An Astonishing Solo by Wynton Marsalis

[AllenLowe]

Larry Kart pointed out to me once that Wynton Marsalis has changed his style from his early years, when he was a much more creative and exploratory player. I just found this on Youtube  - an amazing solo with VSOP - from the '80s? I don't know, but I do know that it is one of the more amazing trumpet solos I have ever heard, free, inventive, playful, intense:

 

[felser]

1983 if I am doing my google searching correctly.  He would have been 21.  It is a fine solo.  I loved his early sideman work with Blakey and with Herbie Hancock, and I'd buy a CD of this performance in a heartbeat.  I thought he had reached a peak as a leader with the Live at Blues Alley album, and was so disappointed when he then turned all academic/historic/pretentious on us.  He has occasionally through the decades since then put out releases that sound good to me, but they are just teasers.  He always returns to his unlistenable "big statements".

[AllenLowe]

  On 8/15/2023 at 1:19 AM, felser said:

1983 if I am doing my google searching correctly.  He would have been 21.  It is a fine solo.  I loved his early sideman work with Blakey and with Herbie Hancock, and I'd buy a CD of this performance in a heartbeat.  I thought he had reached a peak as a leader with the Live at Blues Alley album, and was so disappointed when he then turned all academic/historic/pretentious on us.  He has occasionally through the decades since then put out releases that sound good to me, but they are just teasers.  He always returns to his unlistenable "big statements".

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exactly. I find this disturbing. Like a violation of certain sacred principles.

 

Edited August 15, 2023 by AllenLowe

[Joe]

I can really hear the Woody Shaw influence here. Speaking of which...

 

[Rooster_Ties]

It’s funny to see this thread today, because on my commute into work just this morning… I contemplated starting a thread asking for recommendations of favorite recordings with Wynton as a sideman.

My opinion of Wynton’s polemics is well documented around here — but I occasionally have some interesting and wonderful things come up on my “Woody Shaw”-based Pandora station with Wynton as a sideman. The track du jour this morning was something from Jeff “Tain” Watts’ 1999 Columbia album Citizen Tain…

https://www.discogs.com/release/3243861-Jeff-Tain-Watts-Citizen-Tain

So I guess this is a good a place as any to mention that despite all his BS, sometimes — especially 20+ years ago — Wynton could really play.

[T.D.]

  On 8/15/2023 at 3:18 AM, Rooster_Ties said:

It’s funny to see this thread today, because on my commute into work just this morning… I contemplated starting a thread asking for recommendations of favorite recordings with Wynton as a sideman.

My opinion of Wynton’s polemics is well documented around here — but I occasionally have some interesting and wonderful things come up on my “Woody Shaw”-based Pandora station with Wynton as a sideman. The track du jour this morning was something from Jeff “Tain” Watts’ 1999 Columbia album Citizen Tain…

https://www.discogs.com/release/3243861-Jeff-Tain-Watts-Citizen-Tain

So I guess this is a good a place as any to mention that despite all his BS, sometimes — especially 20+ years ago — Wynton could really play.

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Yes, it's an excellent solo. Thanks to Allen for posting.

I'm old, but only got seriously into jazz this century, starting in the early oughts. I very early on read a lot of WM's polemics, and they turned me off to such an extent that I never really considered exploring his music. But I've never trashed his music, just the polemics.

Still don't care to purchase recordings, but will explore some stuff of the appropriate vintage on Youtube and the like (not into streaming).

[JSngry]

He plays very well on that Live at The House Of Tribes from a while back.

But...he got what he wanted, which was obviously not to be a serious contender as a serious long-game jazz trumpet player.

[danasgoodstuff]

It's an impressive solo, but I honestly don't think it's a very good one.  Too all over the place for me.

[Chuck Nessa]

This topic has caused me to think of GAZORNANPLAT.

[T.D.]

  On 8/15/2023 at 4:14 AM, Chuck Nessa said:

This topic has caused me to think of GAZORNANPLAT.

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🤣

I had to google, and the spelling apparently is GAZORN[I]NPLAT, but that's effin' awesome!

Edited August 15, 2023 by T.D.

[rostasi]

  On 8/15/2023 at 4:14 AM, Chuck Nessa said:

This topic has caused me to think of GAZORNANPLAT.

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I loved his guitar work with Chico Hamilton.

[Rabshakeh]

  On 8/15/2023 at 3:18 AM, Rooster_Ties said:

It’s funny to see this thread today, because on my commute into work just this morning… I contemplated starting a thread asking for recommendations of favorite recordings with Wynton as a sideman.

My opinion of Wynton’s polemics is well documented around here — but I occasionally have some interesting and wonderful things come up on my “Woody Shaw”-based Pandora station with Wynton as a sideman. The track du jour this morning was something from Jeff “Tain” Watts’ 1999 Columbia album Citizen Tain…

https://www.discogs.com/release/3243861-Jeff-Tain-Watts-Citizen-Tain

So I guess this is a good a place as any to mention that despite all his BS, sometimes — especially 20+ years ago — Wynton could really play.

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He's good on that recent Famsworth record on Smoke. A really fudgy tone that shows all the classic jazz he's been re-enacting, but it's interesting in a genre hard bop setting.

I like him on Chico Freeman's Destiny's dance. He plays a good solo, if I recall, on Shirley Horn's You Won't Forget Me, on the track "Don't Let The Sun...", If I recall. 

Citizen Tain is a good record. I started a thread a while back asking for recommendations of the other young lions, and there may be a couple out there.

I'm generally partial to the Fathers & Sons record that the Marsalises and Freemans. Mainly for the split between the tight laced neo bop of the former and the sudden turn into blues power with the Freemans. 

In the longer term, I think that the Young Lions were victims of their own marketing and rhetoric. There's a whole generation of talented young players who never got a chance to mature, and who find their records retrospectively ignored.

[Rooster_Ties]

  On 8/14/2023 at 11:08 PM, AllenLowe said:

…an amazing solo with VSOP - from the '80s? I don't know, but I do know that it is one of the more amazing trumpet solos I have ever heard, free, inventive, playful, intense:

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Just listened to this finally, and yeah, that’s great!  I’m normally half-allergic to war-horse Monk tunes — but that one hit me very nicely.

Hell, Branford was killin’ it too — and I’m well more than half allergic to most soprano playing — but Branford’s tone, intonation, and approach here was just wonderful (and didn’t trigger me one bit).

Wynton had so much technique, but (strangely) also wasn’t limited by it — and he had ideas too (could solo in unpredictable ways, and remain unpredictable through entire solos).

It’s such a shame he went the direction(s) he did, musically and on his soapbox.  Easily had the potential of being on my personal top-10 list of all-time favorite trumpeters — as opposed to not even being in my top-100.

[John L]

I have always really admired Wynton for not backing down from the challenge when some people were proclaiming him as a teenager to be the savior of jazz and the next coming of Louis Armstrong / Duke Ellington.   To his credit, Wynton worked very hard to give it his best with increasingly ambitious projects.  In the end, I agree with what seems the majority opinion here - his lasting legacy will probably end up being a collection of fine trumpet solos made in a small group context.  

[Larry Kart]

  On 8/15/2023 at 3:46 AM, JSngry said:

He plays very well on that Live at The House Of Tribes from a while back.

But...he got what he wanted, which was obviously not to be a serious contender as a serious long-game jazz trumpet player.

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His "thematic" solo on "Green Chimneys" from that album is annoyingly mindless B.S. IMO.

 

 

  On 8/15/2023 at 2:57 PM, John L said:

I have always really admired Wynton for not backing down from the challenge when some people were proclaiming him as a teenager to be the savior of jazz and the next coming of Louis Armstrong / Duke Ellington.   To his credit, Wynton worked very hard to give it his best with increasingly ambitious projects.  In the end, I agree with what seems the majority opinion here - his lasting legacy will probably end up being a collection of fine trumpet solos made in a small group context.  

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He didn't back down from that "challenge,"; he embraced it and then produced pompous musical B.S.

His "ambitious"  projects  likewise.

[AllenLowe]

  On 8/15/2023 at 4:03 AM, danasgoodstuff said:

It's an impressive solo, but I honestly don't think it's a very good one.  Too all over the place for me.

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that's what I like about it - it violates the Sacred Order of the Jazz Solo; and I will say, though this is not necessarily a recommendation, that from a technical standpoint it is masterful.

I am going to add something that strikes me here as relevant, as a player myself - bebop and its parameters can be quite oppressing, as a schematic requirement for musicians to design their playing in specific and "correct" ways. Truthfully, though I loved the man, this is the reason I had to finally detach myself from Barry Harris when I hit my 30s (we had been very close) as I decided to get serious about music. And since then I have noticed a number of players whose work reflected the outlines of bebop but whose playing reflected a fascinating impatience with the music's contours - late Gene Ammons, Von Freeman, Ira Sullivan are just three, Aaron Johnson is a great contemporary example - and I very much, after frustration with the free-jazz cult of today, decided to construct a way of playing that encompassed certain spiritual ties to bebop and swing, but which allowed me to discard all of the so-called lessons learned and abandon the rules in the interest of creative freedom. THAT is what I find so interesting here about Wynton, that for a brief moment or so he had a similar revelation and applied it in a brilliant way - though as we can see, the lesson didn't really take, as middle-class precepts of art as a form of lesson-learned gratification and personal nourishment took over from the idea of art as revelation and risk.

Edited August 15, 2023 by AllenLowe

[danasgoodstuff]

  On 8/15/2023 at 3:18 PM, AllenLowe said:

that's what I like about it - it violates the Sacred Order of the Jazz Solo; and I will say, though this is not necessarily a recommendation, that from a technical standpoint it is masterful.

I am going to add something that strikes me here as relevant, as a player myself - bebop and its parameters can be quite oppressing, as a schematic requirement for musicians to design their playing in specific and "correct" ways. Truthfully, though I loved the man, this is the reason I had to finally detach myself from Barry Harris when I hit my 30s (we had been very close) as I decided to get serious about music. And since then I have noticed a number of players whose work reflected the outlines of bebop but whose playing reflected a fascinating impatience with the music's contours - late Gene Ammons, Von Freeman, Ira Sullivan are just three, Aaron Johnson is a great contemporary example - and I very much, after frustration with the free-jazz cult of today, decided to construct a way of playing that encompassed certain spiritual ties to bebop and swing, but which allowed me to discard all of the so-called lessons learned and abandon the rules in the interest of creative freedom. THAT is what I find so interesting here about Wynton, that for a brief moment or so he had a similar revelation and applied it in a brilliant way - though as we can see, the lesson didn't really take, as middle-class precepts of art as a form of lesson-learned gratification and personal nourishment took over from the idea of art as revelation and risk.

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Thanks for the thoughtful reply, I know you've thought this through and worked it out in practice to a degree I've never even attempted.  Nonetheless, I can only go with my own responses in the end.  There are solos that could be called 'all over the place' that I do enjoy, so maybe that wasn't the best description of what I'm hearing or not hearing here.  I could give it at least a promising direction that he unfortunately didn't follow up on, which would put us not so far apart.  For a music that's supposed to be about improvising, there's very little close analysis of not just what exactly happened in particular performances, but why is that good - the first is hard for more or less technical reasons, the second for more philosophical ones.  And I agree about bebop being a closed little world, even if you think 52nd St. back in the day was some sort of Eden, you can't go back there and playing like Bird done it doesn't mean now what it meant to him or his audience.  Thanks for giving me something to think about, as always.

[Niko]

Off topic, I know, but: Allen (or anyone else), when you say "late Gene Ammons" which recordings are you thinking of? Thanks!

[AllenLowe]

  On 8/15/2023 at 7:27 PM, Niko said:

Off topic, I know, but: Allen (or anyone else), when you say "late Gene Ammons" which recordings are you thinking of? Thanks!

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Ammons In Sweden, and a very interesting recording he made with Dexter Gordon (possibly live in Chicago):

https://www.amazon.com/Chase-Gene-Ammons/dp/B000000ZF1

https://www.amazon.com/Gene-Ammons-Sweden/dp/B005D2ST9E/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1NKJ8044MBYKI&keywords=gene+ammons+in+sweden&qid=1692128402&s=music&sprefix=gene+ammons+in+sweden%2Cpopular%2C101&sr=1-1

neither is a radical departure, but there is, to my ears, a sense of impatience with the more orthodox lines of bebop.

[Niko]

Thank you! I like my favorite late Ammons albums (The Black Cat and You talk that talk) but was suspecting I might be missing something (and those two albums I indeed don't know)

[AllenLowe]

heres the whole Sweden thing:

 

  On 8/15/2023 at 7:27 PM, Niko said:

Off topic, I know, but: Allen (or anyone else), when you say "late Gene Ammons" which recordings are you thinking of? Thanks!

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sorry - it wasn't the Dexter/Ammons, but the Moody Ammons I was thinking of (in addition to the Swedish concert, above):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Concert

 

 

 

[JSngry]

Connected vocal exhortations of key chord tones. 

[AllenLowe]

  On 8/15/2023 at 8:36 PM, JSngry said:

Connected vocal exhortations of key chord tones. 

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I really like all of Ammons' later work. It's always interesting to hear when a musician from that generation gets a little restless, artistically-speaking. Very few of them really changed.