This passage was adapted from an article published in 2003.

For two decades, Wynton Marsalis complemented his extraordinary gifts as a jazz trumpeter with persuasive advocacy of the importance of jazz history and jazz masters. At his peak, Marsalis ruled the jazz universe, enjoying virtually unqualified admiration as a musician and unsurpassed influence as the music's leading promoter and definer. But after drawing increasing fire from critics and fellow musicians alike for his neotraditionalism, the biggest name in jazz faces an uncertain future, as does jazz itself.

In 1999, to mark the end of the century, Marsalis issued a total of fifteen new CDs. In the following two years he did not release a single collection of new music. In fact, after two decades with Columbia Records—the prestigious label historically associated with Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, and Miles Davis—Marsalis has no record contract with any company. Over the past few years Columbia has drastically reduced its roster of active jazz musicians, shifting its emphasis to reissues of old recordings. Atlantic Records folded its jazz catalog into the operations of its parent company, Warner Music, and essentially gave up on developing new artists.

For this grim state of affairs in jazz, Marsalis, the public face of the music and the evident master of its destiny, has been accused of being at least partly culpable. Critics charge that, by leading jazz into the realm of unbending classicism and by sanctifying a canon of their own choosing, Marsalis and his adherents have codified the music into a stifling orthodoxy and inhibited the innovative impulses that have always advanced jazz. As a former executive with Columbia noted, "For many people, Marsalis has come to embody some retro ideology that is not really of the moment—it's more museumlike in nature, a look back."

Indeed, in seeking to elevate the public perception of jazz and to encourage young practitioners to pay attention to the music's traditions, Marsalis put great emphasis on its past masters. Still, he never advocated mere revivalism, and he has demonstrated in his compositions how traditional elements can be alluded to, recombined, and reinvented in the name of individualistic expression, taking the nature of that tradition and trying to push it forward. However, record executives came away with a different message: if the artists of the past are so great and enduring, why continue investing so much in young talent? So they shifted their attention to repackaging their catalogs of vintage recordings.

Where the young talent saw role models and their critics saw idolatry, the record companies saw brand names—the ultimate prize of marketing. For long-established record companies with vast archives of historic recordings, the economics were irresistible: it is far more profitable to wrap new covers around albums paid for generations ago than it is to find, record, and promote new artists.