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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?

Branford Marsalis

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
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
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?
BRANFORD MARSALIS

Artist Records Sound
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
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

Couple Sound Stupid Trails
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?
BRANFORD MARSALIS

Identification Mean Titles
If it’s not going to sound like Terrapin Station, what’s the point of playing Terrapin Station?
BRANFORD MARSALIS

Ifs Sound Stations
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
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
his special ability enables Walter to communicate with aspiring musicians in a way that removes the sense of mystery that sometimes enshrouds our profession.
BRANFORD MARSALIS

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.
BRANFORD MARSALIS

Community Halloween Successful
Pop doesn’t really look back. It can’t. What makes pop work is simplicity.
BRANFORD MARSALIS

Looks Music Simplicity
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.
BRANFORD MARSALIS

Culture Focus Intellectual
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
So much of Jazz doesn’t have an audience other than music students or musicians.
BRANFORD MARSALIS

Jazz Music Students

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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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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