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In this tribute to Jelly Roll Morton, at last there is a large sampling of the Wynton Marsalis who can get large crowds at outdoor jazz festivals like the Playboy at Hollywood Bowl to dance and wave white handkerchiefs. This is mostly gutbucket, stomping, swinging New Orleans jazz through the eyes and ears of avid students of old records -- and they have absorbed a good deal of the original raffish, joyous feeling. Dedicated scholars as they are, the band even recreates the original zany dialogue that opens Morton's recordings of "Dead Man Blues" and "Sidewalk Blues" (with a small alteration in the latter for PC purposes), leading to swaggering performances of both. Marsalis by now is an absolute virtuoso of the plunger mute, and he gets ample room to growl and snarl, often alongside trombonist/co-arranger Wycliffe Gordon. Without the mute, he is often majestically commanding, totally in his element. As befitting the contrapuntal New Orleans ethos, Wynton is also generous with the spotlight, turning over an entire track to Danilo Perez's lurching solo piano rendition of "Mamanita," another to the thick-toned period clarinet of performing musicologist Michael White on "Big Lip Blues," and another, alas, to Harry Connick, Jr.'s ham-handed solo treatment of "Billy Goat Stomp."
Condition:NEW. Punched upc
TRACK LISTINGS
1 Red Hot Pepper 3:41
2 New Orleans Bump 4:32
3 King Porter Stomp 3:10
4 The Pearls 3:51
5 Deep Creek 5:14
6 Mamanita 2:48
7 Sidewalk Blues 5:12
8 Jungle Blues 6:50
9 Big Lip Blues 3:17
10 Dead Man Blues 4:40
11 Smoke-House Blues 4:51
12 Billy Goat Stomp 2:58
13 Courthouse Bump 3:28
14 Black Bottom Stomp 4:20
15 Tom Cat Blues 2:09
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