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Pop doesn’t really look back. It can’t. What makes pop work is simplicity.

Branford Marsalis

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

Country Land Numbers
When people go to concerts, they say I’m going to see… not, I’m going to hear.
BRANFORD MARSALIS

Concert Going 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.
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Dad House Taken
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
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
I think that if you keep banging at the door all you need is a little foothold, a little tiny foothold, and then the rest will take care of itself.
BRANFORD MARSALIS

Doors Needs Thinking
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
You don’t know what you like, you like what you know. In order to know what you like, you have to know everything.
BRANFORD MARSALIS

Jazz Music Order
Everybody talks about finding your voice. Do your homework and your voice will find you.
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Findings Homework Voice
If I were like a lot of other people, then it wouldn’t be fun; but since I’m like me, it’s okay.
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Fun Okay People
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
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 biggest problem with American music right now, is that kids don’t listen. They come by it honestly, Americans don’t listen anyway.
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Biggest Country Kids People
I’m not going to play funk licks on a jazz album. That makes no sense.
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Albums Jazz Play Sense
You hear it in your brain. Whatever makes sense. Some songs work well as quartet songs, sometimes they don’t.
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Brain Sometimes Song
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.
BRANFORD MARSALIS

Day New Country Talking

Pop doesn’t really look back. It can’t. What makes pop work is simplicity.

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Pop doesn’t really look back. It can’t. What makes pop work is simplicity.

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Popular Authors

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