Newport 1956

Here is my newest blog entry on the Jazz Loft Project page.  The article I intended to publish about Branford Marsalis never got done, to my regret.  There is a great story there.  In my view his music is state of the art today, and he’s a celebrity, but he operates in a weird kind of oblivion.  The people who would like his music the most aren’t hearing it.  If you put his quartet in the alt-rock club Cat’s Cradle in Carrboro, N.C. the joint would explode.  But in a fine, cultured establishment where people are paying $50 nobody wants to hear “Jack Baker” or “Blakzilla.”  It’s a conundrum faced by all of jazz but Branford is the epitome.  A decade or so ago he moved down to Durham, N.C.  The local media assumed he was taking over the jazz director’s job from Paul Jeffrey at Duke.  But that wasn’t it.  He just wanted to get out of New York and L.A. where he’d lived for twenty years.  He’s now taking half the money and teaching at N.C. Central, the local historically black university.