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What you have to do is play a couple of songs and then get off the stage because everything that trails it sounds stupid.

Branford Marsalis

The piano is the X factor. People have a tough time following the structures when there’s no piano there, spelling it out. It makes it more easily understood, particularly to people who don’t know as much about music.
BRANFORD MARSALIS

People Piano Times Tough
Humans are imperfect. That’s one of the reasons that classical and jazz are in trouble. We’re on the quest for the perfect performance and every note has to be right. Man, every note is not right in life.
BRANFORD MARSALIS

Inspiring Men Perfect
The way to learn the language is to rip off other players. As Benny Golson told me, “We all start off sounding like other cats.
BRANFORD MARSALIS

Cat Player Rip
You hear it in your brain. Whatever makes sense. Some songs work well as quartet songs, sometimes they don’t.
BRANFORD MARSALIS

Brain Sometimes Song
I’m not going to play funk licks on a jazz album. That makes no sense.
BRANFORD MARSALIS

Albums Jazz Play Sense
My job is to write songs that have emotional meaning to me.
BRANFORD MARSALIS

Jobs Music Song
Pop doesn’t really look back. It can’t. What makes pop work is simplicity.
BRANFORD MARSALIS

Looks Music Simplicity
If I were like a lot of other people, then it wouldn’t be fun; but since I’m like me, it’s okay.
BRANFORD MARSALIS

Fun Okay People
My dad was a musician, it was just what he did, like another guy’s dad drives a meat truck. Our house was normal. We weren’t taken with the fact our dad was a musician.
BRANFORD MARSALIS

Dad House Taken
What is jazz? It, It’s almost like asking, What is French? Jazz is a musical language. It’s a musical dialect that actually embodies the spirit of America.
BRANFORD MARSALIS

Asking Country Musical People
You know, being America, being the land of “number ones”, everyone wants to be a leader before they follow.
BRANFORD MARSALIS

Country Land Numbers
I don’t care who likes it or buys it. Because if you use that criterion, Mozart would have never written Don Giovanni, Charlie Parker never would have played anything but swing music. There comes a point at which you have to stand up and say, this is what I have to do.
BRANFORD MARSALIS

Care Swings Use
One of the things that I loved about listening to Miles Davis is that Miles always had an instinct for which musicians were great for what situations. He could always pick a band, and that was the thing that separated him from everybody else.
BRANFORD MARSALIS

Band Listening Musician
One of the things that’s clear to me from interviews that I’ve read is that the more popular successful jazz musicians had audiences above and beyond the music community.
BRANFORD MARSALIS

Community Halloween Successful
When people go to concerts, they say I’m going to see… not, I’m going to hear.
BRANFORD MARSALIS

Concert Going People
Walter Beasley is an anomaly: a successful performing musician who possesses the rare skill of understanding the musical process beyond the intuitive. T
BRANFORD MARSALIS

Skills Successful Understanding

What you have to do is play a couple of songs and then get off the stage because everything that trails it sounds stupid.

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What you have to do is play a couple of songs and then get off the stage because everything that trails it sounds stupid.

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