Branford Marsalis

“There's not one Tin Pan Alley song on my record.”

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

“One of the things that I loved about listening to Miles Davis is that Miles always had an instinct for which musicians were great for what situations. He could always pick a band, and that was the thing that separated him from everybody else.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“It's hard to get into Newsweek because, as more of our former intellectual magazines take on a pop focus, if there's no buzz, there's no interest.”

“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.”

“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.”