Another Marsalis Hits Hot, Sharp Note : Trombonist Delfeayo Defends Brother Wynton and Direction of His Own Career

Delfeayo Marsalis was angry. Someone had been picking on his big brother and he didn’t like it a bit.

“I’m ticked because I read an article on Wynton here in the paper today that just got me mad,” the 27-year-old trombonist said during a phone conversation last week from Houston, the first stop on a tour that brought him to the Orange County Performing Arts Center Sunday night (see accompanying review).

“What some people say about Wynton is the gravest injustice that could ever be said about a musician. You’ll never hear me say anything disrespectful about Wynton, or any of my brothers.”

Well, almost never. Wasn’t it Delfeayo who called brother, saxophonist and “Tonight Show” band leader Branford Marsalis “the ultimate sideman” because of his willingness to play with performers like Sting and the Grateful Dead as well as with fellow jazz musicians?

“No, he agrees with that,” Delfeayo responded with a laugh. “I’m putting that in the liner notes to his next album. Being a sideman in such diverse circumstances isn’t easy.”

Younger than both Branford and trumpeter Wynton (and older than drummer Jason Marsalis), Delfeayo is just as outspoken on his own craft and equally committed to its mastery. And, like his brothers, he has become a target for some critics who see his success coming too early and too easily, a result of the attention that has been focused on his family.

But, he said, “based on what I’ve heard about Wynton, nothing anyone could ever say about me would bother me. At first, it was the whole idea of him lacking originality and his being too mechanical. Now, in this article, it’s a question of him still lacking emotion. In our generation, Wynton has accomplished more than any other musician out there in terms of cataloguing music. He has 12, 15 records out, all with a lot of music on them.”

Delfeayo admits to following in his brother’s footsteps, but only part of the way. He says Wynton’s 1985 recording “Black Codes (From The Underground)”--an aggressive updating of the sound that Miles Davis pioneered in the mid-’60s with his landmark quintet that included Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and Tony Williams--provided some of the inspiration for his own work. But he doesn’t see himself following Wynton’s current lead in mining the historic sounds and styles of their home town, New Orleans.

“That’s not the direction I’ll be going in. For him, I think it was the best move he could have made. He has enough music documented that he’s free to explore. Me, I hear the style that he was playing in before. That’s the style I want to expand and bring my own thing to.”

Evidence of the Delfeayo spin on that direction can be heard on his first recording as a leader, “Pontius Pilate’s Decision,” a diverse collection of moods and rhythms based on themes pulled from the Bible.

“Some music deals only with certain aspects, certain ideas or certain feelings, but jazz is fully comprehensive. It deals with every emotion. That’s why I wanted to work with thematic material that would force me into having different vibes, different feelings.

“Sometimes you listen to jazz records and every tune sounds the same. That’s one of the reasons people don’t enjoy jazz anymore. There’s just too much monotony. What I try to do is go through different grooves and different vibes, similar to what Duke Ellington did--not the kind of music he was writing, but with conceptual ideas like Ellington.”

His choice of thematic material, he added, has nothing to do with his religious beliefs. “We were all raised Catholic, but when we got older and realized what was going on in the Catholic church, we kind of stopped believing that. But the Bible is something. Art Blakey encouraged me to read it when I was playing with him. You can pick it up at any page and something bad is going on.”

Actually, it was Delfeayo’s interest in literature and writing that provided the motivation to build a concept from biblical themes. As a youngster, while Branford and Wynton were pursuing music, pater familias Ellis Marsalis, a jazz pianist, was encouraging Delfeayo to become a writer. “He knows how difficult it is to survive playing jazz, so from what he observed of me while I was in grade school, he didn’t think music was right for me,” Delfeayo recalled. “Now, he can see his error. Now, he sees that he was wrong.”

Still, writing is a facet of Delfeayo’s talent. He has written liner notes for Branford and for his own album (along with critic Stanley Crouch), annotations that not only explain his interpretation of the themes but relate them to modern conditions. He applied to join the writer’s program at the University of New Orleans last summer--and jokingly credits Shakespeare with getting him started in music.

“I’m a very big Shakespeare fan. Seriously. Over the last three years, I realized from him that tomorrow is actually today. If I want to get anything accomplished, rather than wait for tomorrow, I have to start today. You know how they say somebody is a musicians’ musician? He was a genius’ genius.”

Yet another wrinkle in Delfeayo’s career is his work as a producer; he has done albums for both Branford and Wynton and well as for Ellis, pianist Kenny Kirkland and singer-pianist Harry Connick Jr. “It’s my day gig. There’s a craft to it . . . it’s different than playing. The most important thing to me is that when you turn your stereo on to the proper volume, it sounds like the musicians are in the room with you. Optimum clarity is what I aim for.”

If his instrument, his direction and his production talents separate him from his brothers, he does share that aforementioned outspokenness: He seems most animated when discussing the hand that he sees critics dealing to his generation of musicians.

“The problem in our generation is that the media turns a lot of people away from jazz. (They say) something has to be going on that is totally different from anything that went on before. And that stuff is crazy.

“The people of my generation, people in their 20s and even in their teens, they’re turning away from jazz because the critics say it’s the same old thing. They dismiss the music by saying it sounds like Miles in the ‘60s. Well, Miles sounded like Dizzy. And Dizzy sounded like Roy Eldridge--just like Beethoven, to a degree, sounded like Mozart, who sounded like Bach. The real question is who’s staying out here and being serious about the music.”