Hour 16
At 8 a.m. Sunday, jazz great Wynton Marsalis is in his apartment, saying it’s not so bad having the sleepy time blues.
“It's early in the morning, it's still kind of dark. Well, not now, it's 8 o'clock, but I'm imagining it,” says Marsalis, before breaking into a piano improvisation. “It's just the blues.”
Marsalis offers the visiting television crew some coffee and an extra cup of encouragement.
“It's good that you’re staying up, because that's the real truth of it,” says Marsalis. You know, Wes Anderson and I used to hang out at jam sessions all night until 4 or 5 o’clock in the morning. We'd always say, ‘Anybody can get up and hang at 5, but who can get up at 7 or 8 o'clock all the time?’ The key to being a real hanger is you got to stay up all night, but you got to get up early.”
Marsalis has lived his life on the road, and says musicians really eat, sleep and drink the music.
“Just always be around people and have a good time. You have your horn, you can do all kinds of stuff,” says Marsalis. “Get into restaurants, restaurant be closed. ‘Hey, we got our horns. We'll play for you all if y'all cook for us.’ Okay, man, the chef is not gone. So yeah, if you play such and such.”
For a traveling jazz musician, all-nighters are a way of life.
“You got to do that for about 10 years. Anybody can do it for a day or a week,” says Marsalis. “I got to see years of it, a 10-year hang. Call me 10 years from now and tell me if you made it. You have to have slept an average of four to five hours a night for the past 10 years. I don't want to see any eight-hour, ten-hour nights. It's got to be four or three.”
Marsalis then plays a jazz trumpet solo to show what a real musician sounds like.
At 8 a.m. Sunday, jazz great Wynton Marsalis is in his apartment, saying it’s not so bad having the sleepy time blues.
“It's early in the morning, it's still kind of dark. Well, not now, it's 8 o'clock, but I'm imagining it,” says Marsalis, before breaking into a piano improvisation. “It's just the blues.”
Marsalis offers the visiting television crew some coffee and an extra cup of encouragement.
“It's good that you’re staying up, because that's the real truth of it,” says Marsalis. You know, Wes Anderson and I used to hang out at jam sessions all night until 4 or 5 o’clock in the morning. We'd always say, ‘Anybody can get up and hang at 5, but who can get up at 7 or 8 o'clock all the time?’ The key to being a real hanger is you got to stay up all night, but you got to get up early.”
Marsalis has lived his life on the road, and says musicians really eat, sleep and drink the music.
“Just always be around people and have a good time. You have your horn, you can do all kinds of stuff,” says Marsalis. “Get into restaurants, restaurant be closed. ‘Hey, we got our horns. We'll play for you all if y'all cook for us.’ Okay, man, the chef is not gone. So yeah, if you play such and such.”
For a traveling jazz musician, all-nighters are a way of life.
“You got to do that for about 10 years. Anybody can do it for a day or a week,” says Marsalis. “I got to see years of it, a 10-year hang. Call me 10 years from now and tell me if you made it. You have to have slept an average of four to five hours a night for the past 10 years. I don't want to see any eight-hour, ten-hour nights. It's got to be four or three.”
Marsalis then plays a jazz trumpet solo to show what a real musician sounds like.
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