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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.

Branford Marsalis

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
It’s hard to get into Newsweek because, as more of our former intellectual magazines take on a pop focus, if there’s no buzz, there’s no interest.
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Culture Focus Intellectual
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
Everybody talks about finding your voice. Do your homework and your voice will find you.
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Findings Homework Voice
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
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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Doors Needs Thinking
I’m not going to play funk licks on a jazz album. That makes no sense.
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Albums Jazz Play Sense
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
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
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
his special ability enables Walter to communicate with aspiring musicians in a way that removes the sense of mystery that sometimes enshrouds our profession.
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Enshroud Profession Remove Special
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 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
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
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

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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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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Popular Authors

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