Standard Time, Vol. 6: Mr. Jelly Lord

Often considered jazz’s first significant composer, Jelly Roll Morton crafted high-spirited, suggestive music that upheld the festive ensemble spirit of New Orleans jazz while pushing it toward the complexity and stylishness of swing. Trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, both lauded and sneered at for his jazz orthodoxies, certainly appreciated Morton’s modernist sensibilities; his goal on this 1999 recording was to highlight the “contemporary power” of early jazz, and he approaches Morton’s buoyant music from a variety of angles. “King Porter Stomp” is a showcase for Marsalis (showing his facility with a mute) and pianist Eric Lewis. “Sidewalk Blues” finds the band at its most frolicsome, while the growling horns get down and dirty for “Jungle Blues.” Sometimes the music flies across decades, as on “The Pearls,” which features a (mostly) ‘20s-style arrangement with some decidedly post-bop interjections. Special guests are showcased on a pair of solo-piano tracks: Danilo Perez subtly mixes in some modern strokes on the Spanish-tinged “Mamanita,” and Harry Connick Jr. shows off his urbane stride technique (and then some) on “Billy Goat Stomp.” For the closing “Tom Cat Blues,” recorded five years before the rest of the tracks, Marsalis and pianist Eric Reed ventured to Edison Laboratories in New Jersey to cut an appropriately raspy-sounding duet on wax cylinder.