Photo courtesy of photine on Flickr.
FRED JUNG: The virtues of humility. But reflecting back on your earlier recordings, critics have maligned you for trying to sound like Coltrane or Wayne Shorter. Was there a particular sound you were going for?
BRANFORD MARSALIS: It is not really humility. It’s arrogance actually. Arrogance doesn’t really get its proper due. What passes for arrogance in pop culture is basically insecurity. People who give a fuck about what color the M&Ms are in the dressing room are considered arrogant, when they are just ignorant. It was my arrogance that wanted me to be a great musician and my arrogance allowed me to do whatever had to be done, no matter how humiliating it was because it wasn’t really humiliating for me in the long run. It was short term misery for long term gain. When I was playing with Wynton’s band, I was trying to sound like Wayne Shorter. When I wasn’t in Wynton’s band, I tried to play like John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins and Charlie Parker. And then it was Ornette Coleman. On different records, it was different guys. On the trio record, it was more like Ben Webster on certain songs. I mean, you just keep going and try to learn things and add to the repertoire. I wasn’t really interested in playing the pop culture game. And the pop culture game is the notion that when you read criticisms that you’re twenty-three years old and he doesn’t have his own sound, but if you really studied the music, no twenty-three-year-old, save the few geniuses, had their own sound. It is one of those things that comes after a period of serious apprenticeship. Being well aware of that and having that philosophy fortified by peers and my elders, asking Herbie Hancock and Miles and Ron Carter and Elvin Jones and Art Blakey and having them pretty much say, “Yeah, that’s the way to do it.” Shit, my mind was made up.
— Fred Jung interviews Branford Marsalis on Jazz Weekly.
Song ‘The Dark Knight’ was composed by Bob Hurst and performed by the Branford Marsalis Quintet record Crazy People Music, 1990.
Branford Marsalis, saxophone | Robert Hurst, bass | Kenny Kirkland, piano | Jeff ‘Tain’ Watts, drums
