Reading for CH 9: The New and Old Traditionalists Free jazz may have promised a

Reading for CH 9: The New and Old Traditionalists Free jazz may have promised a revolution , and fusion might have offered financial rewards , but anyone seeking controversy in jazz circles during the closing years of the twentieth century would have found it coming from a different and at first unlikely -direction . After decades of debating the future of jazz , the arguments now focused on the role of the music’s past , and especially the resurgence of traditional mainstream acoustic jazz styles under the auspices of Wynton Marsalis. In truth, these older styles had never really disappeared. During the ascendancy of free jazz and fusion, mainstream artists had continued to follow their muse, although they rarely received the press, airplay, or record sales of plugged- in crossover artists. Indeed, the intense compression of jazz history had led to a vertiginous overlap of traditions and styles. At the close of the 1960s, jazz fans could enjoy the contemporary styles of the period; but, just as easily they might attend concerts by Louis Armstrong, Earl Hines, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Roy Eldridge, Dizzy Gillespie, Art Blakey, Charles Mingus, Dave Brubeck, and Gerry Mulligan, among others. Even in the mid-1990s, many early pioneers of jazz music were still active, such as violinist Stéphane Grappelli, who attracted votes in the first Downbeat poll in 1936 and, sixty years later, in the 1996 edition, again placed first on his instrument; or Benny Carter, who continued to demonstrate his immense talent as a soloist and composer sixty-five years after he built his reputation writing arrangements for Fletcher Henderson and McKinney’s Cotton Pickers. The 1970s mainstream jazz sound continued to draw heavily on the swing and bebop idioms. Major jazz festivals often emphasized these styles, and a number of record labels promoted these once innovative sounds, now transformed into heritage music.Norman Granz, who had made his mark as a concert promoter and record producer during the postwar years, returned to active involvement in the studio with the founding of his Pablo label in 1973. Granz quickly gathered together a roster of some of the leading traditional stylists in jazz, including Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald Oscar Peterson, Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughan, Ray Brown, Milt Jackson, Zoot Sims, and others. The availability of these jazz legends was a telling sign of how little interest major labels were showing in mainstream jazz after the rock- dominated 1960sHowever, Granz’s belief in the commercial viability of this music was validated by the resultsThe Pablo recordings sold well, and the various artists associated with the label demonstrated that they could still pack nightclubs and concert halls Granz placed special emphasis on showcasing Ella Fitzgerald’s talent in the finest jazz settings. He had taken over as Fitzgerald’s manager in 1953 and soon after secured her release from Decca to feature her on his own Verve label. Fitzgerald was a successful popular singer at the time, having sold over twenty million records since stepping in as surrogate leader of Chick Webb’s band in 1939. Now in her late thirties, she was at an age when most pop music stars have already started to lose their audience to younger and more up-to-date performers, yet Granz never gave much concern to keeping current, and under his stewardship Fitzgerald’s music reached a new pitch of artistry. Her 1956 release Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Songbook ranks among the biggest-selling jazz albums of the decade, put Verve on a firm financial footing, and even impressed Cole Porter himself, who reportedly remarked: My, what marvelous diction that girl has” Fitzgerald solidified her preeminence among jazz divas in memorable live recordings in Berlin and Rome, and in other “songbook” releases featuring her interpretations of popular standards by George and Ira Gershwin, Harold Arlen, Duke Ellington, Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, and Johnny Mercer. Under the Pablo aegis, Fitzgerald continued to record strong material in world-class settings, singing with the Basie band, engaging in duets with Joe Pass, fronting all-star combos, or working with premier accompanists who had supported her in the past, such as pianists Paul Smith and Tommy Flanagan Although Granz typically preferred working with major names from previous decades, he also occasionally promoted lesser-known artists and newer talent. For example , virtuoso guitarist Joe Pass had spent much of his early career battling drug addiction, a struggle that found him spending lengthy periods incarcerated, at hospitals, or in halfway houses; even when he was making music, it often was as an anonymous studio player or hidden in Las Vegas hotel bands. Yet in the early 1970s, when the guitarist was in his mid- forties, Granz aggressively promoted Pass in solo albums and alongside the better-known artists on the Pablo roster, including Oscar Peterson and Ella FitzgeraldPass’s 1973 solo recording Virtuoso attracted attention for the guitarist’s speed of execution and astonishing technical mastery of the instrumentInspiring comparisons with Art Tatum and Oscar Peterson, Virtuoso justifiably ranks among the half- dozen most important recordings of modern jazz guitar music. It was followed by dozens of other Pass recordings, as leader or guest artist, on the Pablo label Pablo was far from an isolated example. Other labels thrived by focusing on mainstream jazz sounds played by middle-aged artists. Nils Winther founded the Steeplechase label in Copenhagen in 1972 and recorded over two hundred releases during the next fifteen years, including important projects by Dexter Gordon, Jackie McLean, and other American musicians, as well as such rising European stars as bassist Niels- Henning Ørsted Pedersen and pianist Tete MontoliuThe following year, Carl Jefferson started his Concord label in California, which specialized in albums by a wide array of players associated with swing, bop, and West styles of During the course of the decade, other small labelsincluding Muse, Chiaroscuro, and Timeless- moved in a similar direction, keeping the flames of earlier styles alive in the face of free and fusion fare. A host of seasoned artists from earlier decades rode this wave pursuing revitalized careers and proving that traditional sounds were again on the ascendancyAltoist Phil Woods led several vibrant combos in the 1970s, including his European Rhythm Machine, and in the 1980s was joined for a spell by the stellar trumpeter Tom HarrellDexter Gordon returned from overseas, recording his celebrated Homecoming release for CBSStan Getz renewed his allegiance to straight-ahead after his love affair with bossa nova and briefer flirtation with fusion. Even crossover stars, most notably Herbie Hancock, put away their electric instruments for a time to test the growing market for acoustic jazz”Jazz Comes Back Newsweek proclaimed in a 1977 cover story focusing on the return of prominent jazz artists to more traditional settings -more than a year before Wynton Marsalis’s arrival in New York New mainstream artists began gaining notoriety alongside these veterans, with almost every style finding fervent advocatesIn 1977, twenty-three-year-old saxophonist Scott Hamilton scandalized the New York scene with his retro tenor sound reminiscent of Coleman Hawkins and Ben Webster and reflecting a private universe in which Coltrane Rollins had never existed. Unlike the postmodernists who were resurrecting old sounds with a tongue-in- cheek humor, Hamilton was dead serious about what he was doing, fostering these styles because he thought they “sounded good “-the most anachronistic of defenses it seemed, during this ideologically charged period of transitionAlthough some critics looked askance at such retro efforts, those who listened with open ears were forced to acknowledge his rare gift for improvisation. Hamilton might have been an extreme case, yet such historical consciousness-raising would prove a precursor of things to come. By the dawn of the 1980s, every style and sound from the music’s past seemed to find a ready audience, each one celebrated, fostered, and marketed alongside the most up-to- date offerings of the current dayVisitors to jazz record stores witnessed fascinating juxtapositions in the racks: George Lewis, the Dixieland clarinetist, sharing a bin with George Lewis, avant-garde trombonist ; Woody Shaw lying adjacent to Artie ShawRuby Braff rubbing shoulders with Anthony Braxton; or Sadao Watanabe sidling up to Ethel WatersThe extreme diversity of the traditions that were now acclaimed indicated the tremendous scope of the music’s history and the remarkable breadth of Buddy Bolden’s progeny The mainstream jazz vocal tradition was especially vibrant during this period. Although atonality and other experimental techniques had, at times, made inroads here, most jazz vocalists preferred to work with traditional repertoire and instrumentation . Many major artists who had emerged in earlier decades still remained at the forefront of jazz singing in the 1970s and 1980s. Carmen McRae and Betty Carter, who had first recorded as leaders in the 1950s , made clear that the Billie Holiday tradition could still sound fresh and new decades later. No singer since Holiday had been more adept at singing behind the beat than McRae , or more skilled at shifting from an intimate conversational delivery to hard-edged reconfigurations of melody and lyric. Carter also took extreme rhythmic liberties with her material, sometimes offering such arcane reinterpretations of standards that one is tempted to include her among the jazz avant-garde. Yet this brand of experimentation was one that found inspiration in the traditions of early masters, as disparate as Cole Porter and Charlie Parker, and- once again -Holiday, whose emotionally charged vision of invigorating jazz song with the raw honesty of the confessional also infused Carter’s work Sheila Jordan took a similar tack, avoiding conventional readings of standards in favor of a more deeply personalized approach, best shown in her collaborations with pianist Steve Kuhn. Mel Tormé, who had refined a virtuosic singing style in his early years and flirted with crossover stardom, now found a ready audience for his serious jazz work in this period, which included successful projects with George Shearing, Marty Paich, and othersTony Bennett, who had expanded his audience as a poporiented singer in the 1960s, rediscovered his Jazz roots during the following decade, as demonstrated most clearly in two memorable albums of duets with pianist Bill EvansAll in all, the vocal arts stood out as the most tradition-steeped facet of the jazz scene during the 1970s and 1980sMost of the young singers who initiated their careers during these years reflected this same immersion in the music’s history and though the least inspired of them settled for a superficialsupper-club elegance, the best of the new generationBobby McFerrin, Diane Schuur, Cassandra Wilson, Dianne Reeves- found ways of revitalizing the tradition This nostalgia for the music’s past was especially evident among practitioners of vocalese a style in which lyrics are added to pre-existing jazz melodies and solos. As this idiom gained wider popularity under the influence of such singers as Jon Hendricks and Eddie Jefferson, who had helped create the style some two decades before, or via high-profile projects by pop artists such as Joni Mitchell or the Manhattan Transfer, it became increasingly common practice for the vocalese lyrics to be about jazz musicians-hear, for instance, Jefferson singing eloquently about Coleman Hawkins, Miles Davis, and Charlie Parkeror Hendricks’s lyrics to “Birdland”; or, in a crossover format, Joni Mitchell focusing on Charles Mingus as the subject of her version of the bassist’s “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat” In such settings, the jazz singer became something of a modern-day equivalent of the African griot, using music not just to continue the jazz tradition but also to relate its history The concept of preserving the music’s heritage through jazz repertory companies, akin to the way symphonies propagate the classical music tradition, also gained momentum during this period. In 1973 , Chuck Israels founded his National Jazz Ensemble, and the following year George Wein promoted his New York Jazz Repertory Company. The Smithsonian Institution began taking an increasingly active role in preserving and promoting the jazz tradition during the 1970s , assisted admirably by jazz critic Martin WilliamsGunther Schuller pursued a wide range of activities during the decade- concerts, recordings, writings -to further the same agenda. Still other signs pointed to a revival of interest in the jazz tradition during the 1970s: more reissues of earlier material by record companies; expanding attention to the music’s history and heritage at academic institutions; and the publication of a growing numbers of jazz books and journals. Given these precedents, it would be wrong to claim that the mainstream acoustic jazz tradition was dormant before the arrival of Wynton Marsalis at the start of the 1980s. Rather than being its cause, Marsalis’s success was very much a product of this emerging historical consciousness. Even so, Marsalis must be seen as the key figure who, more than anyone else, vehemently asserted the centrality of this tradition in the face of fusion and free styles, and aimed to be its preserver, propagator, promoter, and publicist all rolled one. His efforts often ignited controversy , yet even the heated disputes that flamed around him can be read as signs of the growing importance of jazz’s inheritance from past generations in the way the art form would be conceptualized and commoditized by both insiders and outsidersAt times ideological and aesthetic issues have gotten muddled in these debates, and one suspects that it will take many years before Marsalis the musician can be dispassionately assessed, without being lost in discussions of the personal or political trappings of his art Marsalis’s rise to fame while barely out of his teens was an unprecedented event in the jazz world. No major jazz figurenot Ellington or Armstrong, Goodman or Gillespie had become so famous, so fast. The story of his formative experiences in music is compact and impressive. Born in Kenner, Louisiana, on October 18, 1961, Marsalis had the benefit of local teachers and mentors, such as Alvin Batiste and Danny Barker, who were living exponents of the rich New Orleans jazz traditionMarsalis’s home life was equally supportive: his father, Ellis, was a professional jazz pianist, and in time Wynton’s siblings Branford, Delfeayo, and Jason would also pursue musical careers of note. At age fourteen, Wynton played the Haydn Trumpet Concerto with the New Orleans Philharmonic. At seventeen , he was allowed to participate in the Tanglewood Festival, despite being the youngest attendee, and won an award as the outstanding brass playerAt eighteen, he entered Juilliard. At nineteen, he was performing with jazz masters such as Art Blakey and Herbie Hancock. At twenty, the CBS record label signed Marsalis simultaneously to their classical and jazz artist rostersan unprecedented move for the world’s most powerful recording company The wisdom of this step was quickly validated: within two years, Marsalis had won Grammy awards in both fields. Even casual listeners were now aware of his reputation. In the popular imagination, he was to the trumpet what Andrés Segovia was to the guitar, or Jascha Heifetz to the violin. Marsalis had a deep reservoir of talent to back up this flurry of attention. His recordings of the Haydn and Hummel trumpet concertos were impressive, and made clear that this young artist was just as formidable in front of a symphony orchestra as on the jazz bandstand. His performances with Blakey were, if anything, even more electrifying, and quickly stirred up both envy and admiration from other improvisers. Not since the days of Clifford Brown had a young jazz trumpeter shown such tone control or fluid execution. Listening to his featured solo on “How Deep Is the Ocean?,” recorded with the Jazz Messengers at the Keystone Korner in June 1981, one could easily imagine a spectacular future for this young virtuoso. His warm, fat tone was on exhibit in the slow introduction, and retained lucent clarity even in the fastest runs during the double-time section of the piece. A few months later, Blakey hired Wynton’s brother Branford to play saxophone with the Messengers, and a follow-up recording helped to amplify the growing reputations of both. The two brothers were prominently featured on Wynton’s eponymous debut jazz release for CBS . This project was more of a hodgepodge than a unified artistic statement, but many of its individual moments were compelling: “Hesitation found the Marsalis brothers evoking Ornette Coleman’s early style in a playful workout over “I Got Rhythm” changes; the shifting rhythmic moods of Wynton’s piece “Father Time ” prefigured the trumpeter’s later concern with complex compositional structures; on “Sister Cheryl Branford made his mark with an ingenious soprano sax solo that even outshined his brother’s formidable contribution; Wynton’s solo on “Who Can I Turn To” was a simple affair, but his trumpet sound was riveting in its depth and purityHis follow-up recordings Think of One and Hot House Flowers were similarly eclectic, ranging from the varied combo moods of the former to the sweet string orchestra-backed melodicism of the latter For another young trumpeter, these would have been laudable achievementsBut the intense publicity and attention directed at Marsalis had raised expectations to a fever pitch that such efforts could do little to fulfill. Jazz listeners and critics who had grown accustomed to a history of towering figures- Armstrong, Ellington, Parker, Gillespie, Davis, Coltrane, Coleman-each of whom had remade the music in his own image , expected something more revolutionary from the young trumpeter. His two follow-up recordings, Black Codes (from the Underground) and Mood, attempted to break new ground. The ensemble textures were now more interactive than on previous Marsalis recordings, and increasingly the rhythm section was challenging the trumpeter. Marsalis’s compositions were also growing much band shows how far they could push old jazz songs, incorporating the experimental metrics of J Mood into the heady motion of jam-session joustingon “A Foggy Day Marsalis superimposes 6/8; 12/85 / 4 and other meters onto the song’s basic foundation; during part of “Autumn Leavesthe band changes meter every barCaravanis masterfully reworked, once again with virtuosic cross- rhythms. Much credit was due to Marsalis’s rhythm section for this tour de forcePianist Marcus Roberts stood out as an advanced structural thinker in the mold of Monk more intricate. Mood,for example, is a twelve-bar blues, but the main melody employs twelve very unusual bars: the meter changes with virtually each one, completing a total of thirty-six beats broken down (according to this writer’s ears) in the pattern 4/2 / 1 / 3 / 3 / 4 / 1 / 4 / 4 / 3 / 4 / 3 Phryzzinian Manfrom Black Codes takes a similar circuitous route, starting with a bar -length pattern of 4/4 / 2 / 4 / 4 / 2 / 3 / 2 / 4 / 4 / 4 / 4 The band returns to straight 4/4 during the soloswhich is something of a letdown after the intriguing melody statementshowever, the ambitions of the compositions showed the direction in which Marsalis was now moving The trumpeter’s next two recordings, Marsalis Standard Time, Vol. and Live at Blues Alley , delivered on the promises of these previous projects and remain the most impressive examples of modernist combo playing in Marsalis’s After them, Marsalis overtly renounced this approach in favor of a traditionalist ethosIn contrast, these two mid-career projects betray little of the hyperconscious historicism that would become the dominant theme of the trumpeter’s later work, but are vibrant, forward- looking worksOn the first, Marsalis Standard Time, the Tristano, and Hancock and clearly delighted in pushing and prodding Marsalis, who in turn showed how far his phrasing had grown since his first recordingsJeff TainWatts and Robert Hurst, on drums and bass respectively, also proved adept at these games in running time, but equally skilled in maintaining the drive and swing of the music. Live at Blues Alley moved in this same direction, but with even greater intensity. This recording features the most forceful solos of the trumpeter’s career. The rhythm section plays at a feverish pitch for long stretches. The music moves confidently from modal to chordal structures and into different conceptions of time, but with a fiery, unrelenting undercurrent . On the whole , these two releases represent Marsalis’s most successful and fully realized attempt to expand the vocabulary of combo playing set out in the Miles Davis, John Coltrane , Bill Evans, and Ornette Coleman recordings from the 1960s. Yet at the peak of this forward-looking period, Marsalis was increasingly sounding a cautionary note. “I knew that when I did that album at Blues Alley that I wasn’t going to make another record in that type of styleall those really complex rhythms, playing fast, wild,” he explained . “Now I’m trying to really put together an approach through which I can create a more accurate tonal picture of my experiences , of the world come out of, of the things in my life that have the deepest meaning to me .” For Marsalis, this “world I come out ofmeant the sounds of his native New Orleans and the traditional African American roots of jazz. In retrospect , we can see that the resulting album, The Majesty of the Blues, initiated a new period in Marsalis’s career . In some respects , the new style marked an extension of earlier concernsone notes the shifting meters of the deceptively simple-sounding Hickory Dickory Dock -but in other ways, Marsalis was moving dramatically away from his previous practices . The trumpeter who, as a teenager, had amazed audiences with his pure, clean tone was now exploring the “dirtier” approach favored by prebop jazz musicians , increasingly distorting his sound with a mute. Instead of living up to his early reputation as the “next Clifford Brown” or his mid- career tag as the bandleader who would build on Miles’s work from the 1960s, Marsalis now seemed intent on reviving the 1920s aesthetic of King Oliver and Bubber MileyAt the same time, Marsalis’s melody lines were becoming more compact; as he would later describe it, he was focusing on “clarion” phrases rather than imitating saxophone lines. The ensemble textures were more open and uncluttered. the title track of The Majesty of the Blues Marsalis adopted a spacious 6/4 meter that gave the underlying blues progression an ambling, unhurried feeling. In place of the restless probing of Live at Blues Alley, a more restrained and controlled approach comes to the fore. In the age-old struggle between form and content, Wynton seemingly changed camps overnight, setting himself up now as an architect of tightly controlled sounds rather than the churning, burning soloist heading off into the great unknownAbove all, Marsalis was consciously trying to reconnect with the premodern jazz tradition of his hometownFor some of the music, Marsalis relied on seasoned jazz players flown in from New Orleans, including eighty-year-old Danny Barker. The same return to the roots was evident on Marsalis’s Resolution of Romance, a follow-up recording of standards, in which the seething polyrhythmic piano of Marcus Roberts was replaced by the more traditional approach of the trumpeter’s father, Ellis Marsalis The blues was now emerging as a focal concern for Marsalis. One suspects that the influence of critic and mentor Stanley Crouch, who was increasingly playing Boswell to Marsalis’s Johnson, was decisive in this regard, as was the aesthetic vision outlined by Albert Murray in his book Stomping the Blues. Crouch praised the latter, in his liner notes for The Majesty of the Blues, as a work “all musicians of my generation should read.” Clearly Marsalis had taken to heart Murray’s celebration of the blues tonality as the essence of African American music. Blues progressions had played a very modest role in Marsalis’s early works, but now his music was permeated with , IV, and V chords and bent notes, amply demonstrated on the three volumes of Soul Gestures in Southern Blues and the later Blue Interlude release. Only a few years earlier, Murray’s vision of jazz had seemed an exercise in nostalgia, out of touch with the currents of fusion, free, and European classical strains in the jazz world. But now the most famous young jazz musician of the day was championing the same cause. In the hands of Wynton Marsalis, jazz was coming full circle in a return to the roots that, in its own way, proved as shocking and unexpected as the earlier controversial career shifts of Miles, Coltrane, and the various jazz progressives of the 1960s. This turnaround was bound to puzzle those who had looked for Marsalis to extend the ” advances” of earlier leading jazz figures. Marsalis’s new rhythm section was clearly more reverential than his early accompanists, rarely pushing the trumpeter the way Marcus Roberts, Jeff ” Tain Watts, or Kenny Kirkland had in previous bands. Criticism was further spurred by Marsalis’s outspoken attitudes. In interviews, the trumpeter had always been uncommonly blunt, not hesitating to ridicule other musicians, even some of the most famous, taking a polemical spin to questions, and frequently showing that he did not need to have a trumpet in hand to blow his own horn. “When first came to New York in 1979the established cats who should have beensetting an example were bullshittin, wearing dresses and trying to act like rock stars,he had once confided to jazz writer Francis Davis. “So when people heard me, they knew it was time to start takin’ care of business again.Marsalis was especially critical of Miles Davis, telling one interviewer that “Bird would roll over in his grave if he knew what was going on.Some time later, when Marsalis tried to sit in with Davis’s group at a jazz festival, Miles stopped the band cold in mid-tune and refused to continue until Wynton had left the stage Marsalis’s music in the 1990s increasingly highlighted his role as composer and section player in settings that often downplayed his skills as a soloist . His band was expanded to a septet, and this move was accompanied by an even more pronounced departure from the aggressive and uninhibited attitudes of his earlier quartet and quintet efforts. During the course of In This House, on This Morning, which was given its premiere in May 1992 at Avery Fisher Hall in Lincoln Center, a beachcomber’s assortment of styles got showcased onstage by the seven instrumentalists, who were joined by vocalist Marion Williams: the gospel sounds of the sanctified church; the twelve-bar blues; boisterous New work songs, blues, and other cultural bric-a-brac from a bygone eraThis historical eclecticism would constantly reemerge, in ever-differing forms, in Marsalis’s later work, whether he was sharing the stage with country artist Willie Nelson, collaborating with Ghanaian drum master Yacub Addy on the trumpeter’s composition Congo Square, or devoting tribute albums to everyone from Jelly Roll Morton to Thelonious Monk Yet Marsalis’s successes in funding and promoting such projects did little to stifle the surrounding controversies- much so that commentators even began talking of a jazz “war” between progressives and traditionalists. When Marsalis took on the role of artistic director of the jazz program at Lincoln Center, harsh economics entered the picture as well. Some critics complained of the exclusionary tone of the Lincoln Center proceedings , carping that those aligned with Marsalis’s vision of the jazz tradition were celebratedand financed with commissions and employment-while players whose aesthetic was too avant- garde or too European were neglectedWhen Marsalis was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music-the first time an artist had earned this honor for a jazz work (although it should be noted that former Benny Goodman band member Mel Powell had won it in 1990 and Third Stream guru Gunther Schuller did the same in 1994, albeit not for jazz compositions) an event that should have been celebrated by fans as the end of the unspoken segregation practiced by the judges of America’s most cherished music award was instead treated as just one more grievance by a vocal group of Marsalis detractors. At the height of the hostilities, which appeared to peak around the year 2000, almost anything relating to the trumpeter seemed destined to fuel the flames of contention In some instances, Marsalis made missteps that contributed to the backlash, yet with the passing years he increasingly grew into the role of global ambassador for jazz that had been thrust upon him when he was scarcely out of his teens. His mentoring of young musicians, his advocacy for the music’s importance in the broader culture, his ability to mobilize financial resources, all contributed to the greater good of jazzAt the same time, his critics sometimes conveyed the impression that their resentment was more an anger that jazz history had not gone some other way, more futuristic, more out theremore whateverMarsalis was a convenient target for such attacks but, in this instance, even his adversaries may have been giving him too much credit. As we have seen, Marsalis’s success was more a result of renewed interest in the jazz heritage than its cause . Branford Marsalis’s evolving career reflected a careless disregard for the rigid hierarchies espoused by his younger brother. If Wynton championed mainstream jazz, Branford played with rock bands; as Wynton’s music grew more structured, Branford increasingly delighted in loose, blowing dates; when Wynton frequented Lincoln Center, Branford took a prominent television gig on the Tonight Show; while Wynton focused on the traditional sounds of gospel and blues, Branford experimented with the contemporary sounds of funk and hip- hop. But under the superficial laxity of Branford Marsalis lay a musical mind capable of the most rigorous logic. His melodic lines unfolded with a structural elegance at times reminiscent of Sonny Rollins , developing with clarity and precision , but not without incorporating surprising twists and turns along the way . For a time , his devil- may-care choice of engagements raised concerns about whether he most valued artistry or mere fame, but as he approached his fortieth birthday , this wide – ranging improviser began focusing more and more on no-nonsense jazz initiatives of high caliber. In such settings, he has proven that he deserves mention on any short list of the finest saxophonists of his generation. During the 1980s, it was sometimes hard to separate the personal influence of the Marsalis siblings from the institutional impact of record companies hoping to replicate their success stories. These moves, especially those of the CBS label, often took on a formulaic aspect. Eager to find a second Wynton ,” CBS signed Terence Blanchard , a teenage New Orleans trumpeter who had replaced Marsalis in the Blakey band and who frequently collaborated with a fellow Crescent City instrumentalist , saxophonist Donald Harrison . Pianist and vocalist Harry Connick Jr. , another New Orleans native, was also signed by CBS when barely out of his teens. Connick showed very real talent, especially as a singer, and exuded a rare degree of stage presence for a young musician, yet these gifts were hyped beyond recognition when the publicity machine tried to anoint him as the next Frank Sinatra ” on the basis of a few early, albeit promising recordings . Trumpeter Marlon Jordan was also signed to the label while still a teenager – his hometown , few will be surprised to learn, was New Orleans. These artists recordings were often produced by Delfeayo Marsalis, who also became an important participant in the expanding New Orleans quarter of the CBS jazz empire. Other labels joined the New Orleans craze, with MCA /Impulse promoting Henry Butler, an exciting pianist and vocalist with a dynamic, heartfelt style; Verve signing Nicholas Payton, a sweet-toned trumpeter who was barely out of his teens at the time; and Novus recording the aforementioned Delfeayo Marsalis, who showed his skill in playing the trombone in a manner reminiscent of J. J. Johnson. This concept-driven campaign, so obsessively focused on the city scrawled on an artist’s birth certificate, threatened to collapse under its own weight . CBS Records, acquired by Sony in 1987, eventually parted ways with every one of the New Orleans artists it had signed, including Wynton Marsalis. For the most part, the musicians swept up in this Big Easy fever were genuine talents, even if the fame and expectations thrust upon them from the start were new phenomena in the jazz world. As the preceding chapters of this book make clear, many of jazz’s greatest figures of previous eras never enjoyed a contract with a major label, and others did so only after mastering their craft the slow way in the trenches, working in someone else’s band or on tightly budgeted leader dates for small labels. Some critics feared that the industry’s quest for young blood would create a generation of instrumentalists with unripened talent or lacking the deep commitment to a set of musical values that comes only from hard dues paying. Others lamented how many brilliant artists in mid-career, mainstream players born between 1940 and 1955-pianists Jessica Williams, Kenny Barron, Steve Kuhn, and Adam Makowicz; trumpeters Tom Harrell, Valery Ponomarev, and Bobby Shew; saxophonists Bobby Watson, Arthur Blythe, Ricky Ford, and Jane Ira Bloom trombonist Steve Turre (to cite but a few)-seemed part of a lost generation who were mostly forgotten by the power brokers and magazines, seen as too old to be part of the youth movement, but too young to be respected veterans from the early days of jazz. Yet, as subsequent events would confirm, this flowering of the traditionalist movement in jazz was much more than a passing fad or a short-lived marketing angle pursued by the record labels. The concurrent spread and institutionalization of jazz education during this same period no doubt played a key role in this process . At almost the same moment that Wynton Marsalis was embracing a more traditional musical vocabulary , the National Association of Jazz Educators , a modest organization of music professionals and teachers started in the 1960s , changed its name to the grander International Association for Jazz Education and would build its annual get-together into the single biggest event in the jazz world-a distinction it maintained until the organization’s collapse from financial stresses in 2008. Who could have imagined , back in the Swing Era or Jazz Age, that the biggest annual jazz party would coalesce around a collection of educators ? Equally surprising to old-timers would be the music’s journey from the nightclubs of Fifty- Second Street to Lincoln Center . Jazz at Lincoln Center had also started on a small scale , with a budget of less than $1 million when it was established , in 1986 , as a department of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts . But a generation later, JALC’s budget had grown to over $50 million- making it the biggest power broker in the jazz world of the new millennium . These been profound changes , yet in an era of codification , institutionalization , and historical consciousness -raising , such shifts should not be surprising But even jazz fans who love the music’s rich heritage can look upon this state of affairs with some degree of concern Is the history of jazz threatening to foreclose its future? On the other hand, is it reasonable to expect that a new revolution in the music will take place on cue every five or ten years (as it did so obligingly in the past)? Is it the jazz world that is amiss or merely our perspective ? How valid is our ingrained expectation that the music should always be progressive , always break the mold, always embrace the newest new thing ? Is it not enough simply for music to be enjoyable , intelligent , well played? These are deep questions , beyond the scope of this work, and relevant to many arts and genres beyond the world of jazz . It suffices to point out that, after five hundred years as a dominant aesthetic vision , the very notion of an art form following a progressive evolution , quasi- scientific in its continual ” breakthroughs ,” is now tottering at its foundations . Various New Age, minimalist , and other styles of art, for all their limitations -and though their aesthetic underpinnings are largely unformed -suggest the possibility of a “degree -zero” style (to borrow the terminology of critic Roland Barthes ), one that has no relation to the time warp of advancing techniques . In weapons that still might have the capacity to shock and awe The Postmodern Impulse a complementary vein, other aestheticians have spoken of the arrival of the “end” of the history of art-a vision that, to some, represents the glorious advent of a nonlinear age of unconstrained creativity, but, to others, implies a frightening abandonment of our previous assumptions and points of reference. Responding to this set of circumstances, an alternative approach to the tradition emerged around this same time, espoused by a group of progressive (and often irreverent) postmodernists. Starting a few years before Wynton Marsalis began his ascent to the pinnacle of jazz fame, these less- heralded artists were attempting a more confrontational approach to the various preexisting styles and vocabularies of jazz. Realizing that the music’s weighty tradition could not be avoided completely , these postmodern players nonetheless refused to be mere acolytes celebrating the past. Instead, they applied a deconstructive approach , a willfully manipulative attitude that aimed to transform elements pulled from the jazz (and non-jazz) musical archives into building blocks for new hybrid sounds . These performers grappled with their musical inheritance not to turn jazz into a museum piece-far from it-but rather seeking aural The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing” runs a famous aphorism from the ancient poet Archilochus-a saying that inspired Oxford don Isaiah Berlin to categorize visionary individuals as either foxes or hedgehogs, based on whether their careers emphasize single- minded allegiance to one big concept or constant shifts from idea to idea. The distinction is useful in understanding the postmodern turn in jazz, which aimed to change the art form from the home of heroic hedgehogs into a frenetic free-for- all of fleet foxes. jazz was built by big personalities with strongly defined individual styles, in the waning years of the twentieth century it would be inherited by eclectic improvisers who were comfortable with a range of idioms and could mix and match them depending on the setting or their inclination. Starting in the 1970s, the leaders of the jazz world were increasingly those who knew “many things” and delighted in the opportunity to show audiences the full range of their The AACM began in 1965 with the aim of helping (1967), Bowie’s Numbers 1 & 2 (1967), Abrams’s Levels and progressive musicians find performing opportunities, Degrees of Light (1968), Braxton’s Three Compositions of New rehearsal space, and other career support. Pianist Muhal Jazz (1968), and the Art Ensemble of Chicago’s People in Richard Abrams served as the organization’s first president Sorrow (1969), Tutankhamun (1969), and A Jackson in Your -his Experimental Band, a large free jazz ensemble House (1969)The title of Mitchell’s Sound, a project that established in 1961, had helped lay the groundwork for helped usher in this new Chicago-based movement, gave the AACM, and many of Abrams’s later recordings would testimony to an especially vital aspect of this multifaceted stand out as important statements of the movement’s musicLike Albert Ayler, these artists often focused on aesthetic vision. Other early participants included Roscoe qualities of sound as opposed to conventional delineations Mitchell, Joseph Jarman, Anthony Braxton, and Lester Bowieof harmony, melody, and rhythm . Standard notation was In its charter as a nonprofit organization, approved on insufficient to contain these nonscalar explorationswhich August , 1965, the AACM outlined nine purposes, which to some degree were throwbacks to African and early African included the cultivation and training of young musicians, American systems of organizing musicgiven the frequency the presentation of concerts and recitals, the creation of with which the sonic textures moved beyond the twelve employment opportunities for performers, and the fostering standard tones. Yet this was only one part of the Chicago of “the tradition of cultured musicians handed down from school’s approachUnlike Ayler and other early avant- the pastIn time, the group would expand its scope gardists, the Chicagoans often downplayed the intensity of to sponsoring recordings, producing radio shows, helping so-called energy jazz in favor of a comparatively open sound inner-city students, and many other behind-the- scenes They were less enamored with “hot solos (that grand efforts of advocacy and community service. tradition invented a halfcentury earlier in the same city) Important early recordings documenting the AACM’s and embraced instead a more layered and episodic approach music included Mitchell’s Sound (1966), Jarman’s Song For to composition and performance. Other trademarks of the emerging Chicago school included diverse borrowings from other genres, aspects of performance art, minimalist and aleatory tendencies, and a pan-African/world music sensibility In many ways, the work of the AACM musicians signaled the first stirrings of postmodernism in jazz. Increasingly, the younger progressive players in the jazz world would temper their quest for new, radical sounds in favor of a pronounced eclecticism, one that included the embrace-sometimes the vivisection of earlier styles and other traditions. In this postmodern sensibility, a two-stepping cakewalk could share the stage with an Aylerian exercise in saxophone glossolalia. This postmodernism was also reflected in a deconstructive attitude toward the music, a desire to break down styles into their constituent elements, sometimes focusing on one isolated aspect, at other times combining the pieces into surprising new wholes. This music was capable of evoking the high seriousness of earlier progressive styles, but postmodernism also experimented with a range of other perspectives including-but not limited to-pastiche, put- on, and parody. In this regard, the jazz world was following a path that other art forms had already trod. Its irreverent and encyclopedic approach to manipulating the materials at handlargely made up of bits and pieces of past traditions -was comparable to contemporary techniques adopted by practitioners in literature, theater, and the visual arts. Carla Bley’s 1971 opera Escalator over the Hill, two hours of music drawing on the skills of fifty-three performers, presented an ambitious blend of avant-garde, jazz fusion, and classical influences, and stands out as one of the key works in this new pastiche style. An intriguing ambivalence informed music of this sort, which seemed to build on traditions, while simultaneously deflating them. A series of later Bley projects amplified on these diverse sources of influence, with a playful, postmodern tinge often present, as in her ” Spangled Banner Minor,” which scrambles the US national anthem and other patriotic airs into a peculiar jumble of the familiar and strange. Other Bley pieces emulate the sound of a needle skipping on a phonograph record, or scales played by a student at a music lesson. Again and again, Bley showed that she had closely studied the jazz tradition, but she seemed just as conversant with circus music, Italian film soundtracks, Motown soul grooves, and psychedelic rock, among other disparate sources of inspiration. This was unpredictable, and often flamboyant music , but Bley took an equivocal attitude to stardom. Attuned to the collaborative spirit of the postmodern movement , she was just as happy to serve as a member of a collective-for example, as a key contributor to Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra or as composer behind Gary Burton’s A Genuine Tong Funeral album-as in leading her own band. This seemingly paradoxical combination of swashbuckling boldness and self-effacing give-and-take would become a trademark of the era. Steve Lacy’s work from this period also anticipated a number of currents that would crystallize in the work of later postmodernists such as Anthony Braxton, David Murray, and John Zorn, including a blending of a progressive aesthetic with an interest in celebrating past stylists , as well as a commitment to frequent recording in diverse settings Born in New York in 1934, Lacy had started his career as an exponent of the Dixieland revival, and at a young age he performed alongside Henry “Red ” Allen, Pee Wee Russell, and other pioneers of early jazzBut he quickly made the leap into the avant-garde, and at age twenty-one played soprano saxophone on Cecil Taylor’s debut album. Like many of the postmodernists, Lacy showed that he could operate with ease in both highly structured and free-form settings, but he was especially skilled in reinterpreting the canonic works of the great jazz composers, especially the songs of Thelonious Monk. Yet in his hands, these classic pieces never sounded like cover versions or tributes to the pastrather more like spiritual exercises that aimed to penetrate into deep inner meanings hidden inside the music. Over time, Lacy made it clear that his artistic vision recognized few boundaries, and his later efforts cast an even wider net, incorporating electronics, language, vocals, and dance. The New York loft scene of the 1970s drew on many of these postmodern tendencies and served as an especially fertile meeting ground for the different schools of progressive music trying to establish themselves in the jazz world. A series of recordings from 1976 drawn from performances at Rivbea Studio, the loft home of saxophonist Sam Rivers, and released under the name Wildflowers, showcased the tremendous heterogeneity of this hotbed of experimentation. One of the bands highlighted was Air, a trio featuring saxophonist Henry Threadgill, bassist Fred Hopkins, and drummer Steve McCall, whose work was reflective of the emerging aesthetic and as likely to embrace Scott Joplin as Albert Ayler. In addition to his legacy with Air, Threadgill forged a fresh, highly experimental body of work with larger combos drawing on sometimes surprising instruments (accordion , pipa, oud, tuba, French horn, etc.), most notably with his 1990s band Very Very Circus. In these various settings , Threadgill’s visionary music implied a rejection of existing jazz hierarchies and an egalitarian openness to a broad range of influences. After the often doctrinaire avant-garde attitudes of the 1960s, many musicians and fans welcomed this approach , one that avoided strict adherence to any one school and celebrated the possibilities of sound over the rigidity of ideologies . These new currents would flow far beyond Chicago and New York . The work of Hamiet Bluiett , Julius Hemphill , Oliver Lake, and other musicians associated with the Black Artists Group in St. Louis revealed a similarly expansive approach to jazz, which encompassed aspects of theater , poetry, and visual arts . On the West Coast , John Carter, who along with Bobby Bradford had formed a Los Angeles splinter group building on the avant -garde principles of Ornette Coleman , created a magnum opus of postmodernism during the 1980s with his five-volume Roots and Folklore project, which chronicled in words and music the history of African Americans . In Europe, Dutch reed player and composer Willem Breuker would pursue a similarly eclectic postmodern style with his Kollektief, which was formed in the mid-1970s. In Britain , Mike Westbrook brought everything from clowns and light shows to the poetry of William Blake into his similarly expansive view of jazz performance. Yet the biggest boost to this deconstructive approach would come from the AACM musicians. The influence of Ayler still predominated on many of the early Chicago school recordings. But it began to coalesce with other postmodern elements in the evolving work of the Art Ensemble of Chicago . The Art Ensemble’s motto, “Great Black MusicAncient to Modern” fittingly denoted their attitude toward the tradition . Fragments of gospel or funk might rub shoulders with dissonance and noise. A stately waltz might disintegrate into musical anarchy. Their fondness for unusual garb and makeup and their borrowings from other genres (theater, dance, pantomime, comedy) validated the performance art elements that had long lurked below the
After Reading Ch. 9 answer the following questions:
Q: As jazz embraced new styles and fusion, were older styles dead? why or why not?
Q: Norman Granz gathered which artists for his Pablo Label in 1973?
Q: Who was Joe Pass compared to on his 1973 album Virtuoso?
Q: Ella Fitzgerald with Granz had what kind of relationship?
Q: What projects came from this relationship?
Q: Describe the jazz vocal tradition post fusion era; what were vocalists doing with the music?
NEXT, Listen to the following videos and answer the following questions:
This track is a cover song of Tears in Heaven: 
Pat Metheny and Joshua Redman deliver an amazing cover of this Eric Clapton song. 

Q: What are your impressions of this cover song?
Q: Is this Jazz? ( there is improvisation, but that is not always the factor for things being classified as jazz)
Jazz crimes:

Q: What are the differences in sound and musical style between Tears in Heaven and Jazz Crimes?
Q: How would you describe this song?
Q: If we had to classify this as a specific style of jazz what would you classify it as? (blues, RnB, Latin, Ballad, Free Jazz, Funk etc. )
This is a duet composed by another star of contemporary jazz Ben Wendel alongside Joshua Redman.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGPZ6aLWcnI&ab_channel=BenWendel-Saxophonist%2FComposerLinks to an external site.
Q: Is this Jazz, despite it only being two saxophones? 
Q: Did you enjoy two honking saxophones together without any other instruments?
Q: Did this song groove?
Q: Describe the interplay between the two performers; what are your thoughts?
NEXT, Take a listen to a few of Chris Potter’s songs and answer the following questions: 

Q: Describe Potter’s Saxophone sound and what do you like or dislike about it?
Q: Describe the interplay between Potter and the group, what stands out to you as a listener? 
Q: Is this a up-tempo (fast) song, or is it a Ballad (slow, lyrical) song? 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeRQWQnCuuY&ab_channel=ShaiMaestroLinks to an external site.
Q: Describe Potter’s Saxophone sound and what do you like or dislike about it?
Q: Any differences in his sound between both songs?
Q: Describe the interplay between Potter and the group, what stands out to you as a listener? 
Q: Is this a up-tempo (fast) song, or is it a Ballad (slow, lyrical) song? 
NEXT< After reading the small section on Geri Allen answer the following: 
Listen to the following songs in this playlist: 
Track 1 RTG and Track 8 Lullaby of the Leaves

Q: What are your impressions of Allen's piano playing?
Q: Do you hear any contrasts in musical style between the two tracks? 
Q: How would you describe her improvised melodies? 
Q: How would you describe her background playing? (piano comping is the musical term for this)
Q: Do you enjoy her style of jazz or not? why?
Keep in mind she came from a University setting and not from the music scene like Louis Armstrong as an example. This can be seen as not authentic to diehard old school jazz snobs.
Q: What was interesting about Brad's style of jazz; how deeply rooted were his musical connections to jazz? 
Q: His early work cause comparisons to which piano master before him and what was his reaction to these comparisons?
Listen to Paranoid Android, both versions and describe differences between them that you feel you hear. 
Q: Are there any jazz related aspects to Brad's version?
Q: Do you like his version; what about it do you enjoy?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lt8AfIeJOxw&ab_channel=Radiohead-TopicLinks to an external site.
– Radiohead's Version
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHxuIKjZEiQ&ab_channel=jeff5429Links to an external site.- Brad's Version
Please answer the questions from the reading to watching the videos I have provided. When doing the answers and questions please put the question and then the answer together. Such as (question) ….(Answer right under). Answer the questions with a Upper Case "Q:" and answer with "A:" Under it.