His exposition on the Wynton/Branford vortex explains so much about that 80s-early 90s era of Jazz. The refusal to embrace anything Jazz or Jazz-oriented that wasn’t straight-ahead at that time period and the fact that such snobbishness was rampant in that Marsalis bunch really harmed the music of that time IMO.
Their influence is undeniable during this era. Even the historians defer to them, which leads me to my biggest gripe about the Ken Burns Jazz Documentary that Wynton basically coordinated. First of all it stops at 1964 — like there wasn’t any significant jazz music after this point up until 2000 or so. The documentary barely mentions free music and it acts as if there is no such thing as jazz fusion outside of Miles. No RTF; and barely a mention of Jaco. No ECM or any mention about how the European and Japanese jazz cats helped to move the music into another direction that continued to honor the tradition that is jazz while still allowing it to move forward. Another missing element from the documentary is smooth jazz. As much as people hate it, the emergence of smooth jazz on the popular music charts was also worth mentioning because Jazz hadn’t topped the pop charts for decades until this genre crossed over. The Marsalis family obviously hated these types of music and decided to leave them all out of the Ken Burns documentary — and don’t get me started on the whole playing unamplified thing that they pushed for. They completely ignore the contributions of NHOP, George Mraz and even post-Miles Ron Carter for developing an amplified sound that allowed the DB to cut through the mix like never before; while still allowing their amazing talents to shine through and work within the framework of the music they were playing at that time.
Their influence is undeniable during this era. Even the historians defer to them, which leads me to my biggest gripe about the Ken Burns Jazz Documentary that Wynton basically coordinated. First of all it stops at 1964 — like there wasn’t any significant jazz music after this point up until 2000 or so. The documentary barely mentions free music and it acts as if there is no such thing as jazz fusion outside of Miles. No RTF; and barely a mention of Jaco. No ECM or any mention about how the European and Japanese jazz cats helped to move the music into another direction that continued to honor the tradition that is jazz while still allowing it to move forward. Another missing element from the documentary is smooth jazz. As much as people hate it, the emergence of smooth jazz on the popular music charts was also worth mentioning because Jazz hadn’t topped the pop charts for decades until this genre crossed over. The Marsalis family obviously hated these types of music and decided to leave them all out of the Ken Burns documentary — and don’t get me started on the whole playing unamplified thing that they pushed for. They completely ignore the contributions of NHOP, George Mraz and even post-Miles Ron Carter for developing an amplified sound that allowed the DB to cut through the mix like never before; while still allowing their amazing talents to shine through and work within the framework of the music they were playing at that time.