TT 561, part two: "Can you play 'Cherokee?'"

Sorting the Wynton Marsalis legacy: Jazz in Europe, Jazz at Juilliard, and the “dreaded bass direct”

Last week I reposted various surveys and interviews connected to Wynton Marsalis.

Yesterday there was a look at an old controversy with the AACM. Today is the last.

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Wynton Marsalis was front page news in the 1980s, mainly for leading the charge to reclaim a specific set of traditional values. After all this time, some of the effects have become clear.

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Europeans seem to have a greater interest in jazz than Americans, at least in terms of paying for the records and the gigs. Some of it is institutional, some of it is cultural. Dave Liebman wrote:

The socialist political tendencies that marked post-war politics have led to government funding which contributes to the survival of the arts. Though the major beneficiaries are opera, theater, and orchestras, jazz has received its share of the largesse…Finally, the romantic image of the smoky jazz club and the whole jazz culture in general resonate loudly in Europe–where the concept of the café as a meeting place to “hang out” is part and parcel of the lifestyle. To sum it up, I quote that famous impresario, George Wein (founder of the Newport and JVC Jazz Festivals): “If it weren’t for Europe, there would be no jazz!”

European jazz education is a growth industry, and at this point the many young European players are competing for not just gigs but competing for teaching positions, just like in America. In a related topic, the critical assessment of European jazz is also a growth industry.

Matt Merewitz recently bravely risked some truth-telling with his post, “American Exceptionalism Could Be the Road to Ruin: A meditation on ‘trade imbalances’ in jazz between America and Europe.”

…not enough of us are really listening…

If our American musicians want to keep crossing the Atlantic the way we have for the last 90 years, we’re going to have to face some uncomfortable truths about how this market is evolving.

At the annual jazzahead! conference in Bremen, Germany, I heard a common refrain from multiple European presenters, along the lines of: “We don’t really need American jazz anymore.”

It wasn’t a hostile pronouncement; nor an insult. It was very matter-of-fact. The dependency that once defined the relationship between American and European jazz cultures is quietly fading, and a new dynamic is taking hold: one where Europe is asserting its independence—creatively, institutionally, and economically.

I like lots of European jazz, I always have, and I like it best when it sounds “local,” meaning that a specific region is perceptible within the blend of influences. (FWIW, I always tell my students: Three of my biggest influences are Django Bates, who sounds English, Masabumi Kikuchi, who sounds Japanese, and Benoît Delbecq, who sounds French.)

Of course, some of the local music at a typical European jazz festival isn’t that good, and some of it is barely jazz. Same as it ever was. However, I do think it is worth remembering that Wynton Marsalis and cohort gave many a pass to ignore the tradition. (This is “the law of unintended consequences” in action.)

From the 2004 article “Euro Jazz Innovators” by Nathan Holoway:

We are in one of the most conservative musical times in the history of jazz, at least in the US, where most of this wonderful, genius music was created. With the return of Dexter Gordon from Europe and arrival of Wynton Marsalis, jazz was ushered into its first real Neo-Classic Era. Now multitudes of Jazz Orchestras, such as Lincoln Center, re-hash old standards almost note for note. Wynton and Branford Marsalis, Marcus Roberts, James Carter and Nicholas Payton are all extremely talented musicians, but they’re not being “innovative.” And “innovation” is what has propelled jazz into the creative music that we know.

A few musicians are still innovating. We don’t hear about them as much but their importance is extremely valid, because they’re creating something fresh, original, and exciting. Innovating. It’s obvious from this list that Europe is on the move as far as jazz innovation is concerned.

Stuart Nicholson wrote a whole book on the topic, Is Jazz Dead?: Or Has It Moved to a New Address? From the American blurb:

Is Jazz Dead? examines the state of jazz in America at the turn of the twenty-first century. Musicians themselves are returning to New Orleans, Swing, and Bebop styles, while the work of the '60s avant-garde and even '70s and '80s jazz-rock is roundly ignored. Meanwhile, global jazz musicians are creating new and exciting music that is just starting to be heard in the United States, offering a viable alternative to the rampant conservatism here.

Avant-garde jazz has some lovely European traditions, but at the time of writing, both Nathan Holoway and Stuart Nicolson were not hot on noisy experiments, but hot on E.S.T. and Erik Truffaz, meaning that their idea of jazz innovation was relatively conservative: beats, drones, dance, and a smidge of electronics—and with very little tough threading in the instrumental modern jazz tradition. Over time, this approach has become commonplace in Europe, and in some ways foreshadowed the success of Kamasi Washington in America a few years later.

I am not going to get into the weeds further on this topic at the moment, but the reason these two posts are called “Can you play ‘Cherokee?’” is because I think the time-honored ritual of the jam session has value. Jan Garbarek is a thought leader for European jazz; recently I was listening to Garbarek’s first record Til Vigdis, 1967 trio with Jon Christensen and either Arild Andersen or Per Løberg. Wow! They are killing it in a traditional manner. They certainly could sit in with Wynton on an uptempo “Cherokee.” This command of the tradition served them well when they moved on to shaping the 1970s landscape in cohort with Manfred Eicher and ECM.

Some of it is simply about respecting black music from America. All my favorite European players have some private relationship to all that. It is pretty dangerous aesthetically for a young jazz player to have no black heroes.

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Back home in America, this Emmet Cohen poster bums me out:

the two greatest personalities in jazz get an impersonal celebration

Cohen is an excellent pianist—like an amazingly excellent pianist— but after listening to him for more than a decade, I have no idea how he plays, meaning I can’t recognize him in a blindfold test. He just goes from one borrowing to another with a big smile on his face. This is now common from a certain crew. Straight-ahead jazz, very well done, and about as idiosyncratic as going to the gym, checking your stocks, and talking to ChatGPT.

It suits the moment, apparently.

A lot of the versions of “Cherokee” and other standard repertoire on YouTube from this cohort are “good” but that’s all. In my opinion, you can’t really play “Cherokee” until you are playing your own stuff on “Cherokee.” (That’s why I dig Wynton’s encores of “Cherokee” so much, his language is totally personal.)

Whatever all this is—I don’t really understand it and don’t want to understand it, either—it seems to be part of the Wynton Marsalis legacy, not just through JALC but also through the Juilliard School, where Wynton has led the jazz program since 2014. I am sure that (as within any student body) there are plenty of disagreements and experiments happening at Juilliard Jazz, but the overall impression is that of a specific party line. (Cohen himself went to Manhattan School, but many of his associates either attended or teach at Juilliard.)

The first time I was confronted with style-shifting was maybe 2009. I was seated next to Stanley Crouch listening to Eric Reed and Herlin Riley play “Body and Soul” at Dizzy’s. Reed and Riley are obviously great players, but they rendered the tune as a straight ballad, then went into the Coltrane double-time changes, then went into something else. It was a collection of literal quotations within the sound of the band. I asked Stanley, “What are they doing? This is bullshit.” Stanley was quiet for thirty minutes, then finally said, “This is what they do now, they move around taking from the classic records. I like it fine.”

Well, I don’t like it fine.

It is worth recalling that the “Young Lion” movement in the 1980s was a sound and an idiom. It was personal. The drummers were key: Jeff “Tain” Watts, Ralph Peterson, Marvin “Smitty” Smith. Almost as important were the piano players: Kenny Kirkland, Mulgrew Miller, Donald Brown, Geri Allen. Just a magnificent roar of black jazz. There were allusions, of course, there always are, but it was still a sound.

By the ‘90s things had smoothed out a bit, especially from Wynton, who went from having Tain to Herlin Riley in his band.

Again, I am not going to get into the weeds further on this topic at the moment, but I’ll be listening for those next on deck who can command the true tradition with true personality. The ‘90’s team that I found most impressive was Mark Turner, Jason Moran, Brad Mehldau, Kurt Rosenwinkel, and their cohort. They may not have had a name like “Young Lions” to sell a movement, but at least something of a cohering vision was palpable. (These are also my friends, so I’m obviously not without bias.)

I still haven’t heard an overarching next step of dealing with standard forms yet, although I like plenty of blues players from Joel Ross to Nicole Glover to Sullivan Fortner and a few others. Immanuel Wilkins with Micah Thomas is impressive.

Well, as Jimmy Rushing sang, “Hurry down, sunshine, and see what tomorrow brings.”

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When looking for a Woody Shaw solo to play for Wynton Marsalis in our interview, I decided on “Fenja,” from Dexter Gordon’s 1977 album Homecoming. It’s a beautiful solo with long lines on a standard chord progression, and Wynton was properly appreciative of Shaw’s genius. What I didn’t anticipate—although I should have—was Wynton making gentle fun of Stafford James’s bass tone. His teasing was a reminder of part of Wynton’s accomplishment.

James is a very good jazz bassist, but the simple fact is that many of the swinging acoustic jazz records made between 1970 and the advent of Wynton Marsalis have a problematic bass sound. In performance, it was all amplified pick-up, and when recording the bass, the engineers usually put the signal of pick-up directly to tape. To compound the problem, the strings of the bass were often far closer to the fingerboard than in the ‘60s and ‘50s, making for a walking line that was heard but not felt. Strangely, the engineers often also mixed the bass hotter than the drums. Sometimes on a ‘70s jazz record all you can hear is the bass!

Delfeayo Marsalis produced several Young Lion records, and I believe Delfeayo also authored the pronouncement featured within: “To obtain more wood sound from the bass, this album was recorded without usage of the dreaded bass direct.”

A fun sentimental listen is Chick Corea’s Three Quartets with Michael Brecker, Eddie Gomez, and Steve Gadd. This record is from 1981, and just about the last gasp of the old guard from before the Young Lions exploded on the scene. The three pieces on the record are acoustic swing, but the affect is wrong, for these quartets sound like electric fusion, not acoustic jazz. It has to do with the tones, the sound, and the attitude. Icy machismo is neither glorified by electric amplification nor tempered by earthiness. Three Quartets lives in some half-life of badly recorded, too-slick instrumental virtuosity exhibiting a false sense of security.

It would be fascinating to hear exactly the same music played exactly the same way but produced by Delfeayo Marsalis. Perhaps it would have much more power. As it stands, how harsh to compare Three Quartets to any Wynton Marsalis record from the 1980s! The Wynton records have the icy machismo, but they also have earthiness, and the result is a sound TKO.

Chick Corea and Michael Brecker got the memo, and soon had warmer-toned musicians in their acoustic bands presenting concerts that sounded more like jazz. (See, for example, the difference between Corea’s ‘80s Akoustic band with John Patitucci and Dave Weckl and the later Trilogy with Christian McBride and Brian Blade. Patitucci may be the musician most affected by the buffeting winds of bass fashion: He sounds like a completely different player in his early years than after 1990 or so.)

Wynton probably doesn’t get enough credit for this sea-change. He yelled at his elders, “Grow up and play this music with respect!” and a surprising number of those elders meekly complied. This was good!

(BTW I am an Eddie Gomez fan, not on Three Quartets exactly but in general. He’s sort of ludicrous at times but his energy pairs with Richard Davis, they are bassists who instantly change the sound and style of a band in an interesting way. Also, Gomez can really swing; all the great drummers I know love playing with Gomez.)