Its self-explanatory, Wynton Marsalis says, pointing toward the papers in front of him. Basically, if you look at what I wrote, that says everything you need to know.
The trumpeter had entered only about 30 seconds before, walking into a small conference room at the New York offices of Jazz at Lincoln Center. Impeccably dressed in a gray suit, he leaned in for a quick hug by way of a greeting. If Marsalis seemed a tad impatient, he had a point: The document hed prepped did in fact speak for itself.
It was a two-page list of essential jazz recordings, containing 50 entries. Marsalis had assembled his choices in conjunction with new biopic Bolden, out Friday, which tells the story of Buddy Bolden, the legendary unrecorded first hero of New Orleans jazz, and which Marsalis both executive-produced and contributed music to. Preparing for his meeting with Rolling Stone, he went deep, listing not simply artists and titles, but also characteristics explaining why hed picked each one: Insightful integration of the blues with disparate elements, Making a horn sound exactly like someone singing and so on. Marsalis made it clear that his list was an inventory of recordings rather than albums, since so many of the early masterpieces of jazz arrived before the LP era.
He may have felt that his work was done in advance, but nevertheless he had plenty to say. For the next 45 minutes, he held forth to RS on 12 of his picks, frequently singing musical passages by way of illustration. Marsalis own written descriptions of what sets each recording apart appear in italics before the entries. (For consistency, titles below are listed according to date of recording rather than release.)
King Olivers 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 youre given with that degree of sophistication, insight and nuance is a great display of skill. Its very uncommon.
Louis Armstrong played second cornet to King Oliver it means hes interpreting internal harmony parts which have to resolve a certain way. Hes playing the alto part basically. King Olivers playing the melody. So, no written music: Hes 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 Olivers improvised trumpet breaks. Thats an unbelievable display of reflexes, musical understanding and ability to hear.
So, youre making up something and Im accompanying you while youre making it up and Im also playing an internal part to a part that youre 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, its not believable. But its what he could do and thats why hes Louis Armstrong.
Duke Ellington, Daybreak Express (1933)
All-time baddest MF
All-time baddest motherfucker. OK? Thats reserved for somebody like Bach. I couldve 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. Weve 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 hes 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 thats that difficult accurately, [like] Day Break Express and the early-Thirties stuff? [Exhales for emphasis] Fantastic.
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)
[Marsalis cited examples of each of the above, but he says this piece shows off Williams composing and arranging.]
Walkin and Swingin' she writes unbelievable soli with trumpet leading the reed section. Unusual voicing, unusual pairing. One trumpet with reeds [sings]. Its so lyrical and beautiful that the bridge becomes the basis of one of Monks 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.
Its unbelievably difficult to play. We laugh in our trumpet section. We go back and forth on whos gonna play it [laughs]. Cause when you play it, you cant help but look at it because it has the beginnings of bebop, its 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. Shes 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.
Benny Goodman, The Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert
Most meaningful 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 Ellingtons 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.
Thats 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 Americas 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 its very powerful.
Dizzy Gillespie with Charlie Parker, Shaw Nuff (1945)
Two people who did a lot of practicing (individually and together)
Charlie Parker and Dizzy. Its one thing to practice yourself; its 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 dont 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.
Ornette Coleman, Peace (1959)
Uncommon psychological complexity while maintaining a lyrical intention
I was very close with Ornette. Ornette was a shaman. Man, Id go to Ornettes house at 1 oclock in the morning. He said, [imitates Colemans 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 hed tell you stuff, it was always something so insightful about human beings.
This solo, Peace, its 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? Its hard to do that improvising. Thats in that solo.
[Sings] Just the areas hes gonna take you in and the psychological complexity of his phrasing and what hes saying and his ability to change the mood and intention in his sound very complex.
Ben Webster and Harry Sweets Edison, Better Go (1962)
Destination: Soul
The cover of that album [Ben and Sweets] is so soulful, thats all you need to know. You just put that up as a poster, it just says it all. Thats a swingin record. Its just blues theyre playing. Veterans playing some blues at grown folks tempo. Thats about being grown. Kids, stay at home, suck your thumb, play with some video games. This is grown folks.
Charles Mingus, Meditations on Integration (1964)
Great consolidator of all past and present (after bebop)
What happens with people is they generally fall into the misconception of their generation. Like, when [Giovanni Pierluigi da] Palestrina was writing music, hes 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? Thats the question.
Now youre in America during the middle of the youth movement, the first time youre able to sell stuff to kids thats for adults. Youre making a lot of money and youre 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 thats 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 didnt know what it was, and bring that into your sound, as you also reach further in the direction that your generation is going in? Thats two reaches. Thats a yoga position.
Thats 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 hes putting in his music. Theatrical elements, and hes not segregating himself from the music.
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. Its almost like its written on one mode. Its 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, hes a master of harmony anyway, but he goes to places in the harmony and the harmony is cyclical. Its the way that the cycle works. I could explain it, but its not gonna translate on the page.
But just suffice to say that, if youre looking at a math equation thats beautiful as an equation, since math can be lyrical and beautiful, and you look at it and say, Damn, thats how the math of this works? Thats how these songs all are.
John Coltrane,A Love Supreme(1964)
Unprecedented improvised development with least amount of thematic material
Trane set out withA Love Supremeto give as a little thematic material as possible and improvise. So most of whats onA Love Supremeis 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 onA Love Supreme.
Thats a tremendous achievement not just for the depth of engagement that its known for but how little thematic material it is, how much improvisation goes on.
Eddie Harris, 1974 Blues (1969)
A boogaloo church shuffle in a funky 7 damn!
Its a boogaloo church shuffle but its in seven [7/4 time]. Not only are you playing a boogaloo which is a rhythm in four youre playing it in a church shuffle feel, so you got the secular and the church, and then youre playing it in seven but the seven is funky. Its not a kind of awkward beat drop in seven, or a seven thats like youre trying to be Eastern European music but youre always failing because you didnt grow up dancing to it. Its 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? Its kind of like what Louis Armstrong does with King Oliver. The key to the syncopation is when they decide to syncopate phrases.
So its like the balance of when youre 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.
Betty Carter, Bridges (1992)
Sounds of protest throughout time
[Note: Marsalis also cited Louis Armstrongs (What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue, Billie Holidays Strange Fruit, Max Roachs We Insist! and several other recordings in this category.]
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 Im white inside, but that dont help my case.
[Betty Carters Bridges is] only scat singing, but the power, the virtuosity of it, the diversity of what shes singing, it speaks for itself. It speaks on the power of instrumental music. Its extremely virtuosic in a very free and strong and progressive way.
At one point, she goes into an African 6/8, shes in four [sings]. The way she spells out the rhythms. So shes taking us on a journey through different rhythms, and its the force of her sound. It is a statement. Because when I say protest, its also sounds of freedom.