From Louis
Armstrong to Ornette Coleman, trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, picks breaks down
tracks and albums that exemplify different aspects of a great American art
form.
12. King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band
with Louis Armstrong, “Snake Rag” (1923)
Otherworldly
display of flatfooted improvisational skills.
To be given
an accompanying part and to hear it and play thematic material that fits in
with the material that you’re given with that degree of sophistication, insight
and nuance is a great display of skill. It’s very uncommon.
Louis
Armstrong played second cornet to King Oliver — it means he’s interpreting
internal harmony parts which have to resolve a certain way. He’s playing the
alto part basically. King Oliver’s playing the melody. So, no written music:
He’s improvising on a complex form: “Snake Rag.”
He makes up
an unbelievable part. When you listen to it, how clear and logical it is and
how beautiful the resolutions are of internal harmony, and he also improvises a
second harmony part to King Oliver’s improvised trumpet breaks. That’s an
unbelievable display of reflexes, musical understanding and ability to hear.
So, you’re
making up something and I’m accompanying you while you’re making it up and I’m
also playing an internal part to a part that you’re improvising. The accuracy
of his parts and the clarity that he plays with in an accompaniment role is
still astounding after all these years. The speed
and the quickness and the reflexes, it’s not believable. But it’s what he could
do and that’s why he’s Louis Armstrong.
11. Duke Ellington, “Daybreak
Express” (1933)
All-time
baddest motherfucker. OK? That’s reserved for somebody like Bach. I could’ve
picked anything, but I picked train pieces, because I love trains. [Note:
Marsalis’ list also included four other train-themed pieces by Ellington: “Choo
Choo” from 1924, “Happy Go Lucky Local” from 1946, “Track 360” from 1959 and
“Loco Madi” from 1972.] I tried to get one from each decade. We’ve played most
of these [with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra].
That level
of sustained engagement, that level of technical achievement, the sophistication
of what he’s doing, the way he gets the harmonies to sound like trains, the
conception of different grooves and moods, the intelligent use of form, the
playfulness of it, the diversity of ideas, the understanding of the instruments
in their registers.
Young
musicians in your band are gonna work hard enough to play stuff that’s that
difficult accurately, [like] “Day Break Express” and the early-Thirties stuff?
[Exhales for emphasis] Fantastic.
10. Mary Lou Williams with Andy Kirk
and His Twelve Clouds of Joy, “Walkin’ and Swingin'” (1936)
Manifestation
of genius and unparalleled set of unique achievements (playing, composing,
arranging, mentoring). “Walkin’ and
Swingin'” — she writes unbelievable soli with trumpet leading the reed section.
Unusual voicing, unusual pairing. One trumpet with reeds [sings]. It’s so
lyrical and beautiful that the bridge becomes the basis of one of Monk’s songs:
“Rhythm-A-Ning.” [Sings] That part is so hard to play. Man, every time I have
to play it, I look at it like, “Shit.”
It’s
unbelievably difficult to play. We laugh in our trumpet section. We go back and
forth on who’s gonna play it [laughs]. ‘Cause when you play it, you can’t help
but look at it because it has the beginnings of bebop, it’s in the Swing Era —
you could go on and on about it.
The
diversity in that arrangement, the call and response. She was very
forward-thinking at all times. She was a mentor to the bebop players. Her house
was like a salon. “In the Land of Oo-Bla-Dee” is an example of bebop music she
wrote that Dizzy [Gillespie] recorded.
They would
go to her house, Dizzy, Bird [Charlie Parker], all the heavyweights talked to
Mary Lou. Monk, they loved her. She taught them about arranging, she had
concepts, she was very philosophical. She’s unsung as a person who really
influenced them and when you talk to them — I talked to Dizzy, any musicians
from that time — they always say, “Man, Mary Lou, she taught us a lot.”
9. Benny Goodman, The Famous 1938
Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert
[In this
concert] Benny Goodman is setting out his concept of what we need to do as a
country. He plays his music; he deals with the history of his band; he features
virtuosic playing. He brings all the people of different races together at a
time of segregation and deep ignorance.
He brings
members of Count Basie and Duke Ellington’s band out, he does American popular
song, he does original jazz songs. He has a section that covers the history of
jazz. He plays the hell out of the clarinet. He has a small group; he has a big
band. He covered a lot of ground on that one concert.
That’s also
the most meaningful concert because he made Carnegie Hall give him rehearsal
time. He was like, “No, no. I have to rehearse this much to get my music
right.” It was in America’s premiere concert hall at that time. It signaled a
movement away from a type of prejudice that, at that time, there was no way to
remove it because prejudice survives all evidence. But at that time, it was a
very strong statement from someone. Very powerful to make that statement.
You get your
space in the premier concert hall and you make that type of encompassing
statement — it’s very powerful.
8. Dizzy Gillespie with Charlie
Parker, “Shaw ‘Nuff”
(1945)
Charlie
Parker and Dizzy. It’s one thing to practice yourself; it’s another thing to
practice with somebody else. To be able to play parts with that type of clarity
and togetherness. Dizzy always said Bird was the other side of his heartbeat.
To this day, I don’t know if two horns have equaled that degree of complexity,
nuance, sophistication and absolute togetherness. Fire, virtuosity.
When it
happened, people knew it was something spectacular. Time has proven to us, yes.
7. Ornette Coleman, “Peace” (1959)
Uncommon
psychological complexity while maintaining a lyrical intention.
I was very
close with Ornette. Ornette was a shaman. Man, I’d go to Ornette’s house at 1
o’clock in the morning. He said, [imitates Coleman’s reedy voice] “Hey man,
pull your horn out, man,” and literally, I would sit across from him and play,
with no talk, for two, three hours. Just playing phrases back and forth. Then
when he’d tell you stuff, it was always something so insightful about human
beings.
This solo,
“Peace,” it’s like, you know how you be talking and you raise your eyes, and
you have many gestures, you go up and down, you have a landscape of emotions
and thoughts and feelings? It’s hard to do that improvising. That’s in that
solo.
[Sings] Just
the areas he’s gonna take you in and the psychological complexity of his
phrasing and what he’s saying and his ability to change the mood and intention
in his sound — very complex.
6. Ben Webster and Harry “Sweets”
Edison, “Better Go” (1962)
Destination:
Soul. The cover of that album [Ben and
“Sweets”] is so soulful, that’s all you need to know. You just put that up as a
poster, it just says it all. That’s a swingin’ record. It’s just blues they’re
playing. Veterans playing some blues at grown folks’ tempo. That’s about being
grown. Kids, stay at home, suck your thumb, play with some video games. This is
grown folks.
5. Charles Mingus, “Meditations on
Integration” (1964)
What happens
with people is they generally fall into the misconception of their generation.
Like, when [Giovanni Pierluigi da] Palestrina was writing music, he’s writing a
lot of really thick counterpoint. Five-voice counterpoint, very complex. The
next generation wrote very simply, and then that style becomes old-fashioned
because you wanna compete with the style. Now, who can come in the era of
simplification and add complexity from the past? That’s the question.
Now you’re
in America during the middle of the youth movement, the first time you’re able
to sell stuff to kids that’s for adults. You’re making a lot of money and
you’re going as far away from anything adult as you can go. But you also have
the Civil Rights Movement going on at the same time and you are engaged with a
lot of stuff in your generation that’s real that did not happen before that
because it could not happen. Why would you, in the middle of that, reach back
into something that is being discredited, was a source of pain and shame for a
lot of people who didn’t know what it was, and bring that into your sound, as
you also reach further in the direction that your generation is going in?
That’s two reaches. That’s a yoga position.
That’s what
Charles Mingus did with all those records he made in the mid-to-late Fifties
into the Sixties and Seventies. He has the avant-garde with people talking and
playing music; it was considered to be free. He has New Orleans musical pieces
like “My Jelly Roll Soul.” He has ballads of unbelievable depth and complexity.
He has
long-form pieces like “Meditation on Integration” that gives you the African
6/8. He has traditional bebop songs, he has ironic songs, “Gunslinging Birds.”
He has church music. All these elements, folk elements, everything he’s putting
in his music. Theatrical elements, and he’s not segregating himself from the
music.
4. Wayne Shorter, “Infant Eyes” (1964)
Extremely
sophisticated, yet lyrical melody/harmony combination
What does
that mean? That means the harmonic progression is as sophisticated as the
melody. Very difficult. Sometimes you have a really great melody and the
harmonies are not up to the melody.
“Infant
Eyes”: haunting melody. It’s almost like it’s written on one mode. It’s not,
but it sounds like that — like something you would sing to a child, like a
lullaby. Harmony, very sophisticated.
When you
look at the harmonic progression, where he goes, he’s a master of harmony
anyway, but he goes to places in the harmony and the harmony is cyclical. It’s
the way that the cycle works. I could explain it, but it’s not gonna translate
on the page.
But just
suffice to say that, if you’re looking at a math equation that’s beautiful as
an equation, since math can be lyrical and beautiful, and you look at it and
say, “Damn, that’s how the math of this works?” That’s how these songs all are.
3. John Coltrane, A Love Supreme (1964)
Unprecedented
improvised development with least amount of thematic material
Trane set
out with A Love Supreme to give as a little thematic material as possible and
improvise. So most of what’s on A Love Supreme is like cells, like a minor
third and a whole step. So you invert it as a fourth, as a fifth; it covers a
lot of different intervals. [Sings themes] Out of the kind of pentatonic sound
that connects you to the East.
The exception
is the second part. But even that eight-bar form, an unusual form for blues,
went back to an earlier form. By then, people were playing 12-bar blues, 14-bar
blues, blues with longer forms. Trane went back to the earlier folk form of
eight-bar blues on A Love Supreme.
That’s a
tremendous achievement not just for the depth of engagement that it’s known for
but how little thematic material it is, how much improvisation goes on.
2. Eddie Harris, “1974 Blues” (1969)
A boogaloo
church shuffle in a funky 7 — damn! It’s a
boogaloo church shuffle but it’s in seven [7/4 time]. Not only are you playing
a boogaloo — which is a rhythm in four — you’re playing it in a church shuffle
feel, so you got the secular and the church, and then you’re playing it in
seven but the seven is funky. It’s not a kind of awkward beat drop in seven, or
a seven that’s like you’re trying to be Eastern European music but you’re
always failing because you didn’t grow up dancing to it. It’s like an organic
seven. He understood something.
The way that
they do it is slick too because the same riff recurs. A groove is based on
repetition, so the question of the repetition is when do you go away from it?
It’s kind of like what Louis Armstrong does with King Oliver. The key to the
syncopation is when they decide to syncopate phrases.
So it’s like
the balance of when you’re going to not repeat. This has a brilliant use of
repetition in the groove. It accounts for the fact that the seven is an odd
meter, so the seven itself is something that will create turmoil in the
repetition. You can repeat a lot more without becoming boring.
1. Betty Carter, “Bridges” (1992)
This is the
sound of protest for our time. [These are] people who decided they were gonna
make a statement of protest in music and how the different forms of protest
were formed. Louis Armstrong did “Black and Blue”, but the bridge says “I’m
white inside, but that don’t help my case.”
[Betty
Carter’s “Bridges” is] only scat singing, but the power, the virtuosity of it,
the diversity of what she’s singing, it speaks for itself. It speaks on the
power of instrumental music. It’s extremely virtuosic in a very free and strong
and progressive way.
At one
point, she goes into an African 6/8, she’s in four [sings]. The way she spells
out the rhythms. So she’s taking us on a journey through different rhythms, and
it’s the force of her sound. It is a statement. Because when I say protest,
it’s also sounds of freedom.
