[Dixielandjazz] Marsalis trumpets

[ROBERT R. CALDER]

so far as I remember, the instrument Marsalis uses is a relatively recent 
innovation designed to facilitate speed of attack. --  following up on the 
practice of sheering off the cup of an old fashioned mouthpiece to produce a 
sheer flat surface the lips come against -- and might even be cut by. A 
lip-slicer not for beginners! 


I recall that when Marsalis appeared, beside I think Snooky Young and several 
other veterans, in a concert performance of an extended Charles Mingus 
composition whose components various people have heard as different works over 
the years, Humphrey Lyttelton mentioned that the instrument the then much 
younger and still moustache-wearing Marsalis was playing looked like something 
out of a pawn-shop.  Mottled, battered ... 


Before which, Marsalis the then Yuppie was on a documentary with Art Blakey and 
expressing ideas of some need for newness entirely at odds with what he has been 

doing in more recent decades. Improvement is possible.