Wynton Marsalis says he wanted last April’s Lincoln Centre blues collaborations with Eric Clapton “to sound like people playing music they know and love, not like a project”. Marsalis knew all too well that such a meeting could sound like a opportunistic marketing ploy. In the event, he gave the English guitarist an ideal setting in which to experiment with jazz by touching the nerve that connects many British blues-rockers of Clapton’s generation to the trad-jazz and bluesy skiffle movement of the 1950s. Set to the eloquent polyphony of an early 20th-century New Orleans jazz band, classics such as Careless Love and Just a Closer Walk With Thee (the latter also featuring a rasping Taj Mahal) join bluesy road songs such as Joliet Bound, a New Orleans swing account of Louis Armstrong’s Ice Cream and a boogieing Kidman Blues. Clapton’s own Layla gets a slow-dirge treatment over solemn drums, the guitarist’s canny links and fills throughout the set are often more absorbing than his solos. Meanwhile, the graceful improv inventiveness of Marsalis and his inspired clarinetist Victor Goines make almost all their interventions and ensemble contributions a delight. These are not heart-wrenching blues performances, but they’re very happily executed and devoted ones.
New York City’s premier jazz venue got the blues last April when Wynton Marsalis and Eric Clapton performed together in Rose Theater at Frederick P. Rose Hall, home of Jazz at Lincoln Center for two sold-out shows dedicated to vintage blues. The extraordinary collaboration, billed as Wynton Marsalis & Eric Clapton Play the Blues, paired these musical virtuosos with members of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra as they brought to life a repertoire of songs selected by Clapton and arranged by Marsalis.
Marsalis and Clapton were joined on stage by Dan Nimmer (piano), Carlos Henriquez (bass), Ali Jackson (drums), Marcus Printup (trumpet), Victor Goines (clarinet), Chris Crenshaw (trombone, vocals), Don Vappie (banjo) and Clapton’s longtime keyboarist/sideman Chris Stainton. Marsalis says the group combined the sound of an early blues jump-band with the sound of New Orleans jazz to accommodate the integration of guitar/trumpet lead, a combination that gave the musicians the latitude to play different grooves, from the Delta to the Caribbean and beyond.
1 Ice Cream 7:23
2 Forty-Four 7:08
3 Joe Turner’s Blues 7:28
4 The Last Time 4:10
5 Careless Love 7:26
6 Kidman Blues 4:00
7 Layla 9:05
8 Joliet Bound 4:00
9 Just A Closer Walk With Thee 12:11
10 Corrine, Corrina 10:01