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I’m not going to play funk licks on a jazz album. That makes no sense.

Branford Marsalis

When you’re dealing with music without words, titles are more a means of identification than anything else. What’s the point of getting lofty?
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Identification Mean Titles
Everybody talks about finding your voice. Do your homework and your voice will find you.
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Findings Homework Voice
Walter Beasley is an anomaly: a successful performing musician who possesses the rare skill of understanding the musical process beyond the intuitive. T
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Skills Successful Understanding
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.
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Cat Player Rip
So much of Jazz doesn’t have an audience other than music students or musicians.
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Jazz Music Students
Pop doesn’t really look back. It can’t. What makes pop work is simplicity.
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Looks Music Simplicity
Coltrane came to New Orleans one day and he was talking about the jazz scene. And Coltrane mentions that the problem with jazz was that there were too few groups.
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Day New Country Talking
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.
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Care Swings Use
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.
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Dad House Taken
When people go to concerts, they say I’m going to see… not, I’m going to hear.
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Concert Going People
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.
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Band Listening Musician
I like to make records sound good. I’m more like a reducer than a producer. If an artist cannot produce themselves, what’s the point?
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Artist Records Sound
The whole point is, give me a break with the standards. You go to the average jazz label and suggest a record and they want to know which standards you’re going to play. I’m saying let’s break the formula.
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Average Giving Play
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.
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Community Halloween Successful
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
You know, being America, being the land of “number ones”, everyone wants to be a leader before they follow.
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Country Land Numbers

I’m not going to play funk licks on a jazz album. That makes no sense.

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I’m not going to play funk licks on a jazz album. That makes no sense.

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