Wynton Marsalis

Wynton Marsalis's 1982 debut was recorded before the trumpeter had reached his 20th birthday and when he was still a member of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. In many ways it was a pivotal event for jazz in the '80s, as Marsalis became the central figure in a return to the acoustic styles of the late '50s and '60s and the model for all the young lions to come. While there are elements of Miles Davis in Marsalis's style, the strongest parallels are with Lee Morgan and Freddie Hubbard, the pyrotechnic trumpeters who arrived at about the same age in the late '50s and who first made their talents known in Blakey's group. Even with a Harmon mute, on Ron Carter's "RJ," Marsalis suggests Hubbard's precise articulation. Saxophonist Branford Marsalis recalls Wayne Shorter's prefusion style, and Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams, featured on four tracks, pick up where they'd left off with Miles Davis and on numerous Blue Note dates. The music is taut, thoughtful, and filled with youthful bravado, but more fascinating still is how a leading-edge style of the '60s succumbed to fusion in the '70s only to return as a full-blown conservative movement in the next decade. --Stuart Broomer