Track Listing

1. Jack Baker
2. Hope
3. Fate
4. Blakzilla
5. O Solitude
6. Sir Roderick, The Aloof
7. Black Elk Speaks

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #101957 in Music
• Released on: 2006-09-12
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.com
Tenor/soprano saxophonist Branford Marsalis is a master of the "burnout"--an intense but deliberate and focused style of jazz that has its roots in John Coltrane. Unlike many Trane-ologists, however, Marsalis uses Trane's concepts instead of the master's notes. On Braggtown, named for a neighborhood in Durham, North Carolina, Marsalis delivers a virtual clinic on how to play 21st-century jazz, with drummer Jeff "Tain" Watts, pianist Joey Calderazzo, and bassist Eric Revis. The pieces range from the uptempo "Jack Baker" and "Blakzilla"--Watts's polyrhythmic props to Godzilla--to the reverent rendition of the 17th-century composer Henry Purcell’s "O Solitude," and Revis's intense, long-form composition, "Black Elk Speaks," complete with his impassioned, Mingusian bass solo, with references to Star Trek: The Next Generation. On all of the tracks Marsalis's tone is impossibly brilliant and burnished, and for my money, this recording is the worthy successor to his 1990 masterpiece, Crazy People Music. --Eugene Holley Jr.

Customer Reviews

Interesting juxtoposition
This album is really the tale of two Branfords, the first being the tenor saxophone wielding scrapper fighting his way through bruising workouts that sound like Crescent era John Coltrane, chased by Elvin Jones own doppelganger, Jeff "Tain" Watts. The other Branford is the romantic poet using his soprano saxophone at crawling tempos to create lush patient improvisations. Besides Marsalis and Watts, Joey Calderazzo plays piano and Eric Revis plays bass. The burning tenor songs make the biggest impact on me, they are the easiest to understand as they are firmly rooted in the past and paovide the frame of reference in the music that John Coltrane had pioneered in the mid-1960's.

"Jack Baker" leads off the album and along with the Watts feature "Blakzilla" and "Black Elk Speaks" the music is very exciting and very much in the post bop tenor saxophone tradition. Often, Calderazzo and Revis become superfluous to the music, and Marsails and Watts break away and interact much like Coltrane and Jones at their most intense. The soprano saxophone features, "Hope," "Fate" and "O Solitude" are much more difficult for me to understand, as the music is taken at a very slow pace and requires a lot of patience to listen to and understand. Marsalis also has a very limpid tone on the soprano, which although quite individual and unique, is not something that reaches out and grabs your attention. So in the end, there is an interesting album which runs the gamut from very fast to very slow, becoming the tortoise and the hare simultaneously.

I'd give it 5 stars just for "Hope" Alone
"Hope", for me, is one of those rare pieces that comes along every 100 albums that you buy - one of those songs that you could hear 1,000 times and still get your heart ripped out each time you hear it. Kenny Garret's "Sing a Song of Song" (although not a ballad) was that way for me and "Hope" is, like Sing a Song, one of those songs that I could hear every day for two years and still enjoy it immensely every time.

The other songs are great too - a very enjoyable album - but I just haven't found anything better than "Hope" in a long time.

Good but not great
Good album, though I feel fellow jazz musicians, music students, and jazz critics, (those know-it-alls who write for snooty jazz magazines), will enjoy it a lot better than I ever will. The intent seems pretty clear: the inner sleeve notes use a lot of technical terms that will probably get some people very excited but mean absolutely nothing to an ordinary layman listener like me.

The quartet is Branford Marsalis on saxophones, Joey Calderazzo on piano, Eric Revis on bass and Jeff Tain Watts on drums. They kick off the album with "Jack Baker", a burst of muscle and testosterone... maybe that's what the cover locker room photographs are all about... and I'm loving the main theme of the song but then the solos start and I just feel lost. It's not till the main theme is played again that I regain any sense of what's going on.

"Hope" and "Fate", written by Calderazzo and Marsalis respectively, are much more on my level, with rhythms and melodies I can actually get a handle on and these two tunes with the sombre "O Solitude" are worth the price of the CD all on their own.

The Watts-penned "Blackzilla", (written in 13/8 time, we're told), is to me, just a whirlwind of sounds and 100mph saxophone playing. It's probably my least favourite track on the album.

"Sir Roderick, The Aloof", written by Marsalis is another nice tune to listen to but the closer, "Black Elk Speaks", written Revis sounds to me like just more saxophone saying a lot but nothing I understand. It calms down a bit towards the middle, with lovely playing from Calderazzo but then it just breaks down again and I just feel like pressing the stop button.

I've always believed that jazz should be thought provoking but I've also always believed it should be fun. When it gets to the point where I get a headache trying to figure out what's going on, I just lose interest. I'm more Yellowjackets or Pat Metheny than I am Keith Jarrett or, interestingly enough, Wynton Marsalis. While I've been a Branford fan for many years, I've never been able to get into Wynton.

Anyway, if anyone reading this is interested in music in a very similar vein featuring all four members of this quartet but a little more down on pedestrian level, I recommend (if you haven't got it already) this quartet's drummer's 2002 album "Bar Talk". It's just as good musically but so much more fun.

Good album but (for me), not a great one.