RSSWynton Marsalis [extended]
- J Mood [Columbia, 1985] B+
- Two Men With the Blues [Blue Note, 2008] **
- Wynton Marsalis & Eric Clapton Play the Blues: Live From Jazz at Lincoln Center [Reprise Jazz, 2011] A-
- United We Swing: Best of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Galas [Blue Engine, 2018] A-
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Consumer Guide Reviews:
J Mood [Columbia, 1985]
As the first young jazz musician ever to enjoy true major-label promotion, Marsalis is trapped into selling an image whether he likes it (or admits it) or not. On the one hand, he inevitably attracts admirers who respond not to the substance he hawks so assiduously but to the idea of it, which makes me wonder whether they really thrill to the shadings and dynamics that up till now have constituted his genius. And on the other hand, those of us who can't stand his expensive tailoring and neoconservative pronunciamentos are tempted to dismiss the pleasures they insure. Listen hard enough and pleasures reveal themselves in profusion, but despite what Marsalis believes even their profusion isn't quite reason enough to bother, because in his wrongheaded determination to adjure the trendy and the obvious, he never lets loose. Most of us would say that inventing meaning while letting loose is the essence and promise of jazz. Neoconservatives wouldn't--maybe because they're not up to it. B+
Willie Nelson/Wynton Marsalis: Two Men With the Blues [Blue Note, 2008]
Louis Armstrong was Jimmie Rodgers' sideman, Wynton is Willie's collaborator, and somewhere in there the songs slip away ("Ain't Nobody's Business," "My Bucket's Got a Hole in It"). **
Wynton Marsalis & Eric Clapton: Wynton Marsalis & Eric Clapton Play the Blues: Live From Jazz at Lincoln Center [Reprise Jazz, 2011]
This isn't just figureheads rising to the occasion or getting back to where they once belonged, although both models pertain--especially for Marsalis, who enjoys the blues enough that his monster chops masticate them lip-smackingly rather than chewing them up and spitting them out. What's decisive, however, is a conception in which the members of a blues horn section interact polyphonically rather than uniting in the soulful Texas manner while blues polymath Clapton dictates as well as plays and sings a repertoire that includes Memphis Minnie and Howlin Wolf as well as W.C. Handy and Johnny Dodd. The juxtaposition may discomfit at first--we're not used to blues so jaunty and effervescent. But let it and it'll lift you right up. A-
Wynton Marsalis Septet: United We Swing: Best of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Galas [Blue Engine, 2018]
The trumpeter-bureaucrat didn't just tamp down his jazz chauvinism as such pop titans as Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson and roots flamekeepers as the Blind Boys of Alabama and Tedeschi-Trucks paid their respects at these 2003-2007 fund-raisers. He put his smarts, chops, and combo at the full service of artistes from Jimmy Buffett to Audra Macdonald. There's not much guitar and, you guessed it, no rapping whatsoever. But just about every song is enlarged. Dylan negotiates the horns that elaborate "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry" like the born hipster he is. Lyle Lovett is a hipster too. Macdonald was made for "Creole Love Call" as she was for little else. Ray Charles is alive, which was all it ever took. James Taylor and John Mayer put their all into self-penned songs about what dicks they are. "Are You Gonna Go My Way" is transformed into nine-tenths of the freedom song Lenny Kravitz dreamt it could be. Derek Trucks's "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free" solo very nearly obliterates that feat. And to top off his show of shows, Marsalis sings a song of his own--sans Auto-Tune, you bet. A-