Wynton’s Blogs
In the Daytime
Driving through Alabama on Hwy 72 at 7:30 in the morning. Some 11 hrs.
Earlier 15 men played an evening of jazz in Conway at the University of Central Arkansas. The cats have been very consistent and serious about 110 percenting it on this whole tour. Last night was no exception.
Many highlights. From Elliot's thematically concise and acrobatic offering on 'Straight Up and Down' (plus he's suffering from a serious stomach virus and shouldn't even be on a bandstand) to Vincent's singing on Joe Turner's Blues (pure soul, imagination and Ooo-Ble-Yew). The rhythm section was loping all night long and Carlos had his hard hat on.
The saxophone section played with absolute dedication and synchronized nuance on the very last song of the night (Ted's arrangement of 'Old MacDonald') on the second to last night of the tour. Before the gig Ali, Vincent, and Sherman all scrunched over their computers working on arrangements for next week's concerts in the House of Swing with Ute Lemper.
My 7th grade teacher, Sr. Lee Ann, was there. She was such a great teacher.
I still show off letters with her lyrical and meticulous handwriting. After an hour or so of meeting with our audience and talking to young musicians, I had the opportunity to sit with her for a minute. We shared jokes and pleasantries and stories. She told me, "I have loved you for a very long time." It felt like someone putting a blanket over you as you struggle to sleep through a cold night.
Well, now we are under steel gray skies passing southern, ranch-style homes, alongside some railroad tracks, past an occasional field of cotton, passing small businesses bearing people's names—-Lula's, Roy's, Beryl's and the winner of the contest this morning goes to a lounge, 'Stagger Lee's.' Frank said that's because of how people walk out of there.
I grew up down the street from railroad tracks and always feel something when I hear a train or see some tracks—tales of journeys upon journeys from the Underground Railroad to 'The City of New Orleans' to the Glory Train.
On I-565 east passing the Davidson Center for Space Research, the shuttle and some earlier rockets announce themselves proudly against the sky. Their beautiful, streamlined architecture change the mood of the highway and cast a long shadow over a chain-gang with fluorescent yellow uniforms and orange trash bags.
Places like Stagger Lee's, yeah, I was in those too. As a boy, I never liked the smell of stale beer in a lounge in the day time.
At night it was ok because everybody was looking for something. In the day you can already see.
Wynton
Texas Sun
5 o'clock Sunday afternoon driving through the Texas panhandle 20 miles from Amarillo.
Big Sky Country for sure. Wide open spaces with crucifixed power lines stringing one ranch to the other. Aluminum grain elevators glisten in the setting sun and rise out of the brush dotted plains with the purposeful permanence of the functional.
From way off you can smell cattle sloshing in their holding pens on the last leg of a bad journey.
Water towers announce the presence of a main street, a high school, something to eat.
Here we go.
A strip mall. Civilization.
Damn
Wynton
Me and Boss Bragg
On the road at 5:30 am leaving Los Angeles headed east to Mesa, Arizona.
The sky over the road ahead (as far as the eye can see) is pink-blue-yellow haze with shavings of smoke gray clouds and orange searing the expanse with no identifiable logic or pattern whatsoever.
I'm telling you that every dreamy, unmanaged, wisping, floaty shape against the horizon inspires optimism and is celebratory of freedom. And here comes cars, cars, cars with so many rapidly passing headlights and there go smaller, red-eyed tail lights guiding us through the immediate landscape in syncopated polyphony with the criss-crossing brights of vehicles who zoom rank and file through the arteries and veins of this concrete maze we call highways and Frank is sleeping.
Boss Bragg, not ever given to much talk, takes in the new sun as it peeks through looming mountains. We speed past waking neighborhoods that we will never know.
Wynton
Words
I called Chris Beiderbecke last night in response to his comments about this sentence in my post 'Egyptian Blues':
"From Buddy Bolden's first revolutionary notes, to Bix Beiderbecke's decision to play this music in spite of his family's disrespect of 'nigger music', to Benny Goodman's historic integration of his band (before baseball), to John Coltrane's 'Alabama', jazz musicians have always known—-when YOU are free, I become more so."
I apologized to him and his family for the justifiable misunderstanding caused by the quotations in this sentence. My quote around the term 'nigger music' was meant to indicate that this was a prevalent national sentiment about jazz at that time, not to imply that it was a direct statement from or teachings of Bix's parents.
I extend this apology also to any others who may have misinterpreted my intended meaning.
I used Bix's decision to play this music in spite of his family's lack of support AND the obvious cultural obstacles, as an example of a personal quest for freedom through jazz.
In combining his family's concerns with the national attitudes about jazz at that time, I gave an unintended inference. One of the beauties of this forum is that it allows people who would never meet or speak to one another to communicate freely without the cloak of anonymity.
I enjoyed the conversation with Chris and always welcome comments that spark meaningful dialogue.
Thank you.
Wynton
Egyptian Blues
Congratulations to the Egyptian people whose quest to remove the yoke of dictatorship was successfully realized today.
Much respect to those who stayed the course when the road was blocked with seemingly insurmountable obstacles, to the young people who forced action to change the trajectory of their future, to the military leadership (undoubtedly not young) who showed unusual forbearance and wisdom, and to the international media who kept relentless pressure on the Mubarak regime.
This glorious hour speaks to the timelessness of the human desire and quest for freedom, equality and for dignity. This moment, in a far away land and in another time, speaks yet again to the greatness of the American Constitution, the Bill of Rights, The Declaration of Independence, and to the insight of the Founding Fathers and the debate around democracy that attended their deliberations. It brings into focus the struggles of our own country to better realize the ideals which undergird our way of life.
Struggles which include a bloody and defining Civil War, life and death fights for enfranchisement of the excluded, and of course, the travails of the American Negro whose non-violent Civil Rights struggles are so clearly resonant in this relatively peaceful revolution. And though we continue to work through kinks in our democracy, we have surely received a eye-opening, spirit-lifting boost from the recent happenings in Tunisia and now, and no more significantly, Egypt.
Jazz is always on the side of freedom, always on the side of equality, always on the side of human dignity. It came from people who were slaves and therefore, keenly attuned to ascendant changes in the fragile harmonies of the human spirit.
From Buddy Bolden's first revolutionary notes, to Bix Beiderbecke's decision to play this music in spite of his family's disrespect of 'nigger music', to Benny Goodman's historic integration of his band (before baseball), to John Coltrane's 'Alabama', jazz musicians have always known—-when YOU are free, I become more so.
Here is our recording of Warmdaddy's "Egyptian Blues" :
http://www.facebook.com/wyntonmarsalis/posts/10150094974707976
Wynton
