Wynton Marsalis on "Cherokee"

[Christiern]

Well, I know I'm in the distinct minority here, but my reaction is that if it was anyone else BUT Wynton playing that solo, we'd all be talking about what a great solo it is and what great chops the guy has!

What I heard is what I heard, and the player's name had nothing to do with how I heard it. It never ceases to amaze me how the honest opinions of others so often get rationalized by those who disagree with them. I listen to C-Span's call-in program, Washington Journal, every morning. They have Republican, Independent and Democratic lines. In recent times, many who call in on the Rep line criticize the Bush regime and there is always at least one person who accuses them of being a Democrat "pretending" to be a Republican.

I have often been critical of Wynton's performances and you'd be surprised (well, perhaps not) to hear how many times that is labeled as "jealousy" (I want his LC job) or somthing else, equally ludicrous. Why can't people just acknowledge the fact that Wynton might not actually be playing well?

The "Cherokee" clip is not by any stretch of the musical imagination a "great" solo—it simply isn't. Chops? Sure, he has chops, but some players have both chops and imagination, and good taste. These players are known to actually play great solos when the moon is right and the ambiance conducive. I have hear Wynton play good solos, but never a great one, and, somehow, one expects more from the cat's meow.

[Lazaro Vega]

During a recent Jeremy Pelt "Before and After" he pointed to Clark Terry's solo on "In A Mist" from the "Happy Horns of Clark Terry" as being one of the key places Wynton comes from.

When the WM Quartet played Grand Rapids right after that Blue Note Quartet album was issued, the one with "Free to Be" on it, he played "Cherokee" and used a long verbatim quotation of Clifford Brown's solo on "Cherokee" as the "head" on the end of the tune.

Edited January 11, 2009 by Lazaro Vega

[Late]

Well, I know I'm in the distinct minority here, but my reaction is that if it was anyone else BUT Wynton playing that solo, we'd all be talking about what a great solo it is and what great chops the guy has!

I understand where you're coming from. I think the idea that inspired this thread was actually a question of perception — or, in other words, how much, knowingly or unknowingly, do we let our biases color our reception, and following interpretation, of something creative.

An example: I'm not a fan of Allen Ginsberg's poetry. If a friend were to give me a few sheets of paper and say, "Here's an Allen Ginsberg poem I thought was interesting — check it out," my initial reaction would likely be disinterest. But what if the friend said this, and then gave me a poem by an author I really care about? How quickly would I be able to recognize the poem as something that works for me? Or, because it's allegedly Ginsberg, would I just read it sloppily, and maintain my bias?

I'm not arguing that Wynton's solo on Cherokee is great. I don't think it is — or rather, I think it's great technically, but not emotionally. But what if a trumpet player that's generally in favor here were to play the same solo? Would it receive the same criticism?

[Larry Kart]

I'm not arguing that Wynton's solo on Cherokee is great. I don't think it is — or rather, I think it's great technically, but not emotionally. But what if a trumpet player that's generally in favor here were to play the same solo? Would it receive the same criticism?

No doubt it depends on how honestly the person on the receiving end listens to music, but as several of us have said on this thread, the simple, honest answer (and we do tend to be honest about our musical tastes; otherwise, why bother to spend time at a place like this?) is: "Yes, it would receive the same criticism." Do you not believe us?

Also, your question omits the fairly obvious factor that would render your implicit false labeling test an impossible-to-mount abstraction. If one were told that any number of trumpet players one admires were playing this solo, the first and probably the only question that would arise would be: "Why the heck does so-and-so sound like this? He never did before."

[Lazaro Vega]

And, of course, there are many other Cherokee solos to compare it to. I mean Diz on "Koko" with Bird live...who is ever going to top that? Brownie's solo with the Max Roach quintet, a staple of young musicians. There comes a point where there are the classics and then there's everything else, which approach the classics yet rarely surpass them.

And for what it is worth I heard Bowie playing a full evening of standards after a Chicago Jazz Festival appearance with the Brass Fantasy. He was on for two full sets at the Southend Music Works. Everyone was playing changes. His creativity in that setting -- he was still Bowie, all in -- encompassed more of the the totality of the trumpet tradition than just about anyone I've heard since. Not sequentially a la homage, but creatively, emotionally, melodically and without much self consciousness. As they used to say, he was natural.

[JSngry]

I'm not arguing that Wynton's solo on Cherokee is great. I don't think it is — or rather, I think it's great technically, but not emotionally. But what if a trumpet player that's generally in favor here were to play the same solo? Would it receive the same criticism?

No doubt it depends on how honestly the person on the receiving end listens to music, but as several of us have said on this thread, the simple, honest answer (and we do tend to be honest about our musical tastes; otherwise, why bother to spend time at a place like this?) is: "Yes, it would receive the same criticism." Do you not believe us?

Also, your question omits the fairly obvious factor that would render your implicit false labeling test an impossible-to-mount abstraction. If one were told that any number of trumpet players one admires were playing this solo, the first and probably the only question that would arise would be: "Why the heck does so-and-so sound like this? He never did before."

Well, ok, my answer is that it would probably not receive the exact response. I mean, if you played that audio for me and told me it was, say, Booker Little, I'd cut it some slack because Booker Little has a well/hard-earned reservoir of musical/spiritual/all the things he are goodwill that Wynton simply has not earned/established. So, no, I would not have the immediate sense of off-putting that I do with Wynton. But - along Larry's lines (and thanks for sharing, dude!) I would also not consider it to be one of Booker Little's finer moments either, and would surely say so right off the bat. Because it's not a sterling example of the improvisatory art, it just isn't. Not even close.

What you're dealing with here is the judging of friends vs non-friends. Friends get slack in the face of their fuckups because we know that on the whole, they are better than those lapses. Non-friends don't simply because A) Life is short and you gotta go with what you get and/or B)The individual in question is a non-friend because they have proven themselves to on the whole not be better than their lapses.

Does this amount to a double standard of sorts? Well, maybe, but I'm of the mind that if we allowed ourselves total objectivity in every aspect of life we'd never really become anything other than a camera that records activity and does nothing with/about it. If you want to have a life, you gotta form relationships, and in order to form relationships, you gotta make judgments. Hopefully those judgments don't get too random, or too severe, or too anything, but hey, really, "objectivity" is on the whole something to be talked about in the abstract much more than lived in the concrete, at least when it comes to people.

[Larry Kart]

What you're dealing with here is the judging of friends vs non-friends. Friends get slack in the face of their fuckups because we know that on the whole, they are better than those lapses. Non-friends don't simply because A) Life is short and you gotta go with what you get and/or B)The individual in question is a non-friend because they have proven themselves to on the whole not be better than their lapses.

Does this amount to a double standard of sorts? Well, maybe, but I'm of the mind that if we allowed ourselves total objectivity in every aspect of life we'd never really become anything other than a camera that records activity and does nothing with/about it. If you want to have a life, you gotta form relationships, and in order to form relationships, you gotta make judgments. Hopefully those judgments don't get too random, or too severe, or too anything, but hey, really, "objectivity" is on the whole something to be talked about in the abstract much more than lived in the concrete, at least when it comes to people.

Well, yes, but I still say that if a friend of yours came up to you with his hair dyed green and a nail stuck through his tongue, your first reaction would not be to judge those choices on aesthetic grounds and maybe cut him some slack because he's your friend but to wonder what the heck was going on here (unless that's how your friend looks normally). Play Wynton's "Cherokee" and tell me that it's Booker Little or Lee Morgan, and I'm thinking, "What happened [to them]?" I'd feel the same if you picked, say, a really good Bobby Hackett solo and told me that the player was Little or Morgan -- "What happened?" Your friends are your friends in part because you know who they are.

[JSngry]

What you're dealing with here is the judging of friends vs non-friends. Friends get slack in the face of their fuckups because we know that on the whole, they are better than those lapses. Non-friends don't simply because A) Life is short and you gotta go with what you get and/or B)The individual in question is a non-friend because they have proven themselves to on the whole not be better than their lapses.

Does this amount to a double standard of sorts? Well, maybe, but I'm of the mind that if we allowed ourselves total objectivity in every aspect of life we'd never really become anything other than a camera that records activity and does nothing with/about it. If you want to have a life, you gotta form relationships, and in order to form relationships, you gotta make judgments. Hopefully those judgments don't get too random, or too severe, or too anything, but hey, really, "objectivity" is on the whole something to be talked about in the abstract much more than lived in the concrete, at least when it comes to people.

Well, yes, but I still say that if a friend of yours came up to you with his hair dyed green and a nail stuck through his tongue, your first reaction would not be to judge those choices on aesthetic grounds and maybe cut him some slack because he's your friend but to wonder what the heck was going on here (unless that's how your friend looks normally). Play Wynton's "Cherokee" and tell me that it's Booker Little or Lee Morgan, and I'm thinking, "What happened [to them]?" I'd feel the same if you picked, say, a really good Bobby Hackett solo and told me that the player was Little or Morgan -- "What happened?" Your friends are your friends in part because you know who they are.

That's my point, exactly. That friends get more leeway than non-friends, simply because we know them. So if this wynton thing comes over as is, as by Wynton, we think "ugh" w/o qualification, and without qualification, because Wynton has not been the musical (or otherwise) friend to most of us here. Whereas if we get it as if by somebody who is our friend, we're much more likely to think "WTF happened?", cut slack, allow for shit happening (as shit does) and then come to an "ugh" that is decidedly more tempered than the one we do for Wynton straight up.

[papsrus]

From the very first, I've thought that Wynton's secret musical soulmate was Charlie Shavers -- that is, that the kind of musician that Wynton was at heart (and at best) before he tied himself up in knots of pseudo-nobility was akin to Shavers' impish/playful temperament. In fact, I once played a Shavers' solo for the young Wynton (the title track from Shavers' great album with Coleman Hawkins, "Hawk Eyes") to see what he would make of it, but Wynton was understandably skittish, as though I were trying to trick him in some manner, and had little to say. In any case, Shavers IMO could play rings around the (to my taste, quite static) Wynton of that "Cherokee" clip, as this clip of Shavers, in good form with Buck Clayton, may demonstrate:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9j5y84t0X4

More startling Shavers' solos are to be found (e.g. "Hawk Eyes"), but not on video ASFAIK.

Thanks for this. Listening to the Marsalis and the Shavers-Clayton clips one after the other, the impression I come away with is that the Marsalis piece is about Marsalis displaying his technical proficiency, while the Shavers piece is about how Shavers is able to use the music as a creative vehicle. Shavers explores the music (with zest!), while Marsalis seems to recite it (with polish).

I always feel a little apprehensive listening to Marsalis, as if every note must have its perfect place and Marsalis is simply slotting the notes in where they belong. "Will he do it?" I find myself wondering, fingers crossed. "I hope a 'wrong' note doesn't appear somewhere, and I hope that the piano player stays in line!" While technically impressive and skillful -- and yes, interesting and enjoyable to listen to -- this doesn't seem to be a particularly creative endeavour, and therein lies the rub.

... if that makes sense ...

(and Hawk Eyes is now on order)

[Late]

Do you not believe us?

I believe you.

Also, your question omits the fairly obvious factor that would render your implicit false labeling test an impossible-to-mount abstraction. If one were told that any number of trumpet players one admires were playing this solo, the first and probably the only question that would arise would be: "Why the heck does so-and-so sound like this? He never did before."

Agreed.

I suppose I'm framing the question of perception — as it relates to responding to music — with too many variables.

[Chuck Nessa]

(and Hawk Eyes is now on order)

If you enjoy that, get the Hal Singer Prestige date for more fine Shavers.

[JSngry]

And get the Just Jazz All-Star concert, both with & without Lionel Hampton. Everybody shines on them!

[Larry Kart]

What you're dealing with here is the judging of friends vs non-friends. Friends get slack in the face of their fuckups because we know that on the whole, they are better than those lapses. Non-friends don't simply because A) Life is short and you gotta go with what you get and/or B)The individual in question is a non-friend because they have proven themselves to on the whole not be better than their lapses.

Does this amount to a double standard of sorts? Well, maybe, but I'm of the mind that if we allowed ourselves total objectivity in every aspect of life we'd never really become anything other than a camera that records activity and does nothing with/about it. If you want to have a life, you gotta form relationships, and in order to form relationships, you gotta make judgments. Hopefully those judgments don't get too random, or too severe, or too anything, but hey, really, "objectivity" is on the whole something to be talked about in the abstract much more than lived in the concrete, at least when it comes to people.

Well, yes, but I still say that if a friend of yours came up to you with his hair dyed green and a nail stuck through his tongue, your first reaction would not be to judge those choices on aesthetic grounds and maybe cut him some slack because he's your friend but to wonder what the heck was going on here (unless that's how your friend looks normally). Play Wynton's "Cherokee" and tell me that it's Booker Little or Lee Morgan, and I'm thinking, "What happened [to them]?" I'd feel the same if you picked, say, a really good Bobby Hackett solo and told me that the player was Little or Morgan -- "What happened?" Your friends are your friends in part because you know who they are.

That's my point, exactly. That friends get more leeway than non-friends, simply because we know them. So if this wynton thing comes over as is, as by Wynton, we think "ugh" w/o qualification, and without qualification, because Wynton has not been the musical (or otherwise) friend to most of us here. Whereas if we get it as if by somebody who is our friend, we're much more likely to think "WTF happened?", cut slack, allow for shit happening (as shit does) and then come to an "ugh" that is decidedly more tempered than the one we do for Wynton straight up.

Well, it's not my point -- which is that it's not because we know them per se that we'd surprised and dismayed if Little or Morgan played this "Cherokee" solo but because we know who they are when they play the damn trumpet. To put it another way, I have a friend who is an all-round great guy, but the initial and lasting basis of our friendship was that I loved his writing (mostly, but not exclusively, about jazz), which clearly is an essential expression of who he is as a human being. If he suddenly began to write like, say, Ben Ratliff, I would give him a pass to the extent of trying to find out what had gone wrong, but the nature of our friendship would if anything deepen, not lessen, my sense that something had gone wrong here. In other words, no leeway, only concern. Giving him "leeway" would amount to treating him as though he were something less than the person I'd known him to be, and that wouldn't be good for either of us, or anyone else.

[Larry Kart]

(and Hawk Eyes is now on order)

If you enjoy that, get the Hal Singer Prestige date for more fine Shavers.

I heard Singer one night in the '70s, I think, at the West End Cafe. He was in great form.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

(and Hawk Eyes is now on order)

If you enjoy that, get the Hal Singer Prestige date for more fine Shavers.

And some John Kirby sextet for Shavers playing around in a very condensed way.

MG

[JSngry]

What you're dealing with here is the judging of friends vs non-friends. Friends get slack in the face of their fuckups because we know that on the whole, they are better than those lapses. Non-friends don't simply because A) Life is short and you gotta go with what you get and/or B)The individual in question is a non-friend because they have proven themselves to on the whole not be better than their lapses.

Does this amount to a double standard of sorts? Well, maybe, but I'm of the mind that if we allowed ourselves total objectivity in every aspect of life we'd never really become anything other than a camera that records activity and does nothing with/about it. If you want to have a life, you gotta form relationships, and in order to form relationships, you gotta make judgments. Hopefully those judgments don't get too random, or too severe, or too anything, but hey, really, "objectivity" is on the whole something to be talked about in the abstract much more than lived in the concrete, at least when it comes to people.

Well, yes, but I still say that if a friend of yours came up to you with his hair dyed green and a nail stuck through his tongue, your first reaction would not be to judge those choices on aesthetic grounds and maybe cut him some slack because he's your friend but to wonder what the heck was going on here (unless that's how your friend looks normally). Play Wynton's "Cherokee" and tell me that it's Booker Little or Lee Morgan, and I'm thinking, "What happened [to them]?" I'd feel the same if you picked, say, a really good Bobby Hackett solo and told me that the player was Little or Morgan -- "What happened?" Your friends are your friends in part because you know who they are.

That's my point, exactly. That friends get more leeway than non-friends, simply because we know them. So if this wynton thing comes over as is, as by Wynton, we think "ugh" w/o qualification, and without qualification, because Wynton has not been the musical (or otherwise) friend to most of us here. Whereas if we get it as if by somebody who is our friend, we're much more likely to think "WTF happened?", cut slack, allow for shit happening (as shit does) and then come to an "ugh" that is decidedly more tempered than the one we do for Wynton straight up.

Well, it's not my point -- which is that it's not because we know them per se that we'd surprised and dismayed if Little or Morgan played this "Cherokee" solo but because we know who they are when they play the damn trumpet. To put it another way, I have a friend who is an all-round great guy, but the initial and lasting basis of our friendship was that I loved his writing (mostly, but not exclusively, about jazz), which clearly is an essential expression of who he is as a human being. If he suddenly began to write like, say, Ben Ratliff, I would give him a pass to the extent of trying to find out what had gone wrong, but the nature of our friendship would if anything deepen, not lessen, my sense that something had gone wrong here. In other words, no leeway, only concern. Giving him "leeway" would amount to treating him as though he were something less than the person I'd known him to be, and that wouldn't be good for either of us, or anyone else.

I guess I have a pretty high tolerance for friends who go left w/o warning, rhyme, or reason. Hell, I've pretty much had to, the bunch I've taken up with over the years...

I just think that people who are explorers by nature have every right to explore into areas that I find dismaying and/or unfathomable. I only get concerned if/when things take a turn for the dangerous (literally). Otherwise, hey, you do what you feel the need to do. Your life, your needs. I'm your friend, I'll hang unless/until it gets too ugly to go on. And along the way, hey, maybe I'll learn something I'd not learn otherwise, if only about what makes people tick not being what I thought it was.

And I grant them that prerogative as a friend because I expect it in return. Nothing turns me off/out of/away from a friendship than the feeling that I've been ultimately been accepted because I provide some kind of "product", some kind of fixed "known quantity" that fills a need on somebody else's human needs shopping list. Anybody who wants that kind of friend should just get a pet, preferably a fish, something that can stay put and always be there on call when needed.

So if Little or Morgan played this "Cherokee" solo, I'd just say, oh well, the cat's trying something different, I know he's got his reasons, and let it go at that. Unless of course, they began to always play that way (and by always, I mean years and years and years), in which case I would wonder what those reasons were, and if I could figure them out, cool (whether or not those reasons appeal to me is besides the point, all I'm looking for is a "why?" that makes sense, not one I personally dig), and if not, well, they'd still be my friend, I just probably wouldn't pay that much serious attention to their playing any more. And dig - Wynton gets none of this slack from me.

Ultimately, though, this is all too much math for R&B!

[Larry Kart]

Nothing turns me off/out of/away from a friendship than the feeling that I've been ultimately been accepted because I provide some kind of "product", some kind of fixed "known quantity" that fills a need on somebody else's human needs shopping list. Anybody who wants that kind of friend should just get a pet, preferably a fish, something that can stay put and always be there on call when needed.

I'm not talking about "products" but acts of personal expression. That latter can be products in the sense that one is sometimes rewarded financially for producing them, but.... And, it's not about filling "a need on somebody else's human needs shopping list," it's about honest conversation; among friends, the needs are more or less shared/mutual -- fluid, yes, and not always in the foreground but ... I almost can't believe that we're having this Martian conversation.

[Chuck Nessa]

Somebodies need to get a room or go away.

[Larry Kart]

Somebodies need to get a room or go away.

Oh my God, yes -- "needs [that are] shared/mutual [and] fluid." I think I will go away for a while.

[AllenLowe]

hey Larry, I saw Hal Singer at the West End Cafe in the 70's - what row were you in?

[Larry Kart]

Somebodies need to get a room or go away.

Oh my God, yes -- "needs [that are] shared/mutual [and] fluid." I think I will go away for a while.

To the Indiana Home For The Dangerously Self-Absorbed -- I'm told that their cure rate is quite high.

[Larry Kart]

hey Larry, I saw Hal Singer at the West End Cafe in the 70's - what row were you in?

Don't know how often he played there, but we could have been in the same audience -- sharing, in effect.

[Dan Gould]

An exhibitionistic technical exercise. Where is the music?

Now that I've listened, I completely agree. But I have to believe that there are better examples of Wynton solos that his detractors would have a harder time ripping, so while the idea behind the thread was a good one, I don't think this was the best example for it.

[John L]

An exhibitionistic technical exercise. Where is the music?

Now that I've listened, I completely agree. But I have to believe that there are better examples of Wynton solos that his detractors would have a harder time ripping, so while the idea behind the thread was a good one, I don't think this was the best example for it.

I agree with that very much. Given the right context, Wynton came come through with some beautiful music, as Live at the House of Tribes clearly demonstrates (IMO).

[JSngry]

Yeah, that was a good one. But the first good one in how many years?

So I'd have to say that this Cherokee solo was much more representative than not.