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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? "

Branford Marsalis

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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. When people go to concerts, they say I'm going to see... not, I'm going to hear. "

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" It's something that jazz has gotten away from, and it's unfortunate. Players aren't physical anymore. "

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" I gave up my base in popular culture when I left the Tonight Show. "

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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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" If it's not going to sound like Terrapin Station, what's the point of playing Terrapin Station? "

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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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" I'm not going to play funk licks on a jazz album. That makes no sense. "

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" We played it as long as we could play it on that CD and I think it might be 50 minutes, maybe. 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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" There's not one Tin Pan Alley song on my record. "

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" Pop doesn't really look back. It can't. What makes pop work is simplicity. "

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" I think that one of the problems that jazz has is that it's so incestuous that it's starting to kill itself. "

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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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" Jazz fans love Miles and I love him for a myriad of reasons, but the overviews are always too simplistic. "

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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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" 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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" If you listen to a lot of the songs that are popular now, there's very little melody in there. People love the beat. But to musicians, it's melody, because we understand how elusive it is and how hard it is to hold. "

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" The lion's share of what I hear right now are people who, intentional or accidental, have avoided all jazz prior to 1960. And all the musicians who were successful in the '60s spent their entire lives, prior to 1960, listening to all the musicians these people avoid. "

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" That's kind of like how jazz is sometimes. You're out there predicting the future, and no one believes you. "

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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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" 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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" A lot of musicians have a tough time hearing what we're doing in a trio format. "

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" I suspect that we might actually start selling some records with these artists in about 10 years. Some the people who invested, they're a little tight-because it's a lot of money to start up a company. "

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" If you're going to use standards as criteria for signing musicians, you can sign thousands. If you're going to use some sort of conceptual interpretation that's based on the tradition of those standards, but is trying to move away from it, you're down to about 10 people or so. "

Branford Marsalis