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Wynton Marsalis On Jazz, And Jazz Criticism
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February 7, 2011
Talking with Wynton Marsalis about jazz is a pleasure, as I discovered while interviewing him for a Sunday Arts & Books profile
Well, the conversation is more listening than talking. But even after all these years of celebrating "America's music," educating kids about its traditions, and of course performing it, Marsalis still speaks with boundless, captivating energy, as if he had just discovered Duke Ellington.
Jazz critics Gary Giddins and Whitney Balliett, to name two, have never been big Marsalis fans. Perhaps their views could be summed up in Balliett's comment that for all of Marsalis' dazzling playing, he "fails to stir the feelings, to jar the heart." | |
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Perfection.......... | |
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Didn't Wynton criticize fusion? I think he said something about his brother playing with Sting too. You can take a black guy to Nashville from right out of the cotton fields with bib overalls, and they will call him R&B. You can take a white guy in a pin-stripe suit who’s never seen a cotton field, and they will call him country. ~ O. B. McClinton | |
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I've always respected Mr. Marsalis's tireless work in making sure Jazz music had a place and wouldn't be forgotten in the country of it's birth.
Having said that . . .
Mr. Marsalis dries me up. The man couldn't swing himself out of a hammock, his music is redundant and on a good day mediocre.
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[Edited 2/7/11 12:28pm] | |
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The Standard Time, Vol 2. Intimacy Calling CD is superb. I nearly wore the grooves off the disc. | |
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"Criticize" is not the right word. "Attack" would be more to the point. He was sort of right at the time though, because there was a period of time in the 1970s / 1980s when there was only a handful of people doing proper jazz music. What pissed off a lot of people was just his elitist attitude and the assumption that he was somehow above everyone else by doing what he himself did.
I like the stuff he did in Herbie's band when he was younger, but I'm not crazy about his "orchestral" works. Maybe I'll give another listen to them someday.
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It also didn't help that Stanley Crouch and a heap of those Jazz purists formed a crusade against the fusion movement on top of them Miles Davis.
That whole "Wynton VS Miles" episode was just shameful. It really showed how devious & out of touch those writers were, and Wynton fell for it like a pawn and he didn't even realize it. | |
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CBS Records (today known as Sony Music Entertainment) were so piss that Miles Davis refused to pass the torch to Wynton Marsalis. THAT in itself made the situation worse, to be dead honest. | |
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i concur. | |
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Why the hell should he? There were far more deserving artists with more experience and flair in the genre than bland ass Wynton Marsalis. And the fact that he showed alot of disrespect to Miles in the press added the fuel, not only that, but in a true "shoot-self-in-the foot" fashion he up and joined Miles uninvited on stage, so you know how the rest went. | |
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I was trying to recall what the story about Wynton's ejection from Miles' stage was and I came across this interesting article at AllAboutJazz.com about the different approaches they took to scoring films about Jack Johnson, and what that says about the different philosophies of making music they've come to represent. Thought I'd share.
http://www.allaboutjazz.c...p?id=16763
"Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced." - James Baldwin | |
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i think that states the difference between the two succinctly. | |
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Here's a list of Jazz trumpters, some well known, others not so well known. This isn't about comparing aritist against each other but it is about listening to musicians who play the same instrument and hearing what they've brought to the conversation in terms of musicianship, signature style/techinque/tone and/or compositions. Mr. Marsalis is found wanting in all categories.
Louis Armstrong Nat Adderley Henry James Allen a.k.a Red Allan * Cat Anderson (Duke Ellington Orchestra) Donald Ayler Augustus Aiken a.k.a. Gus Aiken
Benny Baily Clifford Brown Bix Beiderbecke * Bobby Bradford Austin Dean Brisbois Charles "Buddy" Bolden * Rowland Bernard "Bunny" Berigan Donald Byrd Dupree Bolton Emmett Berry (accompanist of Billie Holdiay) Joseph "Sharkey" Bonano Terence Oliver Blanchard (a contemporary of Mr. Marsalis)
Benny Carter Bill Chase ( Jazz Fusion) William "Bill" Coleman Buck Clayton * (Count Basie's Orchestra) Jonny Coles Leeds "Lee" Collings
Jimmy Dorsey Kenny Dorham Miles Davis
Harry "Sweets" Edison Roy Eldridge Art Framer Dizzy Gillespie Freddie Hubbard Roy Hardgrove (another a contemporary) Henry James
Lee Morgan
Fats Navarro
Joe "King" Oliver **
Bobby Shew Cootie Williams ( Duke Ellington Orchestra, had his own orchestra with the likes of Charlie Parker, Bud Powell & Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, then very young lions)
Charlie Shavers ( trumpet soloist with Billie Holiday)
Clark Terry
Emanuel Perez **
I've heard Marsalis for years go on and on about Mr. Ellingtion and Mr. Armstrong and what they did any how their music is the "blueprint" the foundation for how Jazz music should be played (interpreted") and composed. Please. Those two gentlemen created a style, a tone and wrote compostitions that Mr. Marsalis couldn't conjure up if he went to the crossroads and sold his soul to the devil. Mr. Ellington and Mr. Armstrong created a musical idiom that's theirs and theirs alone. All Marsalis has written is some boring inferior copies of others orginal works. The asturias behind the Jazz trumpters I've listed, were influenced by Louis Armstrong or Armostrong con- temporaries. (Mr. Armstrong is Marsalis's hero) Those musicians built upon Armstrong style/tone /technique . . they expanded his sound, his technique to incorporate their own ideas. As James Mtume said in his debates with Stanley Crouch, artist go through three different stages, 1) Imitation 2) Emulation 3) Innovation.
Marsalis career has been built upon imitation and he hasn't done that well by any stretch of the imagination. As far as him quoting Evlin Jones, how ironic! Mr. Jones embraced and played Free Jazz (was the drummer on, A Love Supreme) and Avant-garde jazz. When Coltrane told Mr. Jones, some aren't going to like what you are playing, it was because those same "jazz purists" were already bitching about Avant-garde and Free Jazz.
Listen to some of these musicians and then comeback and we can speak of what Mr. Marsalis is and isn't. I don't know what critics listen to. But I know they're people who are listners of Jazz from it's earlist begining to present and know what's quality and what's bullshit. More so, the man CAN'T EVEN SWING.
----------- [Edited 2/8/11 6:15am [Edited 2/9/11 5:18am] | |
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Mr. Davis said in an interview, Mr. Marsalis walked out onto the stage to play with him without permission. As close as he was to Dizzy Gillespie they never walked on stage when the other was playing unless they asked beforehand. That's the story. | |
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I think I can sense some hostility towards Mr. Marsalis on this thread.
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Oh I do like him, I've wore out his "Haydn - Three Favorite Concertos" album(I prefer his classical stuff over the Jazz ones).
I just don't agree with him or those Jazz purists who showed in Ken Burns' Jazz in so many ways than one how contradictory they were to the sole idea of Jazz' existence to begin with. | |
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Yeah, I really like Miles' Jack Johnson album, and I think it works well as a 'fusion' piece because of the interplay and the way it develops. The first movement of 'Yesternow', with the bass riff from James Brown's 'Say it Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud' at its core, is probably my favourite part. "Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced." - James Baldwin | |
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Yeah, I remember being a lot more hardcore against the purists, in favour of the 'progressives', like Miles, that kept trying to innovate and drive the music forward, in years gone by. I think I can see where Wynton et al are coming from now, in some ways, as I think they want to stand jazz up as a kind of (Black) American classical music to be respected and even revered, and there's perhaps something laudable about that, even if does run contrary to the way jazz was performed and perceived to begin with, like you say; and if it seems to come at the price of having to cloister it like some kind of fragile museum piece, so that it doesn't get 'contaminated' by the living, buzzing world around it.
Mind you, they saw to it that the fusionists a got a particularly raw deal in that Ken Burns documentary, if I recall correctly; reduced to little more than a embarrassing footnote in jazz history, thanks to a brief clip of Miles and his band crashing through some less inspired material on an off-night, which was rather uncharitably selected. "Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced." - James Baldwin | |
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i LOVE terrence blanchard!!! i had an opportunity to see him live in new orleans (some time before katrina). he's amazing. i love his work.
oh, don't forget marsalis' and crouch's love for sidney bechet. and donald byrd, man, he was one of the funkiest cats out there. blue note all day, every day! [Edited 2/8/11 7:15am] [Edited 2/8/11 7:17am] | |
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lee morgan is actually my favourite trumpetist of all times... i'm surprised i never have gotten grief for that.
my favourite lee morgan tune:
man, you get lee morgan, herbie hancock, art blakey and horace silver together in a room? that is jazz heaven to me! | |
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Amongst my favorites as well. | |
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jazz heaven to me though, would ALSO be albert ayler, pharoah sanders, abbey lincoln, nat adderley, terrence blanchard, herbie hancock, john coltrane, eddie harris, george duke, charles mingus (on the bass), rachelle farell, dianne reeves, roberta flack, bernard purdy, james jamerson, sheila e, andy bey, esperanza spaulding, les mc cann, eugene mc daniels and nancy wilson... i'm sure there's a few more, but this would be a WONDERFUL scene!
one of my most cherished moments in life is having a conversation about life and art with ornette coleman on the 6 train... this is some years before he moved to switzerland or whatever. | |
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YAAAAAAAAAY! | |
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Pretty much. | |
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I think Wynton's a great trumpet player (the Haydn album Harlopolis mentioned and Marsalis Standard Time Vol.1 are both great records) but his mindset about jazz is basically the same academic mindset that killed classical music, just as it's killed jazz. It's all about, "This is what you play over this chord, over this beat, on this tune, etc."
Jazz has a lot in common with punk rock, but most jazz musicians don't really seem to know that and want to act like they're above the roots of the music. To me, the future of jazz is in electronic music bands like Jaga Jazzist and the Cinematic Orchestra, as well as folks like Avishai Cohen. | |
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I need to write this down on my shopping list. | |
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Personally, I've always felt he was too full of himself. | |
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I dunno, PDogz....his hubris may just be warranted, in terms of chops. Check this:
Funk Is It's Own Reward | |
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Oh yeah, I absolutely agree: He's got the chops, for days. When it comes to Jazz, I think he's a skilled technician. And he knows his history very, very well. I have nothing but the utmost respect for his talent, and own several of his CD's that are beyond impressive.
But he acts like they built that whole new Jazz at Lincoln Center complex just for him! And ya know... THEY PROBABLY DID!
He just got the big head, that's all, lol. That's my only issue with him, lol. | |
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