the Miles album of the same name, is given a reading of similar intensity to “The Eye of the Hurricane.” At the end of his solo, Wynton plays a chromatic descending scale which Herbie picks up and makes the foundation for the opening of his solo; Ron Carter picks up on the same pattern, performing it in portamento.

“Pee Wee,” a Tony Williams composition also found on Sorcerer, here gets a sleepy reading courtesy of Wynton’s muted playing, contrasting Herbie’s surging piano. Wynton plays the tune an octave up from its original performance by Wayne Shorter, and the result loses some of the quiet urgency of the original performance. The contrast with Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn’s “I Fall in Love Too Easily,” the only tune on the album from the Great American Songbook, is strong; together Herbie and Wynton play an emotionally rich rendition of the ballad to close out the set, in a reading reminiscent of Miles’ approach to “My Funny Valentine.” Herbie’s coda, in a different tonality entirely, underscores the somber brevity of Cahn’s lyric, bringing the album to a close in a very different place from where it started.

After this album, Herbie and Wynton’s paths diverged. The same sessions that produced Quartet also produced Wynton’s debut album, where he and Herbie’s trio were joined by Wynton’s brother Branford on saxophone, as well as other musicians. Herbie spent most of the 1980s following a very different direction; we’ll get a peek of that next time.

You can listen to this week’s album here:

Old mix: the blue groove of twilight

One of the things that happened when I got to the University of Virginia was that I began to branch out in my musical tastes—or, maybe more precisely, I began to explore each of the branches I had already grown to like. In this case, it was jazz, and while I had made mix tapes containing jazz music before, this was the first to be (almost) entirely devoted to jazz.

I found my way into jazz from Sting, whose band in the mid to late 1980s was made up of jazz musicians; from summer concerts at Fort Monroe; and from my mom’s record collection. She had some Ahmad Jamal and Dave Brubeck and Ramsey Lewis—nothing too outré but enough to convince me that I wanted to listen to more. I also knew, from U2, that I ought to listen to John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. I didn’t really know anyone else who listened to jazz, so I had to find my own way in.

Because I liked to read liner notes, I found myself drawn to the Original Jazz Classics reissue series of classic jazz albums on CD when I was at UVA. There was so much context on the back of those albums! You could see who the players were, read reviews, and more without even opening the album. That’s how I started to dig back into some of the great ’50s and ’60s recordings. I also picked up the threads of Sting’s band, listening to Branford, then Wynton, then Wynton’s band and Kenny Kirkland.

Because I have never been able to focus exclusively, a couple of jazz-adjacent tracks snuck onto this mix. Most notably, “Escalay” from the Kronos Quartet Pieces of Africa appears. While this is nominally a classical or world music track, it has enough in common with the works around it—a strong rhythmic foundation, a modal scale, an improvised solo—to fit in nicely. The other, Robert Johnson’s “Love in Vain,” was added to provide an anchor point for some of the other explorations of blues through the jazz idiom on Side 2. And I couldn’t figure out how to end the mix, so I dropped some Paul Simon and Ladysmith Black Mambazo in; it fits better than you’d think because of the vocal improvisation and the general mood.

For the actual jazz tracks, there’s a pretty good range of stuff. Of course we touch on Kind of Blue, but there’s also Coltrane’s Sound and Ellington Indigos. I really like the tracks from Marcus Roberts, the pianist and composer who was the nucleus of Wynton Marsalis’s late-1980s/early-1990s band. And there are a couple of nice sets on the second side, with the early jazz workouts of Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker and Sonny Rollins contrasting with the more abstract work of Branford Marsalis, Ornette Coleman and Kenny Kirkland.

Brother Veal – Wynton Marsalis Septet (Blue Interlude)
Nebuchadnezzar – Marcus Roberts (Deep In The Shed)
Central Park West – John Coltrane (Coltrane’s Sound)
Escalay – Kronos Quartet (Pieces of Africa)
All Blues – Miles Davis (Kind of Blue)
All the Things You Are – Duke Ellington (Ellington Indigos)
As Serenity Approaches – Marcus Roberts (As Serenity Approaches)
The Jitterbug Waltz – Marcus Roberts (As Serenity Approaches)
Love In Vain Blues (Alternate Take) – Robert Johnson (The Complete Recordings)
Perdido Street Blues – Louis Armstrong (Louis Armstrong Of New Orleans)
My Melancholy Baby [Alternate Take] – Dizzy Gillespie & Charlie Parker (Bird And Diz (+3))
Paradox – Sonny Rollins (Worktime)
Willow Weep For Me – Duke Ellington (Ellington Indigos)
The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born – Branford Marsalis Trio (The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born)
Simpatico – Misterioso – Howard Shore/Ornette Coleman (Naked Lunch)
Chance – Kenny Kirkland (Kenny Kirkland)
Big Trouble In the Easy (Pedro Pops Up) – Wynton Marsalis (Tune In Tomorrow… The Original Soundtrack)
Crepuscule With Nellie (Take 6) – Thelonious Monk (Monk’s Music)
Amazing Grace – Ladysmith Black Mambazo with Paul Simon (Journey Of Dreams)

If you are an Apple Music subscriber, you can listen to (most of) the mix here: