This compact but musically dynamic town still holds tremendous allure for jazz lovers, and not simply because of the city’s storied musical past.
The number of gifted jazz musicians who live in New Orleans and exchange ideas in clubs such as Snug Harbor, the Funky Butt and Donna’s make the city a focal point for jazz improvisation in the ’90s.
Fortunately, the musical activity is documented on uncounted recordings from tiny indie labels that crowd the bins of local record stores — even if they can be difficult to find outside New Orleans. Browse through the French Quarter’s top jazz shop, Louisiana Music Factory (504-586-1094), and you’ll find that New Orleans jazz today means everything from reconstituted brass-band music to cutting-edge, avant-garde instrumentals.
For most listeners, “Storyville Stompers: Feel So Good” (Rugulator Records) will epitomize a great deal of what New Orleans jazz is all about. But though its exuberant, second-line music indeed represents the New Orleans parade-music tradition at its best, the Storyville Stompers are much more than just another retro band cashing in on an easily accessible genre. Rather, they produce an ensemble sound that is richer and arrangements that are more intricately conceived and carefully voiced than one typically encounters in this most extroverted form of New Orleans jazz-roots music.
Moreover, the Stompers do not limit their repertoire to dance-music beats, offering a fresh perspective on the funeral-music tradition in “Lonesome Road,” and an exotic, irresistible blending of New Orleans rhythms and Eastern European Jewish melody in “Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen.”
There’s an even more subtle treatment of New Orleans idioms on every radiant track of “The Yockamo All-Stars: Dew Drop Out” (Hannibal Records). Staffed by such formidable New Orleans players as drummer Herlin Riley, bassist Walter Payton, alto saxophonist Jesse Davis and trumpeter Leroy Jones, the All-Stars reaffirm the infinite variety of meters, tempos and textures that define mainstream New Orleans music today. The exquisite blending of reeds on “Blow, Blow Tenor,” the perpetually shifting rhythmic accents and deep-blues phrasings of the title cut and the slow-drag melodicism of “Falling in Love” will remind listeners that New Orleans music means a great deal more than just its most obvious, uptempo dance numbers.
Experimental music also is integral to New Orleans jazz today, as in an exceptional, self-titled recording, “3 Now 4” (SEM). Strange sonic effects, blurred tones, bent pitches, unmetered improvisations — these form the working vocabulary of this band (staffed by pedal steel guitarist Dave Easley, trumpeter/flutist Charlie Miller, bassist James Singleton, and Johnny Vidacovich and Jeff Boudreaux sharing drum duties). Yet because these are New Orleans musicians, they take pains to make even their most audacious passages inviting to the uninitiated. Only in New Orleans could music as unconventional as this sound nearly danceable.
New Orleans has no shortage of brilliant soloists, but one of the most protean has been captured faithfully on “Victor Goines: Joe’s Blues” (Rosemary Joseph Records). Most listeners probably will recognize the saxophonist’s name from his long-running association with Wynton Marsalis — in the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and in Marsalis’ Septet. But Goines is a top-notch soloist-bandleader in his own right, as he proves with his keening and uncommonly expressive tone on “The Mystique of Romance,” and softly intimating low-register playing on “A Stroll Through Paradise.” Joined by other key members of Marsalis’ septet — including drummer Riley, pianist Eric Reed and bassist Reginald Veal — Goines presides over musicmaking at once personal and accessible, bracingly modern yet steeped in jazz tradition.
The bland New Orleans guitarist Mark Whitfield may be a media darling, but guitar aficionados know who’s the Crescent City player to hear, and some of his most spontaneous work has been captured on “Steve Masakowski: Live at Snug Harbor” (Marzian Productions). Best known for his contributions to the adventurous New Orleans band Astral Project, Masakowski produces guitar lines of considerable fluidity and originality on this session, recorded in New Orleans’ top jazz club. The performance attests to the guitarist’s musicianship and creativity, with not a note wasted in the name of ostentation, grandiosity or virtuoso display.
The young phenoms Irvin Mayfield and Jason Marsalis (Wynton’s brother) have not yet attained national acclaim, but they’re going to, judging by their self-titled debut as leaders of “Los Hombres Calientes” (Basin Street Records). Though they benefit enormously from the support of veteran percussionist Bill Summers and others, trumpeter Mayfield and drummer Marsalis preside over a lively mixture of Latin-jazz rhythm and modern-jazz harmony.
On a more traditional note, trumpeter-vocalist Kermit Ruffins doesn’t get out of the Crescent City very often, so, short of swinging into town, you can check a beloved local hero on “Kermit Ruffins: the Barbecue Swingers Live” (Basin Street Records). Listeners often compare Ruffins to Louis Armstrong, but Ruffins’ higher pitched voice, breezier phrasing and more casual approach to the trumpet make him an appealing entertainer in his own right. If his hip-hop tune “Peep This Groove Out” sounds a bit like slumming, his “St. James Infirmary” — with its heartbreaking vocals and lamenting trumpet lines — makes up for it.
Everyone knows that New Orleans music represents a glorious merger of several cultures, but listeners often forget one key contributor to the mix: Mardi Gras Indians. “Indians of the Nation: United We Stand, Divided We Fall” (Indians of the Nation) nobly calls attention to this music, showcasing the work of five distinct Indian “gangs”: Black Eagles, White Cloud Hunters, Black Feather, Golden Arrows and Wild Renegade Hunters. Because it documents the work of rival uptown and downtown “gangs,” this recording is historic, representing a broad range of chants and folkloric themes. It may not be music to sip a martini by, but for those interested in a mesmerizing improvised music based on centuries’ old tradition, this recording represents critical listening.
Finally, though he’s now known around the world as a New Orleans jazz patriarch and Columbia recording artist, pianist Ellis Marsalis was recording independently before the ascent of his son, Wynton. The reissue of “Syndrome: Ellis Marsalis” (Elm Records) is vital because it documents his pianism in a musically ambitious, 1983 date. Marsalis is all over the keyboard on this disc, his splendid work strongly backed by bassist Bill Huntington, drummer James Black and the extraordinary New Orleans flutist Kent Jordan. The orchestral conception, sophisticated keyboard voicings and fluid virtuosity of Marsalis’ work capture him at his peak.
Long before fame found its way to the elder Marsalis’ doorstep, in other words, the man was setting a high standard for jazz in New Orleans. To this day, that standard is among the highest in jazz.
