City & Shore Magazine | Branford Marsalis to headline this weekend’s Jazz Fest Pompano Beach: ‘To me, records are like magic’

If one were to graph the stylistic flux of Branford Marsalis’ four-decade career, it might resemble the notation of one of his sax’s wild, roller-coaster runs across the charts. Plot it out and the data would show that there’s never been another sax man like him.

Certainly, it begins with the royalty of his jazz lineage. But it’s what he’s done with that mantle, as a scion of his venerated New Orleans family, that’s made him one of the most individual of jazz artists — and a “Jazz Master,” as cited by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Though rooted to his eponymous quartet, Marsalis’ eclectic musical life has been transcendent. It’s zigzagged from a precocious jazz lion with his exalted trumpeter brother, Wynton, in drummer Art Blakey’s band to the leader of the “Tonight Show” band. From a cat jazzing up Sting’s solo work and the Grateful Dead’s jams to a guest soloist with international classical orchestras. From an educator at various universities to an award-winning composer for television, Broadway and Hollywood (he composed the score for Netflix’s “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”). The litany of people the man has played with arcs from Miles Davis to Mary Chapin Carpenter, from Dizzy Gillespie to CSN, and scores of artists in between.

What accounts for such a kaleidoscope of a career? His reminiscence of early interviews offers a hint:

“I’m a jazz guy with his brother, and they’d say, ‘What was the first record you ever bought?’ I said, ‘Elton John, “Honky Château.” ‘ And then it throws their whole interview out the window, because they already thought that the Marsalises were the Von Trapps of the South, where we were all doing Charlie Parker songs over breakfast and all this nonsense. Our parents allowed us to be individuals.”

Marsalis has honored the legend of his late father with the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music, the centerpiece of Musicians’ Village he founded with Harry Connick Jr. in post-Katrina New Orleans. Another city he has a connection with, albeit tangentially, is Fort Lauderdale. The name of Marsalis’ genre-blending ’90s project, Buckshot LeFonque, was a play on the pseudonym, Buckshot La Funke, once used by saxophonist Julian “Cannonball” Adderley for contractual reasons. In the late ’40s, Adderley was the leader of the prestigious Dillard High School band.

“That was the jazz king of Florida right there,” says Marsalis, 63. “Cannonball was one of the great princes of the music.”

Another of Marsalis’ talents is that of raconteur, as is boldly displayed in a freewheeling, candid and casual conversation during a recent interview with the South Florida Sun Sentinel’s City & Shore magazine, collating the dynamics of his career with those of musicianship in general. The following are highlights from that discussion, in advance of his headlining appearance at Jazz Fest Pompano Beach, set for Jan. 18 to 20. (Go to eventbrite.com for details.)

What are you working on now?

Being a better musician. Writing, practicing, some classical gigs.

What is it about classical music that makes a jazz musician want to play it?

Non-classical musicians can hide their weaknesses under the personal-expression clause. All those brilliant dodge words, you know: “That wasn’t really a mistake, man. That’s what I was hearing.” “Well, this is my style.” “Hey, man, this sounds better in another key” — which happens to be a key that they play better in. Whether it’s jazz guys or rock ’n’ roll guys or singer-songwriters, the personal-style clause allows you to cloak all of your weaknesses and limitations as a strength. For instance, when I first started doing this, and for a very long time while doing it, the six lowest notes on the instrument I could not play at low volume with control. Now, when you’re playing with a drum set, it’s never an issue. But when you have a piece that’s written, the percussion is gone, the amplification is gone, and it’s you and an orchestra, everybody else is playing soft and you are not. So right at that point, I had to learn how to play the lower part of my instrument with control. And that took 15 years. It’s made my jazz-playing better. I can play with more control across the whole range of the instrument, which means that I’d be more inclined to write or play songs in a style that reflects this larger palette. And that goes with everybody in our group. Everybody has a thing that they do well. And if you play to your strengths, then it’s not long before every song you play not only sounds the same, but goes to the place of your strength. But if you start to address your weaknesses, then songs can go to more places emotionally and sonically. And classical music was the thing that introduced me to that idea.

What a great answer. You’ve played with so many musicians. Is there a performer you haven’t played with that you’d really like to?

I mean, I didn’t wanna play with any of them. I didn’t move to New York with a target list and say, I want to play with this guy, this guy, this guy. But someone would say, “Hey, you wanna work with Sting?” I’m like, yeah, he’s a bad mother—. I’d love to do that. But there’s no way that sitting around as a high school kid, I would say that I was gonna be playing with one of the most prolific musicians and songwriters in popular music of that two-decade period. That really wasn’t part of the plan. This is what I mean: I bought tickets to hear the Police play at Shea Stadium in New York with an old girlfriend in 1983. And as fate would have it, I was good friends with the main publicist at Sony Music, who was friends with Andy Summers. She sent the Police a care package with all the Columbia products and threw one of my CDs in there. And the guys in the band heard it and they really liked the record. So she called me and said the guys in the Police wanna meet you.

Now, even at that point, I’m thinking, that’s really cool, but I’m not saying, boy, I’m gonna play with Sting. See what I mean? So they said we want you to come to the gig. I said, “I already got tickets, bro, but thanks. I’m looking forward to hearing you.” And two years later I’m in this band.

You pick a person, I can tell you a story behind it. People hire you. And I’m always kind of surprised — less now that I’m older. So I never really wanted to play with any of ’em. I mean, anybody I would’ve really wanted to play with, most of them were dead by the time I got to New York anyway.

I was fascinated by your collaboration with the Grateful Dead. How did that come about?

I was working with a band helping produce a song, and the manager of the band was the cousin of a woman who was working with the video production team for the Dead. He mentioned that he was working with me, and she said, ‘Oh, Phil [Lesh] loves that guy.’ Then the next day he says, ‘Phil wants to know if you can go sit in with the band.’ So I hit the road — a three-hour drive — but I didn’t have a pass. So in my mind I was saying: ‘I’m gonna go there. The security guards aren’t gonna let me in.’ This is after being on the Sting tour, where you can’t go to the bathroom without a pass. And I walked up and said, ‘I’m supposed to play with these guys tonight?’ ‘Yeah, just go on in.’ Bizarre. I was like, OK. And then I got to the backstage area. They’re like, yeah, come on in. Didn’t need a pass. Didn’t need nothing. I met the guys, and Phil was kind of into it. The other guys, they might have known my name, but they didn’t really know my style. So they just said, yeah, we’ll bring him up on the last song of the first set. That’s exactly what I would do. They can say they played with the band, and then you send ’em home. I played the tune. We all had a good time, and I said, ‘Thanks for letting me play, guys.’ And they said, ‘No, stick around, play the second half.’ You know, 24 hours earlier, you would’ve never heard me say, one day I’m gonna play with the Grateful Dead.

What was the first tune?

I don’t remember. I think it was “Eyes of the World.” The Deadheads remember, though. Let me tell you, they remember. (Laughs.)

I grew up playing popular music. And when I turned 19, I switched to playing jazz, and then when I was playing with Sting, it took me about six weeks for my brain to go find my popular music stuff and access it. And then I did that for about four years. And then right at the end of that, I played this gig. So I was sonically prepared. I knew what the music was, and I already had a style of playing.

Do you consider what you did with the Dead a kind of jazz?

No, because I don’t believe that jazz invented improvisation. Do the Dead improvise? Yeah. And so did 18th-century French Baroque musicians. There’s improvisation all over the world. It might not be with jazz language, but jazz musicians did not invent improvisation. And just because a group improvises, it doesn’t make it jazz, no.

Can you put your finger on what drives you to do so many different things?

I have an ability to do it, that’s the first thing. That makes it easy. If I couldn’t do it, then I’d be less inclined to want to do it. And there’s a lot of people who can’t. That’s how I grew up. Wynton started getting into jazz seriously by the time he was 12. When I was 10, the first two records I ever bought were “Honky Château,” and Cheech and Chong, “Big Bambu.” My favorite thing about that record is that there’s a piece of rolling paper the size of the album cover inside the album cover. And for the next 15 years, I had no idea what that was. And I was hanging out with some musicians, and they were smoking weed. And the guy pulls out the paper that he rolls it in, and the name of the paper was Big Bambu. And I went, sweet Jesus. I bought this record in 1970, bruh, and I had no idea what that was. I’m proud to say that though. In all of my teen years, I had no idea what rolling paper was and all that sh—. I lived a naive life in a way. I’m a very inauthentic musician in the stereotypical sense of the word. After that, it was Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Parliament-Funkadelic, Led Zeppelin, King Crimson, Bachman-Turner Overdrive and Seals & Crofts. I was all over the place.

When did you start gravitating toward jazz?

It was my first year at Berklee (College of Music in Boston), 1979. I was going to school for audio production. I thought I wanted to be like a Quincy Jones producer. Wynton was already playing with Art Blakey then. And I was driving all of my teachers and friends crazy bragging about my brother, because I’m naive and I’m 19 years old, and these are grown-ass men teaching. And I’m like: “Oh, you play trumpet? Man, wait till you hear my brother. He’s gonna shock the sh— out of you.” Arrogant-ass kid bragging about his brother. And then he came to town with Art Blakey. And like the people who brag say, it ain’t bragging if you can do it. At that concert, Wynton was onstage and I was just watching it and saying, you know, this jazz sh— might be OK. I wanted to be in a horn section for an Earth, Wind & Fire-type band. And these keyboards started coming in around that time, and it wasn’t lost on me that the people listening to it didn’t find the keyboard sax offensive-sounding like I did. And I said, well, clearly the keyboard sax is a lot cheaper than a real sax player, so they’re gonna just push us right out of the market. So maybe I need to find something else to do. And I said, well, hmm, jazz. And it was at that point that I started really checking out jazz records.

What can people expect to hear at your concert here? Any surprises?

Music. Well, it’s gonna be a surprise to them, ’cause they don’t know what we do. They know my name, but they don’t know what we do. They don’t buy our records. Nobody buys our records. So it’s always new music to them. Anything we play will be new to them. And I’m not saying it in a pejorative way, either. It’s funny how people hear that and they say, “Oh, you trying to say people don’t like jazz?” This is what I’m saying, bro. A dude that’s 7 feet tall is taller than a guy who’s 6-foot-2 who’s taller than a guy who’s 5-foot-7.

People buy records. People don’t buy jazz records. This is the thing that I learned early on, because when I started playing jazz and hanging out at the jazz clubs, I’m like, I don’t want to play for these people. I want to play for the other people. I want to play for the people who don’t like jazz. And I don’t want to pander to them, I want to play jazz for them. Audiences like essentially two things. They like songs with a good melody and a killer beat, and that’s it. So I’m gonna play songs that have an infectious beat and a catchy melody, and then we’ll throw in some modern (jazz). So we’re a total-package experience. All the guys in the band are charismatic. We all dress nice and we have a good time playing. So the people that are watching it have a good time as well. And we play things they can tap their foot to — not 100 percent of the time, but if you do it 30 percent of the time, it’s a victory.

I’m looking forward to it.

Me too, man. Most of those jazz festivals are like smooth jazz festivals now. They don’t really hire us. So I’m always like, wow, cool. Yeah, I dig it. I mean, we like playing, so I’m glad they’re gonna bring us.

The Branford Marsalis Quartet plays Jan. 20 at Jazz Fest Pompano Beach, Old Town Pompano Beach; general admission is free; 3-day VIP passes, $175; also on the bill Jan. 18-20 are Ms. Lisa Fischer & Grand Baton, David Sanchez, Najee, and Valerie Tyson; pompanobeacharts.org.

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More with Branford Marsalis.

Is there a type of music you cannot listen to?

Yeah, but we ain’t gonna get into that (laughs). I’d rather focus on the sh— I listen to.

OK, what do you listen to?

Right now, early jazz is my thing, jazz from the ’20s and ’30s. All of this stuff that kind of got lost over time that’s really, really good. Which is why I’m listening to it, because I’m learning as I listen. Classical music. I listen to a lot of that, too.

What influences were your way into jazz?

Lester Young and Wayne Shorter were my two guys. And then it grew from there. Then I joined Blakey’s band, because he would always tell me how sh–ty I was. And then he would tell me why, ’cause I didn’t know anything and it was impossible for me to say you’re wrong. I’m like, well, touché. You can sit here and rip me all day, or you can tell me what to start listening to so I can shut you up. And he started telling me, check this guy out, check that guy out. You’re learning all this Coltrane. When Coltrane was your age, what do you think he was listening to? Tastes of himself in the future? You need to go learn the cats he’s learning from. It was like the greatest line ever.

And when I got to New York, I noticed that most of the sax players were doing exactly what he told me I shouldn’t do. They were listening only to the person that they liked, instead of listening to the musicians that influenced the person they like. Because a lot of times musicians, their relationship with music, regardless of the style of music, is more transactional than it is aspirational. There’s a lot of musicians who are not interested in spending years learning how to play a style that they cannot immediately monetize. So the relationship becomes transactional.

I’ve always just listened to as much music as I could, but I don’t try to learn things from it immediately. My whole thing is that if you can sing it, you can play it. So I would only listen to about five records a year, and I would listen to them every day. All the time.

Only five records a year?

How you gonna learn a record, bro? I tell my students that, and they say exactly what you just said. So then I say, “All right, that solo you started working on last week, play it for me.” “I can’t.” I say, “Sing ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb.’” He says, “I can do that.” I say: “Why do you think that is? Because you probably sang it 100,000 times in the first five years of your life, and you’ll never ever forget it.” That’s how it is with music.

If you wanna tell people you heard it, that’s another thing. If you wanna learn a record, you have to listen to the record hundreds of times. Hundreds. And all of a sudden, you can hear the entire record in your sleep. You can hear what it is.

To me, records are like magic. And I say this with confidence. When you listen to your favorite songs, you almost never visualize humans standing in a room performing them, because it’s magic. You’re singing along to it. You’re washing your car, whatever. You gotta listen with a different kind of set of ears, bro. And it’s an acquired skill, you know? It’s not an either-or. It’s something that develops over time, over a decade.

Wow. At five records a year?

Hey, man. This is not a hobby, bro. It takes 10 years to acquire the skill, regardless of how many records you listen to. The thing that I noticed about musicians as a younger person, I lacked the ability to articulate. So then I would make these blandishments, for lack of a better term. I would say, “Most musicians suck anyway.” And they said, “You are an arrogant piece of sh—.” And they’re right. “You think you’re better than everybody.” I said: “No, I’m just better than these guys. I’m not better than everybody. It’s just that all the people better than me are dead.” So then they say, “Oh, this guy, man, there’s no end to his arrogance.”

And as I started to get older, I could speak about this stuff better. And now I understand what I was trying to say 30 years ago, is that because I was lucky enough to grow up in New Orleans, the majority of the musicians that I know that play jazz — not in my life — it’s clear that they can’t hear what they’re playing. Because if they could hear what it was, they wouldn’t play that stuff. But they have these things that they know work and they play them.

But when you’re playing with guys from New Orleans, a lot of those guys could not read back then. And they could play their asses off. So if you’re gonna play in that band, there’s no sheet music on the stand. So you gotta do what they do. So my ears developed very early on in my life. I was playing gigs, learning parts, learning tunes, learning in strange keys. ’Cause singers can only sing in certain keys.

I was talking to a musician. The guy said, “You play two songs in the same key, in sequence. You can’t do that.” “Why not?” He said, “That’s just like the unwritten rule.” I said, “The rule is stupid, because people in the audience don’t know keys.” I played in an R&B band for four years, and in the entire time, there’s not a single person that came up and said, “Can you mother—- please play in another key?” The only person that gives a sh— about keys are musicians, and I don’t wanna play for y’all.

And this is the thing I had to learn how to do, because in my late 20s, all I knew how to do was what we did. And then in my 30s, I’m like, I have to really learn this whole music that I’ve been checking out, much to the consternation of the guys in the band. They didn’t wanna play that. They just wanted to do what they did. And now they’re like, yeah, man, that was a good move 20 years ago to start doing this because we can play damn near anything now.

And that’s the thing. I was never really an elitist, even though there are those people who would consider me an elitist, because there’s a lot of music that falls under the aegis of jazz that’s not jazz. And I’ll just say, “This sh— ain’t jazz.” And they say, “You must be an elitist.” I’m like, “If this is the context, I’m absolutely an elitist.” But in general, I’m not the person saying: “We are geniuses playing jazz for all you unwashed ass—- out there. So you should just bow down to us, but you’re too stupid to appreciate us.” We don’t carry ourselves with that mannerism at all. So we’re not aloof, we’re not shy. We are very garrulous. We make fun of each other onstage. We laugh at our mistakes. And audiences appreciate it because most people hear music with their eyes anyway. Never occurred to you, huh?

No.

What’s the operative verb for concert-going, my friend?

“See.”

There you go. Q.E.D. In the ’90s, jazz was becoming quote-unquote hip. Guys start wearing black T-shirts and jeans and trying to be like pop. People say, “Why are you guys always wearing suits?” I said, “Because people like to see that sh—.” I beg to differ. If they’re going to hear their favorite band and the guys are out there in ripped jeans, they’re cool with that. But that one time a year that they want to go to see a jazz concert, they want to see something different. They don’t wanna see you trying to be like their rock heroes.