Wynton’s new album will be out on November 30, 2004
Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson
Wynton Marsalis has lent his compositional and performing talents to the creation of the original score for the new PBS Ken Burns documentary Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise And Fall Of Jack Johnson, a detailed portrait of the first African-American Heavyweight Champion of the World.
Wynton and Ken Burns last worked together on Burns’s 2000 PBS documentary Jazz, a 10-part series that explored the history of the music, on which Wynton was Senior Creative Consultant.
The music on Unforgivable Blackness comprises 16 new Wynton compositions and seven interpretations of material composed by WC Handy, Jelly Roll Morton (3 tracks were drawn from Marsalis’s 1999 release Standard Time, Volume 6: Mr. Jelly Lord, a tribute to the music of Morton), and others. Conjuring up the early 1900s jazz that was current to Jack Johnson’s life (1878-1946), the score provides the perfect backdrop to Burns’s film, capturing all the dramatic tension inherent in Johnson’s story, from the joy of ultimate triumph to the sadness of inescapable oppression.
The new CD will be in stores on November 30, 2004.
Track Listing
1 What Have You Done?
2 Ghost in the House
3 Jack Johnson Two-Step
4 But Deep Down
5 Love & Hate
6 High Society
7 Careless Love
8 New Orleans Bump
9 Trouble My Soul
10 Deep Creek
11 The Johnson 2-Step
12 Rattlesnake Tail swing
13 Weary Blues
14 Troubles My Soul
15 Johnson Two-Step
16 Fire in the Night
17 Morning Song
18 I’ll Sing My Song
19 Buddy Bolden’s Blues
20 The Last Bell
21 We’ll Meet Again Someday
