Good evening, everyone:

Last Sunday – the 18 th of October – marked the birthdates of two seminal figures of American music: Chuck Berry, born in 1926, in St. Louis, and Wynton Marsalis, born in 1961 in New Orleans. Put St. Louis, New Orleans, Memphis, and Detroit in the same sentence and you ’ve gone quite a way toward defining the arc of American post-WWII music.

It ’s hard, though, to imagine two more different origin stories.

Berry was a former beautician ’s apprentice and self-taught guitarist who walked into Chess Records in Chicago in 1955 with a country tune he called “Ida May ”– which would later become “Maybellene. ” Rock-and-roll changed from that moment on. Beyond the signature duckwalk – his songwriting influence would extend from Elvis to the Beatles and the Beach Boys . . .   from Motown to the Rolling Stones. Just so there ’s no doubt: “Johnny B. Goode ” was included on the Golden Record aboard the Voyager spacecraft as an ambassador to other potential audiences beyond our solar system.

Marsalis, in contrast, grew up in a family of distinguished New Orleans musicians – some call it New Orleans musical royalty. His father Ellis was a pianist and renowned teacher. His mother Dolores a devoted champion of her sons ’ music. His brother Bradford, a brilliant saxophonist.

He trained at Juilliard and joined Art Blakey ’s legendary Jazz Messengers when barely nineteen. In 1983 and 1984, he became the first person to win Grammys in both jazz and classical categories in the same year – both years. In 1997, his composition Blood on the Fields became the first jazz composition to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Music.

I long ago played trumpet, but mostly stayed at a distance to admire people who actually had a gift for it. Think Terence Blanchard, Marcus Belgrave, Louis Armstrong, Maurice Andre, Rafael Mendez. But it is arguable that nobody has ever played with such technical brilliance and interpretive command as Marsalis – and his virtuosity is equally transcendent whether expressed through classical performance or jazz.

But the differences aside, what strikes me is the way that both musicians shaped their genres. Berry changed what a song could be about and how it could be expressed; Marsalis changed what an institution could hold.

Berry ’s deepest legacy may be how we think about writing rock-and-roll. He wrote from inside the lives of teenagers: what happened in the classroom, at the jukebox, in the car, during the first crush. His musical mini-stories were quick and simple.

And the musical language was unmistakable – the Stones ’ Keith Richards has said that he went to school on Berry ’s guitar language, and the Beach Boys ’“Surfin ’ USA ” was so derivative of “Sweet Little Sixteen ” that Berry was ultimately given a songwriting credit.

Although Marsalis ’ playing and composition will leave a legacy of their own, he also shaped a profound institutional legacy. In 1987, he launched a summer concert series in New York City. Within a decade, that series had become Jazz at Lincoln Center – a full partner on the nation ’s most prestigious cultural campus. And by 2004, Jazz at Lincoln Center had its own concert hall, a club, and teaching and rehearsal spaces – together with a resident jazz orchestra presenting a repertoire that runs from Jelly Roll Morton to new commissions, many of them written by Marsalis.

Even that understates his reach.  “Essentially Ellington ” puts Duke Ellington ’s scores into the hands of high school bands across the country. The Marsalis on Music series and his voice in Ken Burns ’s Jazz brought jazz history to millions of listeners who might never have walked into a club. His compositions range from big band suites to a violin concerto and a symphony, each staking the claim that jazz belongs among the nation ’s great art forms.

American culture needed both Berry and Marsalis, each a powerful reminder that Black musical genius has written central chapters in America ’s national story.

Rip

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