Wynton Marsalis Under Fire: "It's Like I'm The Enemy Now"

IT TAKES a rare kind of chutzpah to tell Johnny Carson where to go. Wynton Marsalis, Downbeat's "Musician of the Year" in 1982, did just that earlier this year when his group appeared on The Tonight Show. Instead of playing the standard 'Who Can I Turn To' as was originally planned, the 21-year-old trumpeter switched, at the last moment, to 'Hesitation', a terse, original composition with a bebop arrangement. Halfway into the song the group received, and duly ignored, the "cut" sign. Says Marsalis' saxophone-playing brother, Branford: "Wynton can be pretty stubborn, man. But it was cool. We said what we had to say."