By Chris Albertson

Branford Marsalis: I’ve had a love affair with music all my life; that would be the biggest problem for me, if I weren’t a musician. A friend of mine in high school used to say that he was going to have me committed to the House For the Musically Insane, because I listen to fusion and all of that other stuff—I loved it then and I still love it. The only reason I started really playing jazz is because there is nothing else that could really suffice my ego on an extended term, there is nothing as hard in the world to play as jazz. All music is a challenge for a little while, jazz is the only music that is a challenge all the time. Every time you listen to a Sonny Rollins record you are humbled—it’s such a beautiful music. The first record that made me turn on to jazz was Charlie Parker’s April In Paris—what is more beautiful than April In Paris? What is more beautiful than Charlie Parker playing Summertime? Not a lot, not a lot, man.

CA: Is the general public confused?

BM: I find the public very humorous. A friend of mine in New Orleans was really into pop music, and he always dug it, but then something in his head clicked. It’s like the biggest problem I had with my father when I was younger is that I was never convinced that he was the man that he said he was; and it was not until I was 21, 22 that I got to know the real Dad. You know, real men curse and real men drink beer, and real men talk about women--fathers don’t do any of those, father go "Darn." And I’d say, if he’s so straight, why am I so nuts? Where did it come from? Then when I left home and got out of college, then I met him. And I said "Why weren’t you this way all along?" That’s the way a lot of people are, I think that when a guy gets to be 23 or 24 and he gets his first job and he makes $40,000 a year, he suddenly says "I can’t listen to pop music anymore, I’m too old for that, I have to mature." So what does he go and get? He gets a pop record without words, and they call that a jazz record. You know, Americans are very pretentious people, they call themselves abreast of the times, but we really ain’t as hip as we think we are. Americans basically don’t want to spend any time hearing some shit that will make them think, and jazz is a thinking man’s music, a thinking woman’s music, a thinking person’s music.

CA: But obviously you, the young jazz players, have an audience--is it not a young audience?

BM: Yes, we’ve got an audience, but when you go and see Harry [Connick] at Knickerbockers, all these people talk while he plays, then clap at the end of the songs they tell him how good he is. People read an article on you, they see you on CBS Morning News, like I did this gig, it’s like a joke we have. You do a gig like at Blues Alley (in Washington, D.C.) and the first set is the Young Republicans, and they all sit around in their very conservative suits and their very conservative ties, and they expect it to be like some "Hello Dolly" shit, especially me, because I tell a lot of jokes. And they say "Oh God, he’s funny." And they expect to laugh in the show--I may say a line or two that’s funny, but there ain’t nothing funny after that, because the music is like what it is. And they sit there and they look at each other, then they just start talking and eating and doing whatever, and we become background music. And in the second set it’s like fifty-fifty, the Young Republicans who couldn’t get into the first set, and the hip people who don’t want to stay out late, and the third set is almost always the hip people. That’s what’s basically happening to us now--you start to gain some kind of stature in the eyes of the press, in the eyes of the public. People just automatically show up to your shows, because they read your name somewhere, not because they are necessarily into the music.

If it has more than two chords in it, it must be jazz. So then they call his [Sting’s] shit jazz.

Most record company executives are idiots, but they never profess to be anything else but accountants, and they never profess to be in anything other than the business of music. I would be plenty pissed off if they would always make spiels about art, art, art, art, art, and then had the attitude that they have. To sum up how I feel about what we do, you always see Columbia presidents with guys like Springsteen and guys like Billy Joe, Michael Jackson, and shit, but the very interesting thing is that when Ted Turner and the Moral Majority decided that they were going to buy CBS, and they were going to send up CBS artists to them, there was only one that really comes to mind, and that was Wynton. They didn’t send Billy Joel, they damned sure didn’t send Michael Jackson, they sent Wynton. So, in terms of why they sign guys like us, I think it’s very apparent why; they admit that jazz artists are definitely low on the totem pole, and whereas the other guys give them money, jazz gives them prestige. That’s what kills me about the record industry, here I am sitting down with a guy who has a law degree, and he’s going to tell me about music--I find that the most humorous thing of all, I mean I don’t even find it offensive, I find it hilarious. That’s why I avoid those meetings, if I was to go to a meeting and they were going to talk about music, I’d be forced to talk about law. That’s the way my personality is, there’s nothing more ironic than a lawyer telling me how he feels about music.