Back in the day, my Pops used to let me tag along to the late night jazz gigs he’d catch. I saw many legends in my younger days. A treat that has gained stature in the subsequent years was the time I got a chance to experience the Wynton Marsalis Quintet at the Tralfamadore Cafe in Buffalo, N.Y. Wynton was a media darling – the intellectual, neo-traditionalist from jazz’s Royal Family, the Marsalises (father, Ellis; sons, Wynton, Branford and Delfayo). A couple of years before, he had finished a stint in Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers band and released a critically acclaimed, self-entitled debut. When I caught him in early 1986, I was a grammar school kid watching a trumpeter who would become the defining musician of his generation and impact jazz by dictating its role/stature in American music, perhaps more than anyone before him. That night, he looked at me between numbers, his trumpet dangling at his side and said, “Say, young man, whatchu doin’ up so late past your bedtime, huh?” In retrospect, I was witnessing and missing greatness.

Marsalis had released 2 albums the previous year. J Mood followed Black Codes of the Underground, with brother Branford, bassist Charnett Moffett, drummer Tain Watts and the late great pianist Kenny Kirkland. Branford and Kirkland left the quintet soon after Black Codes and joined Sting’s band. The band I saw in 1986 was the J Mood band – Wynton, Watts, new bassist Robert Hurst and new pianist Marcus Roberts, a blind virtuoso. Nothing in recent memory can compare to the Black Codes quintet, as the title track attests (“Black Codes”). Black Codes might be the best jazz album released in the past 25 years andthe quintet might be the most influential.

The 80s was a strange period for jazz. There was a shift where young musicians rejected the commercial silliness of the late 70s and returned to the root, core, and foundation. They referred to that generation as the Young Lions. Jazz started swinging again, it was cerebral again, and it was nasty and soulful again… Wynton, and the Black Codes quintet specifically, led this charge. As much as I love Hurst and Roberts, they weren’t Moffett and Kirkland. Hurst probably wouldn’t have thumped as funky as Moffett did on the “Black Codes”. As dexterous and witty as Roberts could get with his piano solos, very few recent pianists could bang out an apocalypse matching Kirkland’s “Chambers of Tain” solo. And Wynton has never been able to recreate the seamless blend and impeccable communication he had with his older brother, Branford. Check how their tone and mood match so beautifully on “For Wee Folks”, with Branford playing an especially warm soprano sax. But like most groups, regardless of genre, money came calling and folks split too soon.

I regret never getting the chance to see them perform as a collective but it’s all good. They gave us this album. And if you have even a passing interest in jazz, it is an essential purchase for your collection.