How Great (Really) Was Wynton Marsalis?

Was Wynton Marsalis ever really all that good? He’s a legend, sure, write Fred Kaplan, but he disappoints. “Marsalis, who’s now 42, is a superb trumpeter and a brilliant educator. (His schoolhouse lectures on music, which aired on PBS a few years ago, are the best of their kind since Leonard Bernstein’s telecasts in the ’60s.) But he has never been a great bandleader or a composer. He’s written and recorded scores of compositions, but I defy anyone to hum a few.”