Wynton Marsalis and Eric Clapton Play The Blues

[Ed Jewett]

Wynton Marsalis and Eric Clapton Play The Blues

SIDEMEN
Wynton Marsalis (trumpet), Eric Clapton (guitar, vocal), Dan Nimmer (piano), Carlos Henriquez (bass), Ali Jackson (drums), Marcus Printup (trumpet), Victor Goines (clarinet), Chris Crenshaw (trombone, vocals), Don Vappie (banjo), Chris Stainton (keyboard).

[B]DESCRIPTION
New York City's premier jazz venue got the blues last April when Wynton Marsalis and Eric Clapton performed together in Rose Theater at Frederick P. Rose Hall, home of Jazz at Lincoln Center for two sold-out shows dedicated to vintage blues. The extraordinary collaboration, billed as Wynton Marsalis & Eric Clapton Play the Blues, paired these musical virtuosos with members of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra as they brought to life a repertoire of songs selected by Clapton and arranged by Marsalis.
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[B][B]LINER NOTES
When Louis Armstrong was asked about different forms of popular music in the mid-1960′s, he responded, "…all these different kinds of fantastic music you hear today course it's all guitars now I used to hear that way back in the old sanctified churches where the sisters used to shout till their petticoats fell down." He was not attempting to navigate the generation gap. Pops was acknowledging the foundational experiences that inform all rhythm section' music. He was contextualizing a heritage that includes the Irish jig, West African musical traditions, the English Hymn, and the Negro spirituals synthesized and focused into one transcendent form: the blues.

When Eric Clapton and I first met, we began a friendship based in a love of music, nurtured in the mutual heritage we share, and ultimately expressed in the way we play with each other. From our first interactions, I recognized his intensity and seriousness about music. It is the result of countless hours of solitary practice throughout teenhood, of working and reworking the results of that practice on stage, night after night, all over the world. It is lightened by the joy of inventing new things to play, and humanized through the willful creation of community, regardless of personal situation. The lifelong pursuit of music evidences a deep love, but requires even deeper commitment from the extremely successful, because nothing extinguishes creativity with more fanfare than fame. Eric's no-nonsense approach to playing and encyclopedic knowledge of blues styles testify to a passionate and evolving relationship with music, something we both pursue with single-minded focus.

In that spirit, we wanted these concerts to sound like people playing music they know and love, not like a project. We agreed to let the music show how the blues continues to speak with clarity and immediacy across all lines of segregation. We combined the sound of an early blues jump-band with the sound of New Orleans jazz to accommodate the integration of guitar/trumpet lead and to give us the latitude to play different grooves from the Delta to the Caribbean and beyond. New Orleans is a mythic birthplace of jazz, the blues, gospel, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll. It is the perfect place to find our common heritage. We decided to use the instrumentation of King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band plus two (electric guitar and piano), because they transformed the world of music with a set of 1923 recordings and, with performances like Dipper Mouth Blues', forever established the blues as a centerpiece of jazz.

Eric selected all of the songs on this concert (except Layla' which was requested by our bassist, Carlos Henriquez, and arranged as a Crescent City dirge/swing). From the 4-on-the-floor swing of Ice Cream' and the southern slow-drag of Joe Turner's Blues' to the traveling blues of Joliet Bound' and the boogie-woogie jump of Kidman Blues', from the humorous refrain of an oft-disrespected lover in The Last Time' to the spiritual solemnity of Just A Closer Walk with Thee', he chose a diversity of songs from different regions with diverse and specific functions, grooves, and meanings. The set list alone is a testament to the sophistication of his taste.

Though raised in American music, I have learned much about various blues styles from the comprehensive and expertly curated playlist Eric periodically sends after a conversation. And, for me, it's important to acknowledge at all times the supremacy of knowledge. This is especially true in a time when an image, someone's race, or a colorful non-musical life-experience is used to create either a blindness' to cultural history, or the illusion of realness' whilst actual music is left unattended (and the knowledge of it is reduced to pretension).

This collaboration was a pure joy because Eric is about music. We didn't have any pettiness or stupidity about anything small. It takes great courage to come to New York and learn 12 new arrangements in three days, front a band that you've never played with in a form of music you don't normally play, play three concerts, and sing almost all of the material. Eric did this flawlessly, and after all of that he told me, "I'd rather play the rhythm parts than play any solos." That's why I love and respect him.
- Wynton Marsalis


CD+DVD (to be released on September 13, 2011)
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TRACK LIST
[TABLE="class: dlSongTable, width: 0"]
[TR="bgcolor: transparent"]
[/TR]
[TR="bgcolor: transparent"]
[TD="class: dlSongTitle, bgcolor: transparent"]Ice Cream[/TD]
[TD="class: songTime, bgcolor: transparent"]7:38[/TD]
[TD="class: dlSongPreview, bgcolor: transparent"][/TD]
[/TR]
[TR="bgcolor: transparent"]
[TD="class: dlSongTitle, bgcolor: transparent"]Forty-Four[/TD]
[TD="class: songTime, bgcolor: transparent"]7:13[/TD]
[TD="class: dlSongPreview, bgcolor: transparent"][/TD]
[/TR]
[TR="bgcolor: transparent"]
[TD="class: dlSongTitle, bgcolor: transparent"]Joe Turner's Blues[/TD]
[TD="class: songTime, bgcolor: transparent"]7:48[/TD]
[TD="class: dlSongPreview, bgcolor: transparent"][/TD]
[/TR]
[TR="bgcolor: transparent"]
[TD="class: dlSongTitle, bgcolor: transparent"]The Last Time[/TD]
[TD="class: songTime, bgcolor: transparent"]4:18[/TD]
[TD="class: dlSongPreview, bgcolor: transparent"][/TD]
[/TR]
[TR="bgcolor: transparent"]
[TD="class: dlSongTitle, bgcolor: transparent"]Careless Love[/TD]
[TD="class: songTime, bgcolor: transparent"]7:43[/TD]
[TD="class: dlSongPreview, bgcolor: transparent"][/TD]
[/TR]
[TR="bgcolor: transparent"]
[TD="class: dlSongTitle, bgcolor: transparent"]Kidman Blues[/TD]
[TD="class: songTime, bgcolor: transparent"]4:21[/TD]
[TD="class: dlSongPreview, bgcolor: transparent"][/TD]
[/TR]
[TR="bgcolor: transparent"]
[TD="class: dlSongTitle, bgcolor: transparent"]Layla[/TD]
[TD="class: songTime, bgcolor: transparent"]9:09[/TD]
[TD="class: dlSongPreview, bgcolor: transparent"][/TD]
[/TR]
[TR="bgcolor: transparent"]
[TD="class: dlSongTitle, bgcolor: transparent"]Joliet Bound[/TD]
[TD="class: songTime, bgcolor: transparent"]3:50[/TD]
[TD="class: dlSongPreview, bgcolor: transparent"][/TD]
[/TR]
[TR="bgcolor: transparent"]
[TD="class: dlSongTitle, bgcolor: transparent"]Just A Closer Walk With Thee(feat. Taj Majal)[/TD]
[TD="class: songTime, bgcolor: transparent"]12:20[/TD]
[TD="class: dlSongPreview, bgcolor: transparent"][/TD]
[/TR]
[TR="bgcolor: transparent"]
[TD="class: dlSongTitle, bgcolor: transparent"]Corrine, Corrina (feat. Taj Majal)[/TD]
[TD="class: songTime, bgcolor: transparent"]10:22[/TD]
[TD="class: dlSongPreview, bgcolor: transparent"]

http://www.wyntonmarsalis.org/discograph...the-blues/[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]

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I am now listening to the CD; I have just begun the fourth cut.

[Ed Jewett]

Layla, off that album: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvNIivHdy0Q

[Carsten Wiethoff]

Ed, many thanks for that.:thumbsup:

[Charles Drago]

Wynton Marsalis is a (self-) glorified lead player who hasn't proffered an original jazz idea in over 30 years.

In a 1965 liner note essay, the sui generis George Frazier famously bestowed upon Miles Davis the sobriquet "Warlord of the Weejuns." This morning, with the cuffs of my tweed sport jacked unbuttoned and rolled once above my wrists, I am pleased to introduce to the world of jazz the con artist formerly known as Wynton Marsalis ...

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you ... the Avatar of the Armanis.

As homage to Brother Frazier, and to honor the warrior spirit known as Miles Davis, I paraphrase a tiny portion of the former's totemic essay.
_________________________________

I mean to be a bastard about this: I don't care much for jazz musicians who not only play badly, but who mercilessly market their mediocrity to a tone-deaf, soul-dead public.

The kind of man I despise is the stupid son of a bitch who, in the arrogance of his ignorance, thinks he's listening to the epitome of jazz expression because its processor happens to be wearing chic shmata by Armani. Now that's the kind of man I can't stand the sight of, and so much the worse for him if he subscribes to such stuff and nonsense as that somebody named Stanley Crouch is a decent jazz critic. You'd be astonished how many foppishly dressed men respond to Stanley the wrong Stanley. But the hell with that.

All I'm trying to say, really, is that most boutique jazz customers should be lined up before a firing squad at dawn and that there should be a minute of silence to thank God for the existence of people like Miles Davis: Except, of course, that there are no people like Miles Davis. Especially Wynton Marsalis, who is as original as a Gerald Posner sentence. He is a truly over-decorated man. He is indeed the Avatar of the Armanis, and if you don't know what that means, don't mess around, just go to your man-cave, plop into your faux Eames chair, fire up your vintage McIntosh amp, and let the blood fly onto the fields.

When not selecting additions to his wardrobe, Wynton Marsalis is a professional trumpet player. People who know about such things tell me he missed his calling.
____________________________________________

And now for the original George Frazier essay:

I don't mean to be a bastard about this, but, at the same time, I have no intention of being agreeable just for the sake of being agreeable. So, I'll admit at the outset that, damn right, I don't much care for men who dress badly. It's not that I necessarily hate them or that I'd ever dream of doing anything to abridge their civil liberties, and, for that matter, I do have a few friends whose clothes are simply appalling (though that's no problem, for I usually manage to look the other way when I'm with them), but, all the same, I see no point in trying to pretend that I feel very comfortable in the company of the ill-clad.

But the kind of man I do despise is the stupid son of a bitch who, in the arrogance of his ignorance, thinks he's well-dressed, who assumed that he will arouse admiration because he happens to be wearing a campy blazer by Bill Blass or something swishy created by Cardin. Now that's the kind of man I can't stand the sight of, and so much the worse for him if he subscribes to such stuff and nonsense as that somebody named Frank O'Hara was a decent poet. You'd be astonished how many foppishly dressed men respond to O'Hara the wrong O'Hara. But the hell with that.

All I'm trying to say, really, is that most boutique customers should be lined up before a firing squad at dawn and that there should be a minute of silence to thank God for the existence of people like Miles Davis: Except, of course, that there are no people like Miles Davis. He is an original. He is a truly well-dressed man. He is the Warlord of the Weejuns.

Oh. he's a cool one all right, but writing about him presents certain problems, for although he is the most modern, the most contemporary of men, he is also a man born out of his time. In a godawful age when a lot of silly bastards dared appear in public in Nehru jackets (thank the Lord that Nehru didn't have to live to witness that), Miles Davis, I'm afraid, is largely wasted. But before we have the next dance, I want it clearly understood that I'm not advocating that all men aspire to dress like Davis. That would be unrealistic, for it is this man's particular charm that he is unique, not only in his apparel, but in his lifestyle. His apartment, for example well, it is like no other apartment I know, tasteful and comfortable and push-buttony and without making anyone feel he better not dirty an ashtray. On days when Miles is in New York and I can take a few minutes from the task of transcribing the corpus of my writings to vellum (a chore I had a couple of monks doing until they became unionized and began to charge me an arm and a leg for a lousy thousand words), I drop in on Miles and, as they used to say, we dish.
We dish about a lot of things, like, for instance, Is AI Hirt necessary? or Whatever happened to Zinky Cohn? But mostly we talk about clothes, nor could any dialogue be more informed and enlightening. For I happen to know an awful lot about clothes, and Miles, knows as much, if not more, and we are a caution the way we carry on. The Davis wardrobe is very special the creation of Miles and the craftsmanship of Mario at Emsley's, who is reverential toward the Davis ideology. And well Mario should be, for Miles knows what becomes him. He likes his trousers bellbottom, often fringed, and his jackets long and highwaisted, with conspicuous suppression and a flare to the skirt. He also has an instinct for the right fabrics, and he knows how shirt collars should fit and the proper way to wear a silk neckerchief, things like that. He just knows.

But in the matter of being, not merely well- but best-dressed, knowing is not enough. A man can have exquisite, absolutely impeccable, taste in clothes and yet look like hell in them and were I a bigger son of a bitch than I am, I'd name you a few. But we must think positively, not negatively, must we not? What is pertinent is that Davis, like the Beaus and Biddies before him, seems to have been born to wear what is on his back. He, no less than Richard Corey, glitters when he walks. He is tall, slim, handsome, and haughty. He is indeed the Warlord of the Weejuns, and if you don't know what that means, don't mess around, just go to your room.

But what I love about him most is his honesty. About him there is no coyness (as there is, unfortunately, about Astaire, who tries to pretend he couldn't care less about his garb.) Miles is interested in clothes and he sees no reason to feign that he isn't. One night, after a concert in French Lick, Indiana, he asked me how I thought he'd done. "You sounded superb. You " But he stopped me. "No, not that," he said. "I mean how did my suit look?"

When not selecting additions to his wardrobe, Miles is a professional trumpet player. People who know about such things tell me he shows a lot of promise.

[Charles Drago]

P.S.

Ed: In re-reading my post above it occurred to me that you might misinterpret my Frazier paraphrase as some sort of ad hominem directed at you. Nothing could be more distant from the truth.

As for the Marsalis/Clapton collaboration: I've listend to two tunes, and I find them to be both patronizing and derivative rather than inspired.

Charles

[Ed Jewett]

I've learned never to go toe-to-toe with you on jazz, CD, and I don't take it personally. I am aware of significant criticism of Wynton Marsalis and his "chops"... I've seen it described as perhaps technically proficient but somehow lacking in soul or the true essence, which is strange given his "surround", but evident over time. My main comparative tool is the way in which someone interprets the song "My Funny Valentine". But when I saw the ad for a pre-order price of a new album by these two (Clapton is revered in other quarters and self-admits to little exposure to jazz), I had to see (or hear). I do not think I wasted my money. Is it the prize of the century? No. Clapton is called "God" in the guitar and rock-and-roll community; there are arguably even better players but I won't create any more controversies.

My own interests in jazz haven't moved much since discovering the best of Keith Jarrett (I don't spin off superlatives for his standards like others do) and Gary Peacock http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BE46tyj2R4, and I am currently getting help from someone else in training my ear and my brain to hear and see chords, notes and progressions in case I decide to pick up the upright bass.

It's either that or a new digital camera...

[ATTACH=CONFIG]3053[/ATTACH]

The way I figure it, the world needs more art.

The way I figure it, CD, jazz is life, and love, and one of the finest art forms we can know, have and practice.

And jazz needs an injection... more young people exposed to it and playing it... We will have to hear a lot of croaking frogs before we again hear the likes of the dead masters.

[Magda Hassan]

I know Charlie will never warm to Clapton and even I am more a Santana/Hendrix aficionado even Harrison though there a small part of my world for Beck and Clapton. But I agree with you that the world needs more art and jazz being a huge part of that. Otherwise we end up with........crushingly dull and turgid marching songs

[Ed Jewett]

Indeed, and it's not only the songs which are crushingly dull and turgid...

[Carsten Wiethoff]

From http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entert...01414.html

Of course, he knows really why he is a controversial figure. Leave aside his own trumpet-playing, which is universally praised, and Marsalis is seen as the standard bearer for those who want to codify jazz as America's classical music, and whose focus is on recreating the music of the past rather than innovating. Given that many feel that innovation is the very essence of jazz, that's a controversial position. But he doesn't see it that way.
"My experience with people on a day to day basis is beautiful," he says, "it's like a dream. Construction workers call out to me when I walk by, people come and bring me pies, they work overtime at weekends." There's no doubting he has a public, although it's not as overwhelmingly positive as he suggests. "Who are you going to interview?" asked the US Immigration official when I arrived in New York to meet Marsalis. "He speaks too much tell Wynton that from me," were his parting words, a sentiment echoed by a member of Oscar Peterson's quartet I spoke to that evening.
The contradiction at the heart of Wynton Marsalis is that he is relentless in his pursuit of his vision of jazz (he gives me a long and comprehensive definition, but basically it must swing in the "ding-ding-a-ding" sense of the word), yet refuses to accept that his public utterances and his role at the Lincon Center should be seen as anyone's business but his own. In fact, his position as an arbiter of what constitutes jazz is so commanding that everything he does has consequences. During our interview he denies his authority time and again "it's not for me to say whether it's right or wrong" when it's perfectly obvious he has strong opinions on almost all areas. He is unafraid to judge, but is wary which of his judgements he reveals, hiding behind a bland wall of "it's not my place to say...". Flashes of what he really thinks come out when he's pushed. After stressing his good relations with David Murray (Marsalis plays basketball with Murray's son, Mingus) he concedes the point: "Did some people lose some gigs because I don't like their style of music? Maybe that's true, maybe that's false, I don't know. But that's not controversial to me."
When I ask if he felt hurt by the comments Miles Davis and the avant-garde trumpeter Lester Bowie made about him (Davis: "that motherfucker's not sharing a stage with me". Bowie: "everybody knows this cat ain't got it") he replies "not at all." He then goes on to describe Davis as "a genius who decided to go into rock, and was on the bandstand looking like, basically, a buffoon", and Bowie as "another guy who never really could play."
These judgements are not wholly without truth. Unfortunately, such forthright condemnations of post-Sixties developments (which Marsalis would deny were jazz) have come to define him as a purveyor of negativity rather than a celebrator, or curator, of jazz history. He is intensely frustrated that the focus is always on what he doesn't do rather than what he does do. Speaking about Ken Burns's mammoth television series Jazz, which was criticised for detailing the early years but skipping through the last 40, Marsalis could be talking about himself. "It's like I come to your house and you lay out a banquet for me and then I'm mad because I don't like the cigar you gave me at the end. Maybe the cigar wasn't that good, but why should that dominate the conversation about the meal?" And then, in a statement that does reflect the divide between him and his critics over post-Sixties jazz: "Maybe you went through that meal just to get the cigar. Me, I wasn't going to smoke that cigar at all."

From a different band:

And a crowd of young boys they're fooling around in the corner
Drunk and dressed in their best brown baggies and their platform soles
They don't give a damn about any trumpet playing band
It ain't what they call rock and roll
And the Sultans... yeah the Sultans play Creole

[Ed Jewett]

I have a quote tucked away somewhere from Marsalis on excellence, Juilliard and the Yankees from a PBS show on Juilliard: http://www.thirteen.org/pressroom/release.php?get=188

Wynton Marsalis Live at the Royal Albert Hall 2002

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqOOO74MHAM


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wynton_Marsalis


This is the song that slowly made me wake up and realize the greatness in Mark Knopfler:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64vvX6-d_...grec_index