Album of the Week, June 21, 2025
The challenge of mastering your influences has come up several times in this series, and it’s one that permeates the practice of jazz: how do you move beyond imitating those that came before you and shaped your thinking about music? Over the course of several records we saw Branford Marsalis arrive at a sound that is distinctively his own, particularly with The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born.
Marcus Roberts was on his own such journey, working through his compositional and performing influences in his first few solo outings. Today’s record finds him confronting those influences head on in a solo recital that performs music from three of his greatest influences: Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington, and Thelonious Monk. And he comes out the other side with a sound that is distinctively Marcus Roberts.
“Jungle Blues” opens the album; one of three Jelly Roll Morton compositions here, Roberts keeps the mood placid but with an undercurrent of perpetual motion from the stride chords in the left hand. He also adds harmonic interest with his left hand, bringing in notes of gospel and blues that add complexity and interest. Also noteworthy is the way the melody migrates from the right hand to the left, so that he can add what almost seems a third voice with the right hand.
“Mood Indigo” takes a quiet path into Duke Ellington’s great composition (last heard in this column on Ellington’s 1950 recording Masterpieces by Ellington). on a theme from clarinetist Barney Bigard. The initial statement of the melody is in the high register of the piano, but just as Ellington did, Roberts takes the first verse down into the lower register of the instrument, coming back up for the chorus. He plays the choruses with a great deal of rubato and dynamic variation, sounding a bit as if the music is coming in a dream, an effect emphasized by the seventh chords in the coda.
“Solitude” starts out in the same pensive mood, but with considerably more warmth by virtue of its lower voicing. Legendarily the piece was composed in a recording studio in 20 minutes, as Ellington arrived for a recording session with 3 works and in need of one more. There’s no haste about the arrangement here, with Roberts using effects in the higher octave to add additional urgency and variety to the latter verses. Again, there’s a shift in tonality in the coda as Roberts seems to drift away into a reverie. “I Got It Bad (And That Ain’t Good)” feels a bit like the bluesier cousin of “Solitude,” but still holding the reflective move.
“Trinkle Tinkle,” the first of the Thelonious Monk compositions on the record, puts us in a different mood, more uptempo and vigorous. If you didn’t know it was Monk you’d think you were hearing more Morton, as the stride left hand technique Roberts used on the first track is also present here, albeit at a brisker tempo. Roberts’ rubato and octave-hopping improvisation keeping a thematic continuity with the Ellington tracks, and there’s some spectacular meter-shifting in the second half of the composition along with some swooping arpeggios, all while that stride left hand keeps rolling along.
“Misterioso” loses some of the mystery of the original composition but underscores Monk’s debt to Jelly Roll Morton in emphasizing the constantly moving chords in the melody. The improvisation carries us to some different places, with a combination of a high gospel improvisation and some left hand work that swings enough to feel a little shaggy. Overall there’s considerably more swing in Roberts’ interpretation than in Monk’s insistently four-square original. “Pannonica” gives us a more meditative Monk original; except for the ever-moving tonality of the melody, we might be back with Ellington. Roberts’ read of the tune has the rubato of his Ellington readings but the insistent swing of his Monk, adding up to an original synthesis of the different voices in the recording.
“New Orleans Blues” returns us to Jelly Roll Morton, where we hear a little of Monk’s conception in Roberts’ syncopated placement of the chords and the off-angle rhythmic drive. Roberts plays Morton like Bach, not in a fugueing sense but in terms of the absolute authority of the statement.
By contrast, in “Prelude to a Kiss” he continues to underscore the mystery in Ellington’s incredible ballad, lingering over the suspensions in the melodic line to call out the dissonance in the composition. Hearing it reveals the connection from Duke to Monk; both men heard harmonies differently than everyone else. The bridge gives us the connection back to Morton, as well, with the rooted stomp of the chords revealed as the harmonic language settles down. It’s a nifty Rosetta Stone for Roberts’ vision of the three composers, in just over three minutes.
And it segues flawlessly into “Shout ’Em Aunt Tillie,” with the opening chords feeling like an extension of the delirious chord progression in the opening of “Prelude.” Roberts takes the opening out of time and then downshifts into a vigorous 4/4. Listening to his performance, which shifts from fairly straightforward left-hand chords and right hand melody to some all-hands harmonic improvisation, is like listening to an orchestra come out of the wings. You’re reminded that Ellington didn’t only write swooners; this tune could have been repertoire for Louis Armstrong. And yet Roberts doesn’t just play it like New Orleans jazz. Listen to the rhythmic improvisation at 3:30, where he shifts the right hand half a beat behind the left, or 30 seconds later where the shifting rhythmic emphasis in the left hand gives the effect of a hemiola. It’s arresting, and one of the highlights of the record.
Roberts signs off the Ellington portion of the recording with “Black and Tan Fantasy.” The early Ellington composition on a theme provided by trumpeter Bubber Miley is a pocket symphony, and Roberts gives us the funereal march at the beginning, the rhythmic opening, and a solo that seems to float over the deeply regimented blues happening below. Again it seems like there might be more than two hands on this keyboard!
When we wander into “Monk’s Mood” it seems both casual and otherworldly. Like “Prelude to a Kiss,” the song takes us through multiple tonalities; unlike the earlier work, it doesn’t seem to resolve to any of them. But the main tune is still quotable, albeit fragmentary. There’s a broad romantic statement followed by a musical laugh in the lower piano, and just as it seems that we’re going to resolve in F major, it pivots to C, a brief dip into B and then finally back to C, using three octave arpeggios and asides to facilitate the key changes. And the whole thing feels effortless throughout.
“In Walked Bud” is more effortless Monk, with the eccentric genius’s salute to eccentric genius Bud Powell sounding positively straightforward compared to some of the other tunes—at least until Roberts gets into the first improvisation, where he shifts the rhythm, seems to linger over the phrases, all while keeping everything moving forward. In the second improvisation there’s a second where it feels like the wheels have come off, but he’s just slowing down into a swinging prelude to the final recap.
“Crepuscule With Nellie” is a composition we’ve heard a few times before—and critically, it’s a composition, as in written out from beginning to end, so if you play it right the opportunities for improvisation are limited. But Roberts finds them. Again as with “Misterioso” he swings where Monk played straight time, and—most scandalously of all!—he repeats the tag at the end of the second and third repetitions of the melody, like a private joke. The effect is to add a certain earthiness to Monk’s strange love song, which leads effectively into Morton’s “The Crave” to close us out. The last number is played on what seems to be a de-tuned piano and hearkens back to his rendition of “Shout ’Em, Aunt Tillie” with its rhythmic drive. There’s even a moment that seems to quote Scott Joplin and lean forward to Gershwin simultaneously. It’s just another great Marcus Roberts performance, effortless but ingenious all at once.
Roberts went on from this recording to do a series of albums in the 1990s, starting with my personal favorite of his albums, As Serenity Approaches, which features a combination of solo and duet performances and showcases his self-assurance as performer and composer. The recordings tailed off in the early 2000s as the industry changed and he went deeper into his teaching at Florida State University College of Music. He revisited Deep in the Shed in 2012 and has continued to record music that is steeped in traditional jazz while adding his own distinctive voice.
Next week we’ll close out this series with a sharp left turn that was both unexpected and inevitable when it was released in 1994.
You can listen to this week’s album here:
BONUS BEATS: I couldn’t resist highlighting my favorite track on When Serenity Approaches. While there doesn’t appear to be a full-album playlist of the CD-only release on YouTube, there is my favorite track, a magnum opus original that goes from a blues to a classical concerto and back within one massive seven-minute solo performance. Here’s “Blues in the Evening Time.”