Favorite Wynton Marsalis CD

[Dan Gould]

Amongst all of the Wynton Battles, there seems to be at least some agreement that one or two of his LPs are pretty good. I am betting that J Mood will get the most votes but personally I am voting for "Levee Low Moan" whose songs I have always dug a great deal. Obviously I can't list them all ...

[jazzbo]

Well, my favorites aren't on this list. After a lot of listens, I've come to really like Blood on the Fields for its book and execution. And I really enjoy The Marciac Suite.

[Dan Gould]

Sorry Lon, Blood on the Fields was on the list but got dropped when the software reminded me that the list could only have a max of 10.

[Claude]

My favourite Marsalis record is Black Codes (From the Underground)

Because it is not on the list, my vote went for J Mood, which is quite similar in style, although not as good.

[Rooster_Ties]

Just like Claude, I also voted for "J-Mood", although I probably like "Black Codes..." a little better...

I think those are the only two Wynton CD's I own (at least of his jazz material). I've sampled a few others of his, but never have found enough to like to want to purchase them (even used).

Like many others, I find Wynton's 'jazz' politics to not be in line with mine (putting it mildly), and I probably "hear" this into his recordings in such a way that I'm not very impartial, I'm afraid.

I know, others will say it's my loss. So be it - there's plenty of other music that I'm passionate about, without trying to get overly interested in something that doesn't really float my boat.

Sorry to be so negative. I usually am not that way on these boards. But I get so tired of seeing Wynton talk (seemingly on every jazz documentary ever made these days) as if he's the spokesman for all of jazz (and worse, for what isn't jazz). It'll be interesting to see if he changes his tune about the importance of Blue Note artists, now that he's on the label, since he's so rarely mentioned any of them in the past. It's like jazz doesn't exist for him past 1967 (when it comes to Miles), and not after 1960 (when it comes to anything even slightly progressive).

That whole world of Wynton's (and of his followers, meaning other musicians working in that same style) is a sound-world my ears and brain have no interest in, plain and simple. My cards are on the table...

Edited May 23, 2003 by Rooster_Ties

[John Tapscott]

My favorites, "Marciac Suite" and "Black Codes from the Underground" aren't listed. Therefore, I cast my vote for "Blue Interlude", another Wynton CD I have enjoyed over the years. Had the choice been restricted to the big band sides, I would have voted for "Big Train."

[JSngry]

Although it's been decades, literally, since I've listened to them, I remember enjoying HOT HOUSE FLOWERS (great, really intersting string writing) & BLACK CODES FROM THE UNDERGROUND (solid on all counts, imo) a reasonable amount. His first album was pretty cool too - I really dug the tunes and was willing to chalk the somewhat unformed/derivative soloing up to youth. J MOOD was the beginning of me getting turned off of Wynton. The quartet setting, and its lack of a contrasting front-line voice, called attention to what I began to see as the limitations of his playing (limitations that I had noticed in THINK OF ONE & FATHERS AND SONS (yes, I was actually INTERESTED in this guy at one time!)), and those limitations seemed increasingly to the fore with what I heard of his subsequent albums.

Couple my growing disinterest in his playing with the anger I began to feel towards him at his pompous, B.S. pronouncements in the press (they really did get worse as time went by, it seems to me), and the whole "empire building" trip that he and his cohorts got into that for me pretty much brought the organic, ongoing evolution of jazz, as it pertained to the general public's perception, to a grinding, screeching, TOTALLY UNNECESSARY halt (and even tried, successfully so in some important business sectors, to set it BACK a few decades), a move that I felt personally from both a career and an esthetic standpoint, and the result is that other than J MOOD and the Vanguard set (which got a fair amount of airplay here, and caught my attention solely for the work of Marcus Roberts), I am totally unfamiliar with any of the albums on this list, and have no desire or intention to change that, probably ever.

Sorry!

Edited May 23, 2003 by JSngry

[connoisseur series500]

No vote from me as I don't have (or no longer have) any of these cds. My favorite Wynton stuff is on the sessions where he was a sideman, such as Charles Fambrough, PROPER ANGLE.

[Rooster_Ties]

Jim said it better than I did, but I feel much the same way he does. Apart from the music (which I've heard some of, and it really doesn't do anything for me), it's also Wynton's "holier than thou" attitued that I've had it with. There are probably even a few Wynton CD's that I could honestly say I have as little interest in as Kenny G, and that's saying a lot.

For me, it's like Wynton (and his followers) operate in a world that is entirely foreign to me. It's almost like, for them, that 30 to 50 years of music history never happened. This is something that I can't explain in words very easily, but which my ears seem to understand quite well. Most of wynton's music of the last 10 years (what I've heard anyway), just just nothing for me.

That said, I did hear Wynton's recent first string quartet (At the Octoroon Balls: String Quartet No. 1), which I borrowed it from a former co-worker, and I actually found it to be fairly interesting (really!!!). And if I found it used or as a cut-out, I'm sure I'd probably buy it (money being tight for me now, I'm sure not gonna spend a bunch on any Wynton CD's, no matter how much I like 'em). But seriously, his string quartet, while not anything to call all the neighbors over to hear, it did seem like it was a little deeper than I had expected it to be.

But for me, Wynton's jazz isn't even worth it to me, even at bargin-bin prices.

Edited May 23, 2003 by Rooster_Ties

[shawn·m]

Majesty Of The Blues is my favorite.

[Rooster_Ties]

Hey Jim, which is worse?? --- Wynton, or Musicboy???

[catesta]

At least Marsalis keeps his shirt on. B)

[Alexander]

I'd also say that my favorite Wynton performances have been in sideman roles ("Lush Life", "Citizen Tain"). I'm surprised that "Black Codes" didn't make your list. It's generally thought to be his best recording as a leader.

[Rooster_Ties]

I've heard very few Wynton sideman appearences (only one or two that I can think of), but a friend of mine played me one once (I'm struggling to remember who it was by - I'll have to ask him), and it wasn't half bad. It was something recorded less than 5 years ago, and there was a sort of fire to Wynton's playing that I've never heard on his own dates.

Perhaps I need to pursue a few of his sideman dates, from what I'm hearing here.

[JSngry]

What's this string quartet thing?

(Caveat - the following is totally an opinion piece, regardless of how "factual" in tone it is presented. Just want to make that clear up front)

"We" used to talk back in the day about how Wynton would someday have to choose between classical or jazz if he ever wanted to be a "major artist" (yeah, I know...). well, it seems to me that he made the "wrong" choice, because the guy is (or was, anyway), an OUTSTANDING classical trumpeteer. Even more importantly, his whole aesthetic is cast from the "classical" mold - his ideas of tradition, "curriculum", repertoire, apprenticeship (ironic, given his comparatively breif time in that stage), playing the music as it "should be" played, playing down the significance and relevance of fresh thoughts and natural evolutions from "the street" when they come with perhaps less than total conventional technical proficiency behind them, these are all hallmarks of the CLASSICAL world, not the jazz world (at least not the one that I grew up in and around. Today, after 20 or so years of the Marsaillisian "big chill", that's a LOT more open to question...).

That's not a dis either - the classical world is built on these very foundations, has been for quite a while, and those foundations serve them well in the perpetuating of a certain era and genre of European "art" music that deserves very much to be preserved. Questions/reservations about HOW this music gets performed, whther or not the goal of value preservation has become more important than music preservation (or to what extent asuch a seperation is possible) and/or whether focusing on preservation rather than keeping the tradition alive and vibrant through focusing on newer works and developements are another matter entirely, but those are questions that many have asked about Wynton's approach to jazz as well, and show yet again how he is, at heart, a CLASSICAL musician in mindset.

For years, you heard the rallying cry that jazz was "America's Classical Music", a recognition that at its best, it was indeed "art" of the highest level, and that the music and its premier practitioneers deserved to be treated with the respect and acknowledgement inherent in such a designation. Unfortunately, this proved to be yet another case of being careful about what you ask for becasue you might just get it. I don't think that the idea in those days was to turn the music into a museum piece or an altar to be worshipped at, or to have it represent one specific and narrow set of musical and cultural values. Nor do I believe that the intent was to turn, sometimes consciously, sometimes not, the jazz musician into a "repertory player" in order for him to have a high profile career, to have "recognition" be granted for meeting preset criteria rather than for being an individual who succeeded in successfully bending those criteria to totally personal ends that still had a broader resonance . You want to know what's "wrong" with so much "straight ahead" jazz today, why it just doesn't seem to have the bite, the juice, the suck-you-in-and-not-let-you-loose quality of the older stuff, why there is SO much interest in reissues of that genre at the expense of newer releases? That's what it is - the music has become a "style", a vocabulary with strict parameters of content and execution, the goal of which is to EXECUTE within these parameters rather than to CREATE within them. A subtle, but enormous difference, if you ask me, and a concept that is TOTALLY "classical" in nature.

Is it wrong to point the finger at Wynton for this change in the winds, this paradigmatic shift in the music we love so deeply? Maybe not - maybe as the music evolved towards less traditional (ie - "European") goals in both intent and execution it was inevitable that there would be, if not exactly a backlash, a REACTION from the sizable segment of the music community, players and listeners alike, who felt uncomfortable, for any number of reasons, straying too far from "home". I mean no criticism when I say that most of America, and that includes all races and occupations, of a certain age and older approach life (and by extension, music) inculcuated with a certain fundamental outlook that is "traditional" (meaning "European" & "Judeo-Christian") at root. Regardless of how far we might stray from those values, we still view them, consciously or not, as "home", our home base, the ultimate reference point when all is said and done. Nothing at all wrong with that, that is who we are, and to our ownselves we must be true.

BUT - time marches on. New discoveries, musical, scientific, "spiritual" (this means different things to different people, but I hope there is at least a general understanding of what I mean), whatever, get made, and new cultural influxes occur in any society that is not totally isolated, willingly or otherwise. That is the very essence of life itself. As these cultural evolutions occur, "we" have the choices of either A) ignoring them (a failed proposition from the start, to one degree or another); B) looking upon them scornfully; C) acknowledging them and their legitmacy without getting into them to some (or any) degree (call it "live and let live" if you like); D) checking them out and incorporating whatever of them we find beneficial and stimulating and leaving the rest behind for those whom it DOES have use and relevancy; or E) abandoning all ties to our current selves and immersing ourselves in these new stimuli indiscrimately in hopes of finding something "new", something that will fill a void that we may or may not have felt all along and are eager to rid ourselves of at any cost.

Well, E) usually leads to faddism and trendiness, so most "mature" people don't go that route, and only the most staid individuals choose A) on a regular basis, so that leaves us with 3 methods of confronting societal evolution with some kind of awareness and interaction. For me, depending on what's on the table, C) & D) are the most sane and sensible choices if one care at all about remaining fluid in the flow of existence. But Wynton and Co. seem to prefer B), the method of scorn and active dislike. Which is an honest enough decision, and one which again fits in PERFECTLY with so much of the "Classical" mindset. I can respect those who choose that route even though I disagree with it myself - there's something to be said for having such a strong sense of identity that you don't feel the need for any input from any soure other than what you already have, a deep sense of pride and a reservoir of all kinds of strength to draw upon that is more than adequate as it is, thank you very much.

Where I get agitated is when people who make that choice go beyond preserving their own world and get into trying to stifle, destroy even, the newer worlds that are evolving as a matter of natural course all around them, and this, THIS, is what I feel that the "Marsalis Revolution" (or is that "Counter Revolution"?) has more and more come to be about - not JUST the preservation and glorification of a specific set of values (values that are actually quite valid, beautiful, and continuously relevant when stripped of any dogma), but also the suppression (perhaps even destruction) of values that come along that run counter to, or at least modify from without, those precepts held so dear by the "faithful" and the "natives". This too is very much in tune with a sizable segment of the "Classical" community - hearing tales of the battles faced when attempting to program 20th Century works by certain major orchestras, or noting the struggles of contemporary composers to get their works performed, even ONE time, informally, much less presented in a formal setting, is enough to convince me that there is a significant portion of that world that wishes nothing more than to "make it all go away", and by any means necessary, including starving/strangling/whatever the lifeblood/lifeline/whatever of those who would contribute something new.

Jazz, a sizable portion of it anyway, has indeed become "America's Classical Music", but in the WORST possible way. If Wynton himself did not actually generate this turn of events, he certainly capitalized on it, and soon assumed leadership, daringly agressive leadership at that, of the movement that grew up around it. However, time is like water- you can't stop it, you can only stall it, and the last few years have seen begun to see a break in the damn. Perhaps just a small crck as of now, but you know how THAT works. Be it the increased interest in "groove" jazz of all degrees of "progressivism", or be it the renewed interest in "free" jazz, old and new, there are signs that the moves that Wynton made to stop what he saw as "deterioration" of "traditional values" will have perhaps served no other purpose than to have him set for life in a position where he reigns over a willingly captive audience of a certain age and older, an audience that will contain fewer and fewer (but, inevitably, some) young faces as the years pass. There's a whole present and future of people who are ALL about being "fluid" (probably to the extent of being detremental, but that's an evolutionary issue that will play itself out in its own due time). The LAST thing they're interested in is venerating and preserving the past as a fixed entity - for them, the past ,present, and future are all sorta the same thing (a perspective that, although most likely actually shaped by "digital reality", is also in tune with the "everything is everything" spiritual "discoveries" that Western society has had on its plate for the last 50 or so years, even if said society has treated it like the brussell sprout that they know they're going to have to eat if they want dessert but go through any machinations necessary to put off until the point of no return arrives).

The "fact" that Wynton is so resolutely "Classical" in makeup, personally, musically, in every way, makes one wonder what would have happened if he had devoted his obvious passions and energies, as well as his undeniable technical skills, to the existing Classical world rather than using them to remake jazz in its image. Myself, I think he could have revitalized that whole scene, infused it with a distinctly "New World" perspective that it so desperately needs, and struck a blow for racial inclusiveness of potentially immeasurable significance. But it would have been a HUGE struggle, a battle of epic proportions that could have really, REALLY, taken its toll on him as a person. Nevertheless, had he survived and won (and I think he could have, had he the stomach for it), his triumph would have had the legitimacy, legitimacy of the deepest kind, that his "triumphs" in the jazz realm do not begin to have for many of us. No matter how hard, politically, socially, whichever way, Wynton had to work to get what he now has, it bears the stigma of having been "granted" by the graces of the cultural establishment rather than won against them, given TO rather than won FROM. You could say that, given the choices he's made in light of the battles he COULD have fought, that he took the easy (well, easier, anyhow) way out. That he didn't really pay all the dues that he could/should have, not in light of what his options were. That he took the path of least (ok - less) resistance when faced with reconciling his deepest, truest nature to the choices available to him, at the moment of truth that all people, especially people who aspire to be "creative" in a meaningful fashion, inevitably face sooner or later. That in the grand scheme of things, he "settled".

And that, Dear Friends, is about as ANTI-jazz as anything I can think of!

Edited May 23, 2003 by JSngry

[JSngry]

Hey Jim, which is worse?? --- Wynton, or Musicboy???

Six of one, apples and oranges of the other.

[Christiern]

I did not vote in this poll, because I could not in good conscience tag any of the listed albums as a "favorite."

Although I have found some of Wynton's recordings to be ok, none has really captured my imagination, and most have reminded me of my childhood, when we had ersatz chocolate, tea, etc. in war-ravaged Europe. It looks like the real thing, but....

[Rooster_Ties]

What's this string quartet thing?

Wynton's recent first string quartet (At the Octoroon Balls: String Quartet No. 1)

And thanks so much for that mega-long post. I post a ton here, sure, but I could only hope to provide 1/10th of the valuable insights you give us, Jim. Thanks!!!

Edited May 23, 2003 by Rooster_Ties

[Late]

I think I had five Wynton Marsalis cd's at one time. I sold them all, around 1991, to cover the cost of some Henry Threadgill discs. I haven't really missed them, but I did like Black Codes.

For those who'd be interested in hearing Wynton play "out" (well, as "out" as he'll ever likely get), check out his solo on "The Impaler" from Jeff Watts' Citizen Tain. It really is an impressive solo. Still somewhat wanting emotionally, but engaging nonetheless.

I'd love to hear Wynton in a context that would make him somewhat uncomfortable. Reason being, I think (I'd like to think) he'd push himself out of his (generally predictable) aesthetic zone. Imagine him sitting in for Dave Douglas in Masada. I think it would actually work. And John Zorn has gone on record as saying that he even likes (some of) Wynton's playing. (I doubt, in return, Wynton's ever even heard Zorn. Could be wrong, but that's my hunch.)

p.s.

Without meaning to connote anything necessarily negative, I think Joe Milazzo nailed it when he said that Wynton is the Paul Whiteman of the 21st century. I can't think of a more accurate depiction — and pithy too!

Edited May 23, 2003 by Late

[Rooster_Ties]

For those who'd be interested in hearing Wynton play "out" (well, as "out" as he'll ever likely get), check out his solo on "The Impaler" from Jeff Watts' Citizen Tain.

I think that's the cut my buddy played for me, come to think of it.

Hey, who's Paul Whiteman??? Can somebody explain the comparison??

[RDK]

The thing is, I actually have a fair number of Marsalis' albums, the result of finding bunches of them in the dollar or $2.99 bins. I'll buy just about any jazz CD for a buck or two. Also, Hot House Flowers was one of my first CDs so many years ago.

But while I find many of them interesting for various reasons, I'm hard pressed to label any of them "favorites." Heck, few if any of them are truly memorable. I dig the Monk album 'cause of its sorta weird interpretations of Monk, who's one of my favorite composers. I like Big Train because it's Ellingtonian in style and spirit. I like Village Vanguard because it was cheap. Seriously, VV is a pretty good set, though I don't revisit it often. For the others, I mostly just play them once and set them aside or give them to my father-in-law. I'm not at all impressed by Marsalis' compositions, though his playing doesn't really bother me. The problem is that there's just so much other good stuff out there. If I feel like listening to some trumpet jazz, I'm more inclined to reach for a Lee Morgan disc...

Ray

[jazzbo]

As much as I delight in Joe's insight, I don't see that comparison as apt. But anyway. . . Rooster, you really don't know who Paul Whiteman is? Do some googling. I'm not a Whiteman detractor myself, I like quite a bit of his music.

[Alexander]

Hey, who's Paul Whiteman??? Can somebody explain the comparison??

Paul Whiteman (1890-1967) was a white bandleader who's greatest popularity coincided with "The Jazz Age." He was dubbed "The King of Jazz" (he never claimed that title for himself), which has guaranteed his place as perhaps the most contraversial/reviled jazz figures of the 1920s. His band tried, in Whiteman's words, to make "a lady out of jazz" and is probably most famous for presenting the premier of Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" at New York City's Aeolian Hall in 1924. While Whiteman is usually blamed for watering down jazz for the masses, his band was a breeding ground for top notch (white) talent. Both of the Dorsey brothers passed through Whiteman's band, as did Bix Beiderbecke, Frankie Trambauer, Red Nichols, Bunny Berigan, Joe Venuti, Eddie Lang, Jack Teagarden and Bing Crosby.

I suppose Whiteman is being compared to Wynton because both men were overpraised by the press of the day, and both men are seen as presenting a diluted form of jazz. Between the two of them, I prefer Whiteman. His bands made good music, and if it wasn't as good the music black performers were making, it wasn't for a lack of talent or trying. Whiteman was an important figure in early jazz. Even if he wasn't really the "King of Jazz," he was the epitome of what F. Scott Fitzgerald dubbed "The Jazz Age."

[kdd]

Black Codes From the Underground is his best record to me and a fine record at that. There is nothing here to vote for. Can you change these things?

[Dan Gould]

Sorry, Black Codes isn't one I own so it didn't come to mind as being all that significant. I honestly thought of J Mood as the most likely to be approved.