Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing.
Speaker 1: The cover of Time magazine in October nine was unusually artistic,
Speaker 1: a full body portrait of a man alone on a
Speaker 1: roof at night. His eyes are closed, he's playing the trumpet,
Speaker 1: and you sense that it's a soft and soulful tune.
Speaker 1: The man is went in Marsalis, and the headline, unlike
Speaker 1: the tune, blares out the new jazz age, the quintessential
Speaker 1: American genre was back, selling out halls and going platinum
Speaker 1: for the first time since Bebop, and according to Time,
Speaker 1: nobody was more responsible for this resurgence than Marsalis. Three
Speaker 1: years before, he had started the concert series at Lincoln
Speaker 1: Center that would become Jazz at Lincoln Center, the first
Speaker 1: addition to Lincoln Center since the Film Society in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty nine. Marsalis is ill It's artistic director. He's also
Speaker 1: head of the jazz program at Juilliard, his alma mater.
Speaker 1: For an artist less brilliant than Marsalis, all these achievements
Speaker 1: might overshadow his genius as a player, but Marsalis's genius
Speaker 1: could never be overshadowed. He is as the new Yorker
Speaker 1: called him the most celebrated trumpeter of his generation. Just
Speaker 1: as impressive is the fact that perhaps nobody else could
Speaker 1: have marshaled the donations and the will of the city
Speaker 1: to build Rose Hall, the permanent one eight billion dollar
Speaker 1: home for jazz at Lincoln Center in the time Warner
Speaker 1: Center on Central Park. That's where Marsalis and I sat
Speaker 1: down to talk in front of a small audience of
Speaker 1: his students and Jazz at Lincoln Center donors. That silence
Speaker 1: was impressive, so we could just jump into it. What
Speaker 1: do you think is one of the things that you
Speaker 1: need to have to perform? Jazz? People to play with
Speaker 1: My shows an hour long, I'm gonna need longer answers
Speaker 1: to these questions. I'm don't worry. But it is jazz
Speaker 1: is up. It's communal. So you can look at somebody
Speaker 1: like Luis Armstrong really really could play. And when he
Speaker 1: met the penist Earl Hines, man they could play together.
Speaker 1: He made some great duets. Because when when Pops heard
Speaker 1: Earl Hines, he said, Okay, somebody really to play with
Speaker 1: the real innovation of jazz is grouping provisation and the
Speaker 1: fact that I can in time we have the pressure
Speaker 1: of time that in time I can make a decision,
Speaker 1: and you will make a decision, and we will work
Speaker 1: out as we go through time how we're gonna negotiate
Speaker 1: our agendas to some type of meaningful development and conclusion.
Speaker 1: As I tell my young students, I'm glad they're here.
Speaker 1: The main thing of the teaching is how do we
Speaker 1: play together? Why did you make that decision? How are
Speaker 1: you playing? Why did you go into two there? Why
Speaker 1: did you play this cross rhythm? How do you develop
Speaker 1: the matic material when you're a soloing? So you asked
Speaker 1: me a question, and the longer I talked, the more
Speaker 1: difficult it is to stay on the point of that
Speaker 1: question and make it. I thought I made it clear
Speaker 1: when we started that you went too mar salaries. You
Speaker 1: can say whatever you want to say, no, but but
Speaker 1: part of part of the problem in jazz improvisation is
Speaker 1: organization of material. The longer you play and what makes
Speaker 1: kind of Blew such a great record. Because we're talking
Speaker 1: about Miles Davison, So what if you take the horn players,
Speaker 1: Miles cannonball athlete, and John Coltrane. Each of them develops
Speaker 1: thematic material in a different way. John Coltrane is more
Speaker 1: like Faulkner, just comes out in waves. Miles Davis is
Speaker 1: more like him away, just short phrases that he will
Speaker 1: develop Boom boom boom boom boom. Cannonball Atlee is just
Speaker 1: like a valuable, soulful Southern preacher that's just gonna hit
Speaker 1: you with He beens a gravy and sauce on your
Speaker 1: plate every time. And when you hear the three of
Speaker 1: them play, you here distinct personalities on the same form.
Speaker 1: And that's the allure of jazz. Once a piece and
Speaker 1: you sit there and say, oh God, this is like
Speaker 1: the double black diamond Ski run. You know this is
Speaker 1: the one man. I gotta be on it. I gotta
Speaker 1: be on it, and I gotta be so hon it.
Speaker 1: You're not gonna play pieces perfectly. It's like, can I
Speaker 1: have a perfect conversation with you? I cannot misspeak a word,
Speaker 1: but doesn't mean I've had a good conversation. It's the
Speaker 1: opposite of a few a pianists. You have four hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy five thousand notes in a concerto. How many
Speaker 1: of those notes are you gonna play perfectly? You're gonna
Speaker 1: miss a good twenty thousand of them and you will
Speaker 1: play the hell out of it. And when did you
Speaker 1: first pick up a horn? Al Hurt actually gave me
Speaker 1: my first trumpet. My father was playing an how Herds
Speaker 1: band in nineteen sixty six and sixty seven. And in
Speaker 1: terms of Doc Severance, and just to give you a
Speaker 1: sense of the history of music, I was supposed to
Speaker 1: play on the Tonight Show in night two eighty three
Speaker 1: and they've said, well, let's bump this guy off. He's
Speaker 1: nobody knows who he is. Let's because they ran over
Speaker 1: something that let's bump this guy. From Doc servants and said,
Speaker 1: oh no, you're not bumping the trumpet. Put this man on,
Speaker 1: and Doc got me on the show. We have a culture,
Speaker 1: you know, trumpet players, and we know each other. We
Speaker 1: talked to each other, we talked about each other across generations,
Speaker 1: across time. The type of love that we have of
Speaker 1: our instrument, of our traditions, it's a it's not something
Speaker 1: that's known also about jazz musicians. That's another thing that
Speaker 1: doesn't come come through that eighty year old person would
Speaker 1: be talking to a twenty year old And the type
Speaker 1: of love and feeling that we have that goals between
Speaker 1: us is not like what's common in our culture, you know.
Speaker 1: So I had a home when I was six, but
Speaker 1: I couldn't play. But I was always conscious of the
Speaker 1: music and of the the struggle of social It's the sixties,
Speaker 1: and my father and the musicians were trying to keep
Speaker 1: the music alive. And they were always playing for almost
Speaker 1: no people, and it was always southern town places. And
Speaker 1: my father also was involved in education. He was always
Speaker 1: struggling to get kids to come in and teach the music.
Speaker 1: And I knew from the musicians, the feeling of them
Speaker 1: from birth, that it was something they felt was very
Speaker 1: important in the music and the people in our neighborhood.
Speaker 1: Even though they didn't like the music my father and
Speaker 1: then played like in the barbershop. My Daddy would win
Speaker 1: the arguments and they said, man, you can't know jazz musician.
Speaker 1: You know, they've been around the world, they know. So
Speaker 1: I dealt with the music more from a personal standpoint.
Speaker 1: We liked what was on the radio. R and B,
Speaker 1: James Brown and then Dave Motown and even before Motown
Speaker 1: kind of like the music my father's sister like was
Speaker 1: more like you know, Sam and Dave, real deep kind
Speaker 1: of southern soul Tammy Terrell, Sam Cook, Sam Cook, that
Speaker 1: was like what we heard it and that and we're
Speaker 1: from New Orleans, so we have our new a Fats Domino,
Speaker 1: the music that comes from our culture. But my father
Speaker 1: and them did not play that type of music. They
Speaker 1: played serious jazz. They were improvising, real along and my
Speaker 1: mother was always funny describing them. She said, I took
Speaker 1: I took two of my girlfriends to your dad's gig
Speaker 1: and child they played. The first song was any Minutes,
Speaker 1: and my my friends are looking at me saying, girl,
Speaker 1: what in the world are they playing? And then your
Speaker 1: daddy didn't say a word. And Alvin Battiso was a
Speaker 1: great clarinet as he's passed away, but he could really
Speaker 1: play like a Coltrane. And Alvin Battiss played another long
Speaker 1: solo and he didn't stop to do Do Do Do Do
Speaker 1: Do Do Do Do Do, And your Daddy didn't say
Speaker 1: a word. And then he played the third song and
Speaker 1: they played Old Lord. After the third song, my friends
Speaker 1: looked at me and say, a girl, you must love him.
Speaker 1: And you know, so my daddy and them they were
Speaker 1: they were they were going uphill with the music, and
Speaker 1: I like them because they had a kind of feeling
Speaker 1: like they would hug each other, they knew people, people
Speaker 1: came from broad I met all the great jazz musicians,
Speaker 1: you know, Dizzy Gillespie, R. Blakey, Sarah Vaughan, Witty Herman.
Speaker 1: Another thing is I grew up with extreme racism and
Speaker 1: prejudice and ignorance in Kenna, Louisiana, and New Orleans. But
Speaker 1: the jazz musicians were not like that. They had a
Speaker 1: vibe like we were not like the rest of this.
Speaker 1: If you grew up in an ignorant environ it was
Speaker 1: very different. It was stark, you know. So that's kind
Speaker 1: of what I would attracted me to music. It's jazz
Speaker 1: an escape from racism. It is a way to address it.
Speaker 1: Jazz was a way for people, even in the earlier years,
Speaker 1: to come together and communicate with each other and work
Speaker 1: on the healing process that was genuine and honest. Jazz
Speaker 1: makes it so that you and I can talk and
Speaker 1: I don't have to I don't have to do all
Speaker 1: the stuff people have to do in our culture even today,
Speaker 1: or cheesing and grinning and smiling over nothing, making up stuff,
Speaker 1: lying and bullshit, and we don't I don't have to
Speaker 1: do that. You know. My father was like a person
Speaker 1: that came from out of space or something that was
Speaker 1: put down in his environment. And I saw a picture
Speaker 1: of him with a Cliff of Brown album when he
Speaker 1: was a teenager, you know, just in his hand. I
Speaker 1: could just look at the picture. I just saw him,
Speaker 1: like I said, eating have nothing to do with what
Speaker 1: was going on. And he loved Charlie Parker and he
Speaker 1: loved Cliffor Brown. He loved the music. It's kind of
Speaker 1: intellectuals a person black person, kind of his generation with
Speaker 1: an intellectual inclination. They would lean towards jazz, and he liked,
Speaker 1: uh the style of jazz that was not that popular,
Speaker 1: but they had all the greatest musicians in the Monk
Speaker 1: and Duke Ellington and Basie and so he he just
Speaker 1: was attracted to it. He did not have a large
Speaker 1: number of people. He started playing saxophone R and B saxophone.
Speaker 1: He was walking to bar and playing like when people
Speaker 1: played in the mid fifties. But he loved the music
Speaker 1: and he changed it to piano. I said, well, what
Speaker 1: do you changed the piano? He said, piano players eat
Speaker 1: when saxophone players starve. So he he he became, you know,
Speaker 1: and and did he encourage discourage or he just was
Speaker 1: neutral about your musical education? You know? Did he push?
Speaker 1: Shoot me? Man? I love my father so much, Like
Speaker 1: it's it's hard for me to even think about him
Speaker 1: or talk about him without getting full and crying. And
Speaker 1: note that my father is is old, he's sick. And
Speaker 1: I think to myself, even at this age, man, what
Speaker 1: am I gonna do when my father dies? Like I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna have a person to to play for. Like
Speaker 1: I can't describe y'all of love I had for my father,
Speaker 1: Like I went with him on gigs. He was always alone.
Speaker 1: So I want to make it just about my experience.
Speaker 1: I sat in a car with a man and we
Speaker 1: would drive forty five minutes to some place. He played
Speaker 1: like in a in a club would be like three
Speaker 1: people in it. And he did it for years, and
Speaker 1: I would be, man, why are you doing this? You
Speaker 1: know what? What is the value of this? Nobody cares
Speaker 1: about this. I joined the funk band when I was thirteen,
Speaker 1: and me and my brother could make twice the money
Speaker 1: our father could make, not together, both individually, and he
Speaker 1: was so much great in us. We couldn't even tease
Speaker 1: him about that. And he was such a non petty.
Speaker 1: He is such a non petty not just such an
Speaker 1: encouraging kind of just so taught. Everybody wasn't just me.
Speaker 1: I don't care who it was, anybody, Harry Connick, Donald Harrison,
Speaker 1: Terrence Blanchett, all the musicians came down. They'd be in
Speaker 1: my house study with my father. He being a community
Speaker 1: teaching people. And he was so for real and he
Speaker 1: has such a deep kind of spirituality and never complained,
Speaker 1: live hard life, struggle, didn't make money, was not known
Speaker 1: just but just he was always in there for you.
Speaker 1: So I just one story I tell about my father.
Speaker 1: When I came to New York. I was coming to
Speaker 1: represent my father, not practice, because my father wanted to
Speaker 1: come to New York. My father always gave me good advice.
Speaker 1: My false the least prejudiced person in the seventies and
Speaker 1: everybody be black power and all of that. My father
Speaker 1: wasn't a tom He wasn't the type of person was
Speaker 1: always white folks, all right, now that but he never
Speaker 1: I saw him sit in rooms full of only black
Speaker 1: people and defend white people. And I would say, man,
Speaker 1: why are you always he said, man, you never attacked
Speaker 1: people who are not there. You know, people don't understand
Speaker 1: about humanity. He had always had a larger sense, and
Speaker 1: I saw him live that. But I came to New
Speaker 1: York and I got a lot of publicity when I
Speaker 1: was young. I became really well known. Eighteen nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: was unheard of for somebody actually trying to play, and
Speaker 1: I didn't expect that. So I came back to New
Speaker 1: Orleans and the older musicians were very very hard on me. Well,
Speaker 1: I growed up in jazz and I talked a lot,
Speaker 1: so you know, I had opinions and views, and I
Speaker 1: expressed them. So it's not like I didn't deserve for
Speaker 1: them to do how they did be So I wasn't
Speaker 1: some innocent being treated it alright that I had mused
Speaker 1: him opinions. I was outspoken. I said what I had
Speaker 1: to say. They didn't like it, okay. But I came
Speaker 1: back home and I played a gig with my father,
Speaker 1: and my father made me stand like on the bench
Speaker 1: stand for a long time, and since I was a
Speaker 1: little boy, he always let me sit in So, man,
Speaker 1: I sat on the bench and I was kind of
Speaker 1: started to kind of see you know, man, my daddy
Speaker 1: gonna even him. He's mad because I got some publicity.
Speaker 1: They think I'm making more money. And then I got
Speaker 1: to the last song, my daddy called me up. Man.
Speaker 1: I was so mad. I walked up. I played a
Speaker 1: couple of choruses and I was looking at him like, damn,
Speaker 1: not you too. And as we walked off the stage,
Speaker 1: my father put his arm around me and he said, man,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, my rhythm section was so sad. I really
Speaker 1: didn't even want to call you up. And I looked
Speaker 1: at him and I just had to laugh, and like,
Speaker 1: this is a man who was never small home. I
Speaker 1: don't care what the instance was. He was never small.
Speaker 1: He was uh he he is a man of deep philosophy, curiosity,
Speaker 1: and honesty. And when I left home, it was I mean,
Speaker 1: we were contentious in my home. You know, my mother.
Speaker 1: I was always fighting with my mama, really a lot
Speaker 1: over my daddy. And when I was sixteen, me and
Speaker 1: my men and my mother was fighting so much. My
Speaker 1: daddy sat me in a car and he said, hey, man,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to work this out with your mama.
Speaker 1: I said, man, mama does this and this and that.
Speaker 1: Man she's messing with you. Man. Blah blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: He said, Man, you don't understand what I'm telling you.
Speaker 1: You need to work this out. Work it out, man,
Speaker 1: gee bloom. He said, if mama leave, nobody pays these bills.
Speaker 1: We don't eat, homework don't get done, children don't get raised,
Speaker 1: and one of your brothers is artistic. If you leave,
Speaker 1: we have more money. But he was dead serious. He
Speaker 1: was not playing with me. He was serious, and he said,
Speaker 1: work this out. I'm gonna be visiting you at your career.
Speaker 1: Your dad sounds like my dad. When did you know
Speaker 1: this is something? This was the path you should run down?
Speaker 1: You know? I was. I was not even the best
Speaker 1: musician in my family, and I don't. I'm still not,
Speaker 1: probably just technically. My brother Branford, I was always unbelievable,
Speaker 1: learned stuff much quicker than me. And music. My little
Speaker 1: brother Jason is like a savant with his memory and
Speaker 1: the stuff that he knows. Um I don't. I was
Speaker 1: always good at most at things like in school, good
Speaker 1: playing ball, good hand eye coordination. People didn't mess with me.
Speaker 1: Everybody like my went everywhere, and I was always around
Speaker 1: adults and older people. People struggled. Good talk with my
Speaker 1: mom about life, you know, because my mother was also
Speaker 1: very philosophical and always good with dealing with people, like
Speaker 1: it was a kind of quarterback played, always good dealing
Speaker 1: with like disputed people want to fight a man, you know,
Speaker 1: identifying situations. Um, I think I went into music when
Speaker 1: I was I was playing on the basketball team actually,
Speaker 1: and I said, man, I started like Drahn Cold Traine's music,
Speaker 1: and he's not drumming player. But I put Trains on
Speaker 1: and I my father was at a picture of him
Speaker 1: and James Black and New Orleans drumming and Cold Train,
Speaker 1: and that picture was like a shrine. Man, that's us
Speaker 1: with Train, you know, Train that's trained. So I know
Speaker 1: they love Train, and they would always talk about when
Speaker 1: Train came to one of their gigs. They were playing
Speaker 1: at the club called Vernons, and Train came into doing
Speaker 1: that was the great saxophone player and that stood him
Speaker 1: up in the door with that was playing it. So
Speaker 1: I started listening to Train and that then I said,
Speaker 1: I wonder if I could learn how to play like
Speaker 1: these people who really can play, because we're playing phone
Speaker 1: and playing in pop bands. But I wanted to play
Speaker 1: like Clifford Brown, or like Train, or like how Miles
Speaker 1: was playing, or like you know, people who actually could play.
Speaker 1: So I felt I didn't know whether I could learn
Speaker 1: how to play the music or not. Music is difficult
Speaker 1: to learn how to play. It's difficult at that time
Speaker 1: to figure out what the music was for my generation.
Speaker 1: I never felt like I'm good, like I really can play,
Speaker 1: because my brother could play, and the New Orleans a
Speaker 1: lot of people could play. With le Roy Jones, a
Speaker 1: great trumpet player, we call him Jazz. We played in
Speaker 1: a Febue Baptist church margin band I was eight. We
Speaker 1: had a lot of trumpet players that could play. A
Speaker 1: lot of families could play. So you never felt that.
Speaker 1: And with my father and the musicians, they only dealt
Speaker 1: with quality. They didn't deal with awards, they didn't deal
Speaker 1: with none of that. My father really has no value, sister,
Speaker 1: mixed up? Is this for real? So when I went
Speaker 1: to I wanted one of my first Grammy awards when
Speaker 1: I was twenty two, and my father went to the ceremonies.
Speaker 1: And he's not a person who's given any kind of
Speaker 1: you know stuff when you see something's fake, he just
Speaker 1: he don't care he's not gonna be a crmudge about it,
Speaker 1: but he just okay, it's not about playing. So he
Speaker 1: sat through the ceremony a loud, a bunch of nine playing.
Speaker 1: So we're in the room after I want him talking
Speaker 1: to him and he's looking at me. You know, yeah, man,
Speaker 1: you want? You know I want. I was trying to
Speaker 1: go out to the party and something. I get ready
Speaker 1: to go out him and my mama. He said, hey, man,
Speaker 1: he said, I'm glad you wanted stuff. He said that
Speaker 1: was the Grammy sign. I said yeah, And he said,
Speaker 1: you don't think this means you can play, do you?
Speaker 1: So of course I didn't think it, especially in front
Speaker 1: of him, because he knew whether you could play or not.
Speaker 1: And I was actually in my forties. One time I
Speaker 1: was playing something and my daddy said, man, I read
Speaker 1: you on the radio. You ain't learned how to play
Speaker 1: on changes yet. And he was serious, he was seriously
Speaker 1: and it was actually a two way. I was kind
Speaker 1: of shaking on the changes of the song. I said, Man,
Speaker 1: I didn't even know the song. I just he said, man,
Speaker 1: you got to you have to work on your years. Man.
Speaker 1: Wynton Marsalis, Artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. Another
Speaker 1: greatest of his generation instrumentalist I've spoken to is violinist.
Speaker 1: It's a Perman. His pleasures these days are, oddly enough,
Speaker 1: mostly musical. Now that I'm old. There's no food after
Speaker 1: eight o'clock, you know, if if I pay for it,
Speaker 1: if you can't eat after, I can't eat it. But
Speaker 1: then in the middle of the night give vault. So no, no, no,
Speaker 1: no food. But you grew up. Food was everything. Food
Speaker 1: was everything, very very guiding force in your life because
Speaker 1: you grew up kind of poor, correct, very The rest
Speaker 1: of my conversation with Itsak Perlman is in our archives
Speaker 1: at Here's the Thing, Dot org more with Wynton Marsalis
Speaker 1: in a moment, this is Alec Baldwin and you're listening
Speaker 1: to Here's the Thing. When did Marsalis grew up in
Speaker 1: a household teaming with the greatest jazz musicians of the
Speaker 1: era thanks to his pianist father. I, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: came to appreciate the genre through other means. For me,
Speaker 1: the portal for jazz was a movie, the movie Lenny
Speaker 1: with Dustin Hoffman, where Dustin Hoffan played Lenny Bruce and
Speaker 1: they just had the most beautiful soundtrack, and they remember
Speaker 1: sitting there watching the movie they play. It never entered
Speaker 1: my mind. I remember sitting there going, oh my god,
Speaker 1: this is so beautiful. You know, are there any movies
Speaker 1: that speak to you in the world you're in? Is
Speaker 1: a movie you saw you thought was a good movie
Speaker 1: about the world that you're in? You know, most of
Speaker 1: the jazz movies I didn't like. Really you didn't. Why
Speaker 1: what was missing? Corny? You know what I mean? I
Speaker 1: knew the jazz musicians, so you know, when you're and
Speaker 1: it's like I do something about actors, you're gonna be like,
Speaker 1: that's that's what you think it is, but it's not.
Speaker 1: But I love when people attempt to do it right,
Speaker 1: you know. But I think that I like Elia Kazan's movies,
Speaker 1: you know, just baby Doll facing the crowd. But Bird
Speaker 1: and movies like that, No, you know, no, because I
Speaker 1: just the music didn't have the power, and the musicians
Speaker 1: were always made to seem less than what they are
Speaker 1: because they had a bird. Bird got high, okay, but
Speaker 1: Bird was not. It was not a child, and he
Speaker 1: wasn't treated like a child by people who are around him.
Speaker 1: So it failed to convey birds magnetic power and the
Speaker 1: power of his genius. Every person you ever talked to
Speaker 1: who knew birds, did man? Everybody just Jerry Mulligan told
Speaker 1: me a story about bird. He said, Bird was always late.
Speaker 1: He was a drug addict. He always had mustard on
Speaker 1: his tie. He was always he said, So once we
Speaker 1: were sitting to Jazzy's Philharmonic. All the greatest saxophone players
Speaker 1: in the world, he says, you got Johnny Hodges. Me. Uh,
Speaker 1: he just named the greatest saxophe players you ever heard of,
Speaker 1: He said. Everybody saying wears bird or bird is late? Pird?
Speaker 1: Is this the insulting bird talking about bird? He's just
Speaker 1: so we're all warming up like noways of eight horn
Speaker 1: players place. All of a sudden, Bird comes in late.
Speaker 1: Everybody's pretending like they don't see him. He said. Bird
Speaker 1: took his horn out and put put it together and
Speaker 1: played a scale. He went, he says, like the most
Speaker 1: perfect scale you ever heard in your life. He said.
Speaker 1: Everyone stopped at the same time and looked at Bird.
Speaker 1: And that was our critique of ourselves, because there was
Speaker 1: not another one of us who could have made the
Speaker 1: rest of us do that. So I think it's hard
Speaker 1: to convey Black Americans. They convey the actual power and
Speaker 1: accuracy of jazz musicians, the depth of food they are,
Speaker 1: and then you manity and what they understand and how
Speaker 1: deep it it is, and who was the loneout monk
Speaker 1: or it's too easy to talk about his hat. It's
Speaker 1: too easy to talk about When I read the Time
Speaker 1: magazine article on Monk, it was all about people eccentricities
Speaker 1: and when Myles left for concert or and the music
Speaker 1: is extremely difficult to play, and that's why we still
Speaker 1: keep trying. Over time, we've shifted and taken many of
Speaker 1: the fundamentals out to make it easier. But that's why
Speaker 1: when you listen to the records, as I tell my
Speaker 1: young students, I'm glad they're here with filling all them
Speaker 1: because they're the most talented young people in the world.
Speaker 1: This is hard. When I give Anthony Solos to learn,
Speaker 1: he could already play when I heard him when he
Speaker 1: was fourteen. It's hard to play like he plays. He's
Speaker 1: a trump player. Unbelievable, he can play. I'm not saying it,
Speaker 1: and I tell him that if he's just in my
Speaker 1: house and I'm talking to him, it is difficult to play.
Speaker 1: You're gonna be fifty. It's hard. So you have to
Speaker 1: these fundamentals, this stuff, these things. Learn these things thoroughly.
Speaker 1: No one will know whether you can play these things.
Speaker 1: No one will care about that. You may be the
Speaker 1: only person you know who cares about whether you can
Speaker 1: play or not, who can evaluate you are playing. Develop
Speaker 1: an independent sense of integrity, and train yourself to death
Speaker 1: and and yeah, yeah, you know. I do a play.
Speaker 1: I do a play one time. And I said, someone
Speaker 1: said to you, what's the goal? What are you after?
Speaker 1: What what are you doing, you know, beyond getting a paycheck?
Speaker 1: And I said, I want the perfect show. They said,
Speaker 1: what's the perfect show? I say, I say every line
Speaker 1: as written in order, and I say them the way
Speaker 1: that I think they should be said. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: really concentrating. And I walk off stage at the end
Speaker 1: of the show and there's a prop table and I
Speaker 1: took a cigarette and I lit a cigarette. I looked
Speaker 1: at the stage manager and I said, well, there you
Speaker 1: have it, I said, my perfect show. I did it
Speaker 1: once one show, but you always aim me and I
Speaker 1: and I said, to what is his naming? That trumpet
Speaker 1: player Anthony Anthony? I went up to Anthony before and
Speaker 1: I said, you know, I grew up in an age
Speaker 1: of you know, al Her and uh Armstrong. I said,
Speaker 1: guys who were trying, you look like something that those
Speaker 1: guys would have had for lunch. You know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Where where does a person get that training, this little
Speaker 1: bantam of a man to get that wind? I asked him.
Speaker 1: But it's the secret. You know when you look at
Speaker 1: the trumpet players, like ray Nance was small, Miles was little,
Speaker 1: it's spiritual, like its spiritual weight of your sound. What
Speaker 1: you're projecting is a spiritual thing. It's like when you
Speaker 1: when you see people when they've passed away, you notice
Speaker 1: how small they are. You always say, damn it really
Speaker 1: small when they animated and you know you're not holding
Speaker 1: their breath in the bathtub like a pearl diver. You
Speaker 1: you got that minute long long tone. I always tell
Speaker 1: them it's an exercise we have and say, you hold
Speaker 1: that long tone. To you, it's like life. You hold
Speaker 1: that long tone till the end of your breath. So
Speaker 1: let's say you can hold a long tone for forty
Speaker 1: five seconds. When you hit forty five seconds the end
Speaker 1: of your breath, now that's when the long tone starts.
Speaker 1: So if you get fifteen seconds after that, you did
Speaker 1: a fifteen second long tone. If you get twenty seconds,
Speaker 1: you did twenty second long jone. Because the long terone
Speaker 1: you challenge your breath when you don't have any left.
Speaker 1: And that's how you have to approach your integrity. And
Speaker 1: uh that long done is a microcosm of just life.
Speaker 1: You become very successful. You become very successful when you're
Speaker 1: very young. And you've been at the top of this
Speaker 1: game for a long long time now. And uh, people
Speaker 1: talked about you as you know, uh, the new jazz age,
Speaker 1: and and you were a part of I don't think
Speaker 1: that you would allow anybody to say, even though it's
Speaker 1: probably partly true that you were alone in this endeavor,
Speaker 1: but you were a part of the rebirth of jazz
Speaker 1: as a very popular music form in this country and
Speaker 1: around the world. Where would just say we are now
Speaker 1: with jazz? What's the state of jazz now? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: think I was never really part of it being popular
Speaker 1: or even but I feel like I was a movement
Speaker 1: towards quality. And I think we still have a long
Speaker 1: way to go because our nation is going in the
Speaker 1: opposite direction and we've going in opposite direction with education,
Speaker 1: opposite direction with our mythology. We're going to opposite direction.
Speaker 1: So we have to double and triple down. And that's
Speaker 1: also why I love to see my younger people. And uh,
Speaker 1: I feel I feel that part of what we try
Speaker 1: to do here, Jess Lincolnson and and what you do
Speaker 1: with the Philharmonica whatever. You know, there's so many people
Speaker 1: on the country working in the arts and teaching and
Speaker 1: doing all the things they do. It's true. It's a
Speaker 1: qualitative thing. You teach a class, you're talking to younger people,
Speaker 1: you just talk to somebody else, you pass it on
Speaker 1: and you're you're invariably talking with them about quality. Check
Speaker 1: this out, study this, try to be do this. You're
Speaker 1: gonna find this. And that was always my proposition. Let's
Speaker 1: start to talk about this, and you obviously become famous
Speaker 1: and everybody knows you who you are and your brother
Speaker 1: as well. How this start? A lady from Visitors Services
Speaker 1: and Lincolnson and named Elena bloom God called me. This
Speaker 1: is the six She said, can you can you? Can
Speaker 1: you do some concerts? It it uh at Lincoln Center
Speaker 1: in August. I said, well, how many concerts? She said, three?
Speaker 1: She said, you know, we can't pay. You said, but
Speaker 1: at that time I was doing two hundred and I
Speaker 1: don't know, two twenty concerts a year. So I had
Speaker 1: three concerts, no problem, you know, I just need you
Speaker 1: to program and book some people and this They had
Speaker 1: no problem. You know. I booked the people something for
Speaker 1: jazz and the halls great. I mean I didn't I
Speaker 1: didn't know what it was. So we booked concert Women
Speaker 1: in Jazz was one, and then Darth and Kirk was
Speaker 1: a partner of ours from w B G. Oh. It
Speaker 1: was all very local, you know. We just all knew
Speaker 1: each other. We were talking, can you can we call someone?
Speaker 1: So musicians we knew. I called different people. We had
Speaker 1: a bud pole bird. We did different I didn't. We
Speaker 1: played in the hall in Alice. It was over and
Speaker 1: Alice Tully Hall and that was seven. It was okay.
Speaker 1: The next year I said, I wonder if we could
Speaker 1: do Gellington's music, not like this big band music. We
Speaker 1: never played it, so I said, let's call this guy.
Speaker 1: We called them and we said, man, can we uh
Speaker 1: could we call Norris Tourney. We just started naming old
Speaker 1: old Ellingtonians and most of I thought they had passed on,
Speaker 1: and every time my name, somebody said, well we could,
Speaker 1: we could call them, we could call them. Then I
Speaker 1: was twenty six years old, twenty seven, damn, I walking
Speaker 1: in the room. Next year, Man, there's no there's Norris Turney,
Speaker 1: britt Woodman Clark, Terry, Jimmy Hamilton's I mean, I was
Speaker 1: just looking, man, we're gonna play with these people played
Speaker 1: on all these unbelievable records from ninety five too. Man,
Speaker 1: we sat down to play. We didn't want to play
Speaker 1: their music at all, and they started cussing us out,
Speaker 1: and you know, the main thing I was saying, y'all
Speaker 1: play too loud, you know. And then we got questionable
Speaker 1: reviews about why we were playing Duke Ellington's music. Wasn't
Speaker 1: the playing Then when I noticed, Okay, these group of
Speaker 1: people kind of jazz cricks. There are enemies. So if
Speaker 1: they say you shouldn't play Duke Ellington's music, let's do
Speaker 1: two nights next year. Next year, we did two nights
Speaker 1: to Duke Kellington. Then we started to do Duke Kellington's music.
Speaker 1: And then a guy named Gordon Davis approached me, said
Speaker 1: he want to form a committee around jazz and I
Speaker 1: sat in the first meeting. I didn't know anything about
Speaker 1: this raising money and talking to people in jazz Lincoln Center,
Speaker 1: and and I just knew this was gonna be some
Speaker 1: free concerts I had to play. So we sat in
Speaker 1: the meeting and it was interesting, Okay, these are people
Speaker 1: from the community who are going to help us build
Speaker 1: a program around jazz. And they said, we need you
Speaker 1: to come up with the program. Said, okay, I would
Speaker 1: just take the same thing that I'm doing on the road,
Speaker 1: because I was then. I had already and I was
Speaker 1: going to five or six schools a day. Then I
Speaker 1: would just call schools and say, I'm a musician. Do
Speaker 1: you need me to come? They be we don't want that.
Speaker 1: And I had already had ten years of experience. It
Speaker 1: was rough. I was just on the road rough, and
Speaker 1: they calling people going to schools teaching their kids because
Speaker 1: I saw my father do it. Basically, then we started
Speaker 1: to put it in place. Man. I looked up Jack
Speaker 1: Ruten is a developer. I'm talking to him about like
Speaker 1: what it was like to fight in World War two,
Speaker 1: politics in New York City, or what the internal things
Speaker 1: is and and and we're talking about stuff I didn't
Speaker 1: talk about what other of your officer and Ed Bradley
Speaker 1: is on the board. Man, we're talking about this and
Speaker 1: that it so just said you such. I'm at Ernigan.
Speaker 1: We're talking and we're arguing about this. And then I
Speaker 1: started to go through the board members. These people are
Speaker 1: gonna give money and time to jazz. Man. People only
Speaker 1: take stuff from jazz. Beverly Seals goes on a call
Speaker 1: with me to raise some money and she she says,
Speaker 1: I brought this guy to talk about Jameson. I don't
Speaker 1: like jazz, and she asked the man for a million dollars.
Speaker 1: I thought she was crazy, and he said, I'll give
Speaker 1: you a million. I was to get out of my office,
Speaker 1: and I mean, the whole thing was like then, of
Speaker 1: course I talked to Dinny Gillespie and then we're trying
Speaker 1: to build this program. We got a chance to do
Speaker 1: this because Dizney was always one of the smartest people
Speaker 1: you ever talked to. If you could get him to
Speaker 1: actually tell you something and he knew it was serious,
Speaker 1: you could not have a higher level of understanding than
Speaker 1: Dizney Gillespie. Okay, so then he wasn't joking enoughing I
Speaker 1: said uh, you know, big band is not the former
Speaker 1: music I grew up in us the jazz linca center.
Speaker 1: We're trying to do this and that. He said, one
Speaker 1: should not consider it an achievement to lose one's orchestral
Speaker 1: music and jazz. We always considered our orchestrame music to
Speaker 1: be lower. So it's part of the kind of brainwashing
Speaker 1: it takes place. And I thought, well, you you played
Speaker 1: in small bands. He said, if I could have kept
Speaker 1: my big band together, I would have never disbanded. It
Speaker 1: was a struggle, he said, developed that big band. So
Speaker 1: on his word, really, I said, okay, I'll give up
Speaker 1: what I'm doing and do this. And then we all
Speaker 1: started to work together. So the kind of defining thing
Speaker 1: for me in my life was the quality of people
Speaker 1: I had a chance to work with putting jazz Lyn
Speaker 1: Consenta together. And then when did this become the vision?
Speaker 1: This floor of this building and a big nut you
Speaker 1: gotta raise. I mean, that's facing is not some little
Speaker 1: clubs somewhere, and it's been attacked for not being that
Speaker 1: so many times. We all of us would take the
Speaker 1: attack of us wanting to keep us in the ghetto
Speaker 1: and ghetto wise us and make us accept less and
Speaker 1: be proud to accepted and defined us by the less.
Speaker 1: So this is the most piece of steel ever designed
Speaker 1: that leaves this glass wall back to get acoustics. We
Speaker 1: heard there was a room in the Canary Islands that
Speaker 1: was made of glass, so we studied that room in
Speaker 1: the back room rolls based on an Italian opera house.
Speaker 1: You go to these Italian cities and you play these
Speaker 1: opera houses. Local our proms that that oval shape, that
Speaker 1: shape works, that's perfect. We're gonna have that shape. And
Speaker 1: our club is just a like like a clubs you
Speaker 1: have in the Mediterranean. We kind of sound and floor
Speaker 1: and would So we started to develop our understanding of
Speaker 1: how these spaces would work. The level of dedication was
Speaker 1: unbelievable and well even the electricians. We ran out of
Speaker 1: money and I had to have a meeting with town
Speaker 1: a man. We ran out of money, and the guy
Speaker 1: was was messing what he said, you ran out of money.
Speaker 1: Well this is New York, buddy. You know we're not
Speaker 1: gonna be able open. I don't know what to tell you.
Speaker 1: We need our we need our our damn money man.
Speaker 1: You know you will be just invent some money. So
Speaker 1: He looked at me with standing right over here in
Speaker 1: the building. He said, he said, look, man, I lived
Speaker 1: down the street from John Cold Drane's house on Long Island.
Speaker 1: We're gonna finish this. They finished it. So as many
Speaker 1: things like that in New York things. And the last
Speaker 1: thing I want to cover with you is about education
Speaker 1: and about the future. When you talked about calling up
Speaker 1: schools and wanted to give it away and so forth. Uh,
Speaker 1: you went to Julian and have you talked Did you
Speaker 1: teach jazz at Juilliard? Yeah, I mean I run the
Speaker 1: jazz program at Juilliard. At Juliard, you know, I went
Speaker 1: there in seventy nine and eighty. And I also had
Speaker 1: a rough time there. Why he has a brother and um,
Speaker 1: you know it's rough. It's just culturally. I'm from New Orleans.
Speaker 1: I was always like, oh, I was, you know, like
Speaker 1: I am right now. I was like that. And I
Speaker 1: had a running with a conductor the first performance we're
Speaker 1: playing the writer spring Man. Every time I played the
Speaker 1: guy stopped orchestras. The first trumpet, first trumpet. First trumpet
Speaker 1: has a great part to the writers bring. You get
Speaker 1: to just bounce high k notes off the wall. So
Speaker 1: he got to where it was just every time stopped,
Speaker 1: first trumpet play, I played high pea must play these
Speaker 1: high parts, and the orchestra shuffles when they like how
Speaker 1: you play something. So after a while orchestra started to
Speaker 1: kind of go on my side. They were like shuffling
Speaker 1: the guy just so, I said. I went to see
Speaker 1: the assistant uh dean. His name was Brunelli. I said, Brunelli,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't need you to take me off of this piece. Man.
Speaker 1: This guy's like, I can't. I'm I'm my freedom after
Speaker 1: whippers behind because I can't. I'm not from there. I
Speaker 1: can't deal with this. Every time he stopped, and he's
Speaker 1: saying I'm a musical and all this stuff. And if
Speaker 1: Brunelli looked at me, he's older guy, also a World
Speaker 1: War Two veterans. He said myself, I hear you from
Speaker 1: New Orleans. I said yeah. He said, you know, I
Speaker 1: always wanted to get down there. How's that gumbo? I said,
Speaker 1: it's good, man, he said, and I got up and
Speaker 1: went back to rehearse. Okay, he was telling me something,
Speaker 1: and what he had to tell me is, man, you here,
Speaker 1: you know this is what this is like. Play your horn.
Speaker 1: That's what this is. So okay, I'm not talking to
Speaker 1: any guy. I'm not doing anything. Where are you from?
Speaker 1: From New Orleans? You candle a conductor like him? Come on, baby,
Speaker 1: let's let's get to it. And that's you know, there
Speaker 1: was there was no jazz there. And then I kind
Speaker 1: of got into it with my teacher once again about racism.
Speaker 1: You know, it's always kind of if I have to
Speaker 1: be true. But he was Italian. I loved him. Well,
Speaker 1: your vociano. The deepest lesson I was ever taught in
Speaker 1: my life was from this this man, and we he
Speaker 1: was like a guard the trumpet players. He played the
Speaker 1: New York Philomonic from the thirties to the eighties, and
Speaker 1: we started to talk about racism. He told me some
Speaker 1: kids took his backpack because he was Italian. I said, man,
Speaker 1: let me start telling your stories about what people will
Speaker 1: do you, you know, so I told him three ful
Speaker 1: good choice stories from Kenna Louisiana Circle nineteen sixty nine
Speaker 1: seventy one. He was like, damn. So every week we
Speaker 1: would go back to this material and then I, you know,
Speaker 1: then I kind of dropped off of school. I joined
Speaker 1: up blaking a jazz mrs. But later, two or threes later,
Speaker 1: I called him Vacciano because I still loved him. Your
Speaker 1: storways telling me I was the best black student he had.
Speaker 1: That also made me mad. So look, man, don't tell
Speaker 1: me I'm your best black student. I'm not here to
Speaker 1: be your black student. And you know, just general reachings
Speaker 1: clash because I was I called everybody man. Now I
Speaker 1: understand for him, and that was disrespectful to call him man,
Speaker 1: But I was. I didn't even know I used the
Speaker 1: word man all the time. She hates it. She's like,
Speaker 1: I'm not a man. You know, you get into that habit.
Speaker 1: So I went to his househout in Queens and uh, man,
Speaker 1: this house was dark, you know. And he he invited
Speaker 1: me in and I sat down and told him I
Speaker 1: wanted to work on my transposition and stuff. He was like,
Speaker 1: you don't need to learn anything about transposition, he said, uh.
Speaker 1: He said, my wife is. My wife is at the
Speaker 1: end of this room, and she's been an invalid for
Speaker 1: a long time, he said, and my son died in
Speaker 1: an accident. We had a contentious kind of thing. He said.
Speaker 1: When my wife dies, I'm gonna be all alone. So
Speaker 1: he's probably in his mid mid eighties at that time.
Speaker 1: And he said, you're gonna be known. You could play.
Speaker 1: He said, you're not gonna struggle with that. He said,
Speaker 1: but your inner life. He said, if your inner life
Speaker 1: is unhappy, you are unhappy. Take care of your inner life.
Speaker 1: And that was it. He said, that's your lesson. And
Speaker 1: you know, offer me a drink. I didn't drink at
Speaker 1: that time. I was always in bars and stuff. I
Speaker 1: didn't and I had alcoholism like in my family. And
Speaker 1: but you offered me a drink of scotch. I said, okay, man,
Speaker 1: and I pretended like I was drinking it and then
Speaker 1: I left. So, but there have been times in my
Speaker 1: life when I would want to choke or kill maine,
Speaker 1: one of my kids or something, and uh what his
Speaker 1: words will come back to me. So that's what I
Speaker 1: took away from my Juilliard experience. And uh, with my students,
Speaker 1: I tried to I don't see them as much as
Speaker 1: I want to see them, but for me with them
Speaker 1: as more person like failer, I see them anyway, I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't just see them in school. Tell me you'll
Speaker 1: gonna be out of school. I'm gonna see you're gonna
Speaker 1: be thirty. I'm gonna be people I studied with their dead.
Speaker 1: I'm still here and I try to teach them away
Speaker 1: of life, this jazz and when I when I see them,
Speaker 1: I love them. I hugged them and they know it.
Speaker 1: It's no question. I'm not saying it because I'm in
Speaker 1: front of a bunch of people. Anthony her If it
Speaker 1: comes to my house to give less and I try
Speaker 1: to teach him what I love. My daddy talked people
Speaker 1: with thank you, thank you so much, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1: The incomparable went to Marsalis. This is Alec Baldwin and
Speaker 1: you're listening to here's the thing