Home » Jazz Articles » Play This! » Branford Marsalis & Joey Calderazzo: Face on the Barroom Floor

2

Branford Marsalis & Joey Calderazzo: Face on the Barroom Floor

By

View read count
On "Face on the Barroom Floor," the duo of Branford Marsalis and Joey Calderazzo pay tribute to Wayne Shorter by distilling one of Shorter's most beautiful pieces into its essentials. The sentiment might be interpreted as "a lovelorn individual drinks himself into forgetfulness. We hope for a happier future for him." Marsalis and Calderazzo take the original arrangement, performed by Weather Report, and leave only the piano and soprano saxophone, playing them plaintively with sparse block chords and a honking wail. The track highlights Shorter's unique, later compositional style, clustering melody lines into short flurries of notes and reframing the notes in a chord to deftly shift tonal centers, surprising the listener.

For further insight into this piece, read Wikipedia's description of the 1872 poem of nearly the same name (an inspiration for the song?), in which the drinker ultimately dies of a broken heart.



Contribute to Play This! Recommend a favorite song, album, or performance and we'll share it with your fellow All About Jazz readers. Submit it here.


About Branford Marsalis

Tags

Comments


PREVIOUS / NEXT



Branford Marsalis Concerts


Become a Sustaining Member

Get the Jazz Near You newsletter

Since 1995, All About Jazz has championed jazz as an art form and supported the musicians who create it. Over three decades, it has grown into one of the world's leading jazz resources, serving hundreds of thousands of readers, musicians, presenters and industry professionals each month.

Help Build the Future of All About Jazz

Your support helps us continue building All About Jazz for the next generation—expanding our editorial coverage, preserving jazz history, developing new community features and creating better ways to discover the music and the people behind it.

Become a sustaining member for as little as $20 per year and you'll immediately enjoy an ad-free experience along with access to subscriber features and future articles for a full year.

Together, we're not simply sustaining All About Jazz—we're building its future. Thank you for being part of the journey.

More

Jazz article: Two Views Of A Masterpiece
Jazz article: Lionel Loueke: Actual Proof
Jazz article: Brian Bromberg: Top Down

Popular

HIDDEN GEMS

Jazz article: Flora Carbo, Mário Costa and Wocjiech Jachna
Jazz article: Val Wilmer: Dues And Testimony
Jazz article: A Selection of Jazz on Sonorama

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletters highlight our top stories, top album reviews, website news, free songs, radio & podcast shows, news, and upcoming jazz events near you.

Install All About Jazz

iOS Instructions:

To install this app, follow these steps:

All About Jazz would like to send you notifications

Notifications include timely alerts to content of interest, such as articles, reviews, new features, and more. These can be configured in Settings.