I get upset when I hear a Black man who knows nothing about Jazz pretend he knows. It's painful to listen to and insulting. Jazz is deeply personal to whatever taste, or whomever artist you choose to favor. My father for instance had a decent Jazz collection and even got into blues. His artists were Jimmy Smith (his favorite), Count Basie, Wes Montgomery, Miles Davis, Charles Earland and even those funky New Orleans brothers the Meters. He and my mom and some of their friends loved to go to see B.B. King and/or Bobby Bland. Now me, my love of Jazz began back in the mid-'70's with a genre called Jazz-fusion.

In 1975 me and a couple of my buddies York Turner and Leonard Holton occasionally broke away from basketball, chasing girls and listening to Motown, James Brown and the funk bands (we were big on Parliament/Funkadelic, Graham Central Station and the Ohio Players), and began checking Jazz bands of our era, Chick Corea and Return to Forever, John McLaughlin and the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Tony Williams Lifetime, Weather Report, Passport, the late great Frank Zappa, Jeff Beck, Roy Ayers, the Laws brothers (name both of them), etc. Other brothers in the 'hood got into Bob James or Deodato, and the really, really down pro-Black brothers in their early 20's was listening to Ahmad Jamal, Pharoah Sanders, Sonny Rollins, Ornette Coleman and Wayne Shorter. Leonard's older brother James was into some of those bands, but the three of us, we loved the way out, the fusion, our s—t was deep. These bands were called fusion because they merged rock and jazz into some rather limitless ideas and sounds, and they boasted some of the greatest musicians of all time. Shorter's Weather Report; whom many consider the greatest jazz band off all time, was very much into fusion. Listening to them is like viewing a great painting. Passport was Germany's take on fusion, Germany had lots of progressive tight little bands that jammed long and heavy. Return to Forever had Chick as keyboard player, Stanley Clark on bass, Al Dimeola; possibly the fastest guitarist of his day, and Lenny White on drums. Weather, Mahavishnu and Lifetime boasted dynamic young musicians who got their first major exposure as members of Miles Davis' '60's bands.

I never got into Pop's collection until one day he bought home a brand new release by Miles that would become his last LP release before he went into seclusion back in '75; 'Agharta.' I took his Delta 88 for a spin and wore that tape out (yes it was on 8-track). You hip-hop kids know nothing about this. Back then there were only 2 radio stations in Buffalo that consistently played these artists; the old progressive rock free-form station WBUF FM-92 and the jazz station that's still around today UB's WBFO FM-88.7 (Gary Storm's overnight 'Oil of Dog' show in particular is still a missing void) were both good important outlets for albums that needed airplay. After that the corporate world really went on a mission to eliminate fusion and prog-rock because they no longer wanted listeners to think, to them these stations played too many Black singer/songwriter artists and Reggae with it's political message was emerging. This conspiracy crossed the board to most popular music and even R&B stations began playing disco, and the FM progressive stations were taken over by the all-white Album Oriented Rock format.

There is something very suspicious about radio being confined to just Michael Jackson, Madonna, bad rap, Country and Western and conservative talk shows, while fusion, folk, reggae, progressive music and political rap had to fight for exposure because there were only scant few stations playing and promoting their new releases. When it came to jazz, the suits would later figure out a different plot. They started using a single individual to discredit jazz fusion, in fact this jazz artist was only too happy to criticize not only the fusion movement that started before him in the late '60's, but the avant-garde jazz that preceded fusion. The man in question? Wynton Learson Marsalis; premier jazz trumpeter, national director of Jazz at the Lincoln Center , winner of 9 Grammys and 1 Pulitzer.

Marsalis of course first came into national prominence in the early '80's, the first in a long line of a great jazz family. Don't get me wrong, he is one is the greatest trumpet players in music history period. I bought a couple of his albums back them 'Black Codes: (From the Underground),' and 'J Mood,' as well as a couple of his classical albums, it's when Wynton takes the horn out of his mouth that the problems begin. The boy makes great music and then gives stupid commentary. It is well known to those who follow jazz and Mr. Marsalis in particular, that he does not like jazz fusion, avante-garde or basically most of the jazz released after 1965. That's all well and fine, he has a right to his opinion just as I gave you my opinion on musical preferences, and obviously you have yours. By misusing his prominent voice to classify only the timeline of jazz to just pre-65, he is only identifying bebop music and Big Band as being authentic versions of the music.

Dogmatically imposing such a narrow view of such a free art form is a contradiction anyway. I can say the Temptations and Marvin Gaye were my favorite R&B artists from the '60's, but I can't say that they and the groups of their era were the only authentic R&B going on. That eliminates a whole lot of singers of the '50's, '70's, 80's down to today. Wynton has been critical of the ground-breaking efforts of the very people who made it possible for him to prosper, like John Coltrane-who popularized the long improvisational style of people like Sun Ra. He seems to have bought into some of the theories of Coltrane's white critics who say that 'Trane's music during his sessions with Eric Dolphy was 'hate music.' I wondered then how can a man who doesn't sing make hate music. Coltrane's brilliant saxophone was just a back drop to much of the struggles of the Civil Rights Movement. Who then, was producing the hate?

It wasn't the first time Wynton's rap-style dissin' dialog took aim at his elders. One jazz insider stated he interviewed Marsalis in May of '82 and he complained that the 'Art Ensemble of Chicago was the worst thing that could happen to jazz.' Now he's getting personal, AEC is one of my favorites. Noted author Eric Nisenson said of Marsalis back in '97 that 'his love of and commitment to the supposed jazz tradition is not unlike a fundamentalist's view of the Gospels.' Eventually he would try to bring down jazz' greatest icon; Miles Davis.

In his autobiography 'Miles,' Davis disclosed that part of the reason he was having so much trouble with Columbia Records was due to their heavy endorsement of Wynton, and their continued snubbing of him. It seems that the young Marsalis failed to understand the game the industry suits were playing on Davis and used the divisive tactics as validation that he was a superior musician.: 'I really liked Wynton when I first met him. He's still a nice young man, only confused… the more famous he became the more he started saying things-nasty disrespectful things about me, things I've never said about musicians who influenced me and who I had great respect for… the press was trying to play Wynton off me… What makes it so bad is that Wynton is listening to all their s—t and believing them. If he keeps on, they're going to f—k him up. They even got him putting down his own brother for playing the kind of music he wants to play.'

It's not that Davis was jealous of Wynton, historically he took great delight in the efforts of young musicians and gave people like Tony Williams and Marcus Miller great praise. His main critique of Marsalis was that his music-though technically on point-lacked the passion and improvisational skills that only comes from life's experiences.

If Wynton wants to use his outspoken voice in a useful manner and rant against people taking away from the jazz culture, he should sound off against the 'smooth jazz' format. This is nothing but a style of music originated by guys like George Benson, Grover Washington Jr., Roy Ayers and maybe Maurice White, but can't get airplay on some radio stations using that banner because it's just a slick way for radio to play white artists only and promote them as important jazz artists. The fact remains, there is no music that is so definable that any deviation from it means it's not 'authentic.' Insulting those before you-even if you are in the industry and are doing it at the behest of your bosses or fans or if your ego is driving you-makes no sense at all.

Today Marsalis has a segment on XM-Radio's 'Real Jazz' network called the 'Swing-Seat,' where he emphasizes musicians who still play his style of swing-bop era jazz. That's all well and fine, but don't ever get the idea that this is the only real jazz that exist. African Americans originated all of the major music played in this country except country and western, and that includes jazz, blues, rhythm & blues, folk, rock-in-roll, heavy metal, and hip-hop. Miles would later state that 'bebop was about evolution, it wasn't about standing still and becoming safe.'

It doesn't matter if Miles used heroin, cocaine, crack and sniffed glue, and all Wynton does is drink Simlac and win 500 Grammy Awards. He will never, ever eclipse Davis, Dizzy, Byrd, or Coltrane in terms of musical stature, influence and ranking even if he lives to be 200-years-old. So you may as well shut-up and blow that horn boy. There is no hard and fast rule within any style of music except that you must be good at it. Oh by the way, a big Rest In Peace to Michael Brecker.