(7 of 9)
Meanwhile, Wynton found a shepherd to help guide him back to the source: New Orleans clarinetist Michael White, 35. Unlike Marsalis -- unlike most blacks of his generation -- White took an interest in the city's old-time musicians, learned to play their style and eventually became a regular with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. The two men started bumping into each other at airports and music festivals a few years ago and developed a close friendship.
When Marsalis decided to include a New Orleans-flavored suite on his 1989 Majesty of the Blues album, he asked White to come up and record with him, along with other members of White's Original Liberty Jazz Band: trombonist Freddie Lonzo, 40, trumpeter Teddy Riley, 66, and banjoist Danny Barker, 81, a veteran of the famous Cab Calloway orchestra. (Marsalis as a little boy had actually known Barker and played very briefly in a children's marching band organized by the banjoist.)
Marsalis has since performed with these "homeboys," notably at a Hollywood Bowl tribute to Armstrong and at Lincoln Center's Classical Jazz festival, where they played such 1920s-vintage New Orleans numbers as Armstrong's Cornet Chop Suey and Jelly Roll Morton's Jungle Blues. For Marsalis, who had brashly declared in one of his early interviews that "there is no jazz in New Orleans," that was quite a turnaround. He now regrets what he calls his youthful "ignorance" and is delving into that city's musical legacy -- particularly the blues -- with a vengeance.
He is learning his lessons well, applying them not only to his playing and composing but also to a whole music-centered philosophy about American life and culture. Sitting in the sparsely furnished living room of his Manhattan brownstone, with three Louis Armstrong statuettes peering down from the mantelpiece, he confidently mingles allusions to Picasso and the Iliad with appreciations of Duke Ellington and childhood anecdotes. The hardwood floor is littered with the toys of his two sons, Wynton Jr., 2, and Simeon, six months; their mother Candace Stanley, 28, is doing postgraduate work at New York University. (Marsalis has put the four-story house on the market for $950,000 and is planning to move his family to New Orleans.)
His glasses give him a scholarly look, partially offset by the sweat pants, T shirt and basketball shoes he favors when not onstage. He speaks softly, occasionally offering an impish smile or raising his eyebrows to make a point. He sips hot tea as he talks. Like most of today's young players, he stays away from alcohol, cigarettes and drugs.
Marsalis sees jazz as a metaphor for democracy. "In terms of illuminating the meaning of America," he says, "jazz is the primary art form, especially New Orleans jazz. Because when it's played properly, it shows you how the individual can negotiate the greatest amount of personal freedom and put it humbly at the service of a group conception." He points to Ellington as the jazzman who best embodied the "mythology of this country" in his music.