WYNTON MARSALIS The Wynton Marsalis Quartet Live at Blues Alley

Columbia PC2 40675 (1988)

Recorded near the end of Wynton Marsalis' ascendancy to keeper of the traditional jazz flame, Live at Blues Alley is quite a bit looser, even rowdier, than his studio albums of the same period. The live setting of a small club with an appreciative audience seems to inspire the musicians into some of their freest (and, occasionally, most frenzied) playing on record.

Take the opening tune, "Knozz-Moe-King". Marsalis leads his quartet through the manic free-bop changes like Miles Davis and his sixties quintet, careening recklessly around the implied harmonies, soloing freely off little more than drummer Jeff Watts' pounding rhythms, yet able to stop and start together on a dime. Or pianist Marcus Roberts' solo on "Juan", where he gets deep into a riff, repeating it over and over with different rhythmic inflections until it threatens to shake itself loose from the beat altogether. The highlight of the album is probably the fifteen-minute "Chambers of Tain", a showcase for Watts' prodigious percussion chops in which his solo seems arranged into chapters that resolve into a recurring theme.

Things calm down a bit on side three, with a fairly straightforward reading of Charlie Parker's "Au Privave" and a touching rendition of "Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans", but, for the most part, Live at Blues Alley is fierce, virtuosic hard bop that crackles with energy and invention and shows an unexpected (but welcome) side of Wynton Marsalis.