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RE: I like the original band better...

Posted by D Harvey (M) on February 14, 2015 at 11:54:49

In Reply to: RE: I like the original band better... posted by fantja on February 14, 2015 at 10:21:33:

My comment was less about the departure of Branford than it was about the changes in the rhythm section. That's not a slam against Branford, more a statement on the comfort zones of the two completely different rhythm sections in question, and the more central role any rhythm section plays in the typical jazz group than any one soloist does. The percent of time they spend playing dictates that this is true. Bass and drums especially, but Kenny Kirkland was an unusually dominant pianist, stylistically speaking, so I find myself missing him a lot here too.

A rhythm section truly comfortable with the style this music was conceived in is what's missing in the video for me. Wynton, Wes Anderson, and the bassist (Reginald Veal?) are the only ones here who look/sound truly comfortable to me here from the start on through Wynton's solo. The bassist does pretty well, so the underappreciated Charnett Moffatt is not too sorely missed. But, a couple of really big personalities missing in the piano and drum (Jeff Watts) chairs, and it shows. Once you get to know the original, come back to this video and see what you think.

I'm pretty sure that's Herlin Riley on drums. I would have expected to see Marcus Roberts on the piano around this time, but that's not Marcus. Anybody recognize him? I saw almost the same band around the same time, but they played the music from the "Soul Gestures in Southern Blue" set of albums exclusively (Levee Low Moan is perhaps the best of those records). I'm a little surprised to see Wynton calling this tune with this band.

This thread has caused me to pull out my well-worn copy of Black Codes out for the first spin in a while. I see an even bigger influence on my own music here than I probably did this morning. Jeff Watts' "boiling over" drumming style was huge for me, and the collective conception of this rhythm section, with the bass playing way up on top (only Eric Revis and Nat Reeves have matched Moffatt in this regard in any Marsalis-led band that I've ever heard) and Kenny Kirkland wailing away is just explosive. The writing lends itself to this same sort of tension, and my own writing can trace many of its central ideals to the music on Black Codes, among a few other sources that I mostly got to know later.

I still remember where I was when I first heard "Delfeayo's Dilemma". I was 17, working a summer job doing general construction help on a guy's house. I listened to NPR a lot at the time, and Ben Sidran had Wynton on his show "Sidran on Record" while I spackled dry wall one day. They played that track in it's entirety, and I was simply rapt, by the whole package--the writing, the playing, the unstoppable forward momentum of the music. This was so different from the Bird, Miles, and Trane records I had been listening to, yet still in the same vein. Miles' "Four and More" was the nearest thing to a direct ancestor that I was aware of, but this was different fundamentally from that music on several levels. I believe Black Codes was the next album I bought and proceeded to wear out. It changed my outlook considerably. Looking back at it today, I think it changed me even more than I previously recognized. Happy memories...


dh

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