Standard Time, Vol. 6: Mr. Jelly Lord

1	Red Hot Pepper 3:41
2	New Orleans Bump 4:32
3	King Porter Stomp 3:10
4	The Pearls 3:51
5	Deep Creek 5:14
6	Mamanita 2:48
7	Sidewalk Blues 5:12
8	Jungle Blues 6:50
9	Big Lip Blues 3:17
10	Dead Man Blues 4:40
11	Smoke-House Blues 4:51
12	Billy Goat Stomp 2:58
13	Courthouse Bump 3:28
14	Black Bottom Stomp 4:20
15	Tom Cat Blues 2:09

Barnes & Noble

On MR. JELLY LORD, Wynton Marsalis offers a homage to fellow Crescent City native Ferdinand Lamenthe ("Jelly Roll") Morton that does full justice to a choice selection of the seminal jazz composer's incomparable oeuvre. Joined by a select crew of regular cohorts, New Orleans repertoire specialists, and by guest pianists Danilo Perez (an unaccompanied "Mamanita") and Harry Connick, Jr. ("Billy Goat Blues"), Marsalis extracts an ensemble tone that simultaneously addresses Morton's idiomatic essence while interpreting it with a modernist vocabulary.Not least, Mr. Marsalis unleashes his magnificent trumpet more than has been his wont on recent recordings. "King Porter Stomp" is an exquisite mute feature. There's a nuanced open-horn reading of the insinuating theme of "The Pearls," and, on "Dead Man Blues," a soaring Armstrong-esque oration articulated with golden tone and phrased with rhythmic complexity that recalls '60s vocabulary extenders Booker Little and Woody Shaw.The virtuosic solo on the penultimate track, "Black Bottom Stomp," remains pure Wynton Marsalis.The album concludes with a duet between Marsalis and pianist Eric Reed on "Tom Cat Blues"--- recorded by wax cylinder in the Thomas Edison Laboratories where phonographic technology was developed -- that blurs the lines between past and present in the manner Marsalis intends. It's a fitting end to one of his essential recordings. Ted Panken

All Music Guide

In this tribute to Jelly Roll Morton, at last there is a large sampling of the Wynton Marsalis who can get large crowds at outdoor jazz festivals like the Playboy at Hollywood Bowl to dance and wave white handkerchiefs. This is mostly gutbucket, stomping, swinging New Orleans jazz through the eyes and ears of avid students of old records -- and they have absorbed a good deal of the original raffish, joyous feeling. Dedicated scholars as they are, the band even recreates the original zany dialogue that opens Morton's recordings of "Dead Man Blues" and "Sidewalk Blues" (with a small alteration in the latter for PC purposes), leading to swaggering performances of both. Marsalis by now is an absolute virtuoso of the plunger mute, and he gets ample room to growl and snarl, often alongside trombonist/co-arranger Wycliffe Gordon. Without the mute, he is often majestically commanding, totally in his element. As befitting the contrapuntal New Orleans ethos, Wynton is also generous with the spotlight, turning over an entire track to Danilo Perez's lurching solo piano rendition of "Mamanita," another to the thick-toned period clarinet of performing musicologist Michael White on "Big Lip Blues," and another, alas, to Harry Connick, Jr.'s ham-handed solo treatment of "Billy Goat Stomp." The most startling performance -- authenticity taken to its extreme -- comes at the end as Wynton and pianist Eric Reed wander into Thomas Edison Laboratories (circa 1993) to record a cylinder of "Tom Cat Blues" with vintage acoustical equipment. The results are often hilarious, and certainly instructive (try this out as a blindfold test on friends who think that they don't make jazz records like they used to). Richard S. Ginell