You know, being America, being the land of “number ones”, everyone wants to be a leader before they follow.
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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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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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.
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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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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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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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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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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.
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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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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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You hear it in your brain. Whatever makes sense. Some songs work well as quartet songs, sometimes they don’t.
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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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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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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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Pop doesn’t really look back. It can’t. What makes pop work is simplicity.
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When people go to concerts, they say I’m going to see… not, I’m going to hear.
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