Pop doesn’t really look back. It can’t. What makes pop work is simplicity.
BRANFORD MARSALISMy 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.
More Branford Marsalis Quotes
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If it’s not going to sound like Terrapin Station, what’s the point of playing Terrapin Station?
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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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So much of Jazz doesn’t have an audience other than music students or musicians.
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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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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.
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You hear it in your brain. Whatever makes sense. Some songs work well as quartet songs, sometimes they don’t.
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My job is to write songs that have emotional meaning to me.
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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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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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I’m not going to play funk licks on a jazz album. That makes no sense.
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You don’t know what you like, you like what you know. In order to know what you like, you have to know everything.
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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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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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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.
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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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