Branford Marsalis January 17, 2014

here's an interview I hope people find enjoyable more clips of interviews will be posted from artists such as Sonny Rollins Wayne Shorter Branford Marsalis and more if you find these interviews interesting and would like to support the project please go to Lester lives dot wordpress.com Lester Young is kind of like the embodiment of the spirit and the rhythm of jazz in a way because Charlie Parker clearly listened to Lester Young you can hear it in his playing stand guests listen to Lester Young you can hear in his plane and then you jump up to the harm be guys like Don Wilkerson and read prysock all they're doing is playing Lester young licks much faster with a brighter tone so there's a connection to all these guys - Zoot Sims there's so many guys Lester was a player Lester just hire a cast to do gigs and he just did his thing and it was a it must have been something that the whole must been something to behold Perez had this thing where you know his playing kind of sounded like dancing I mean people loved hearing him play people loved hearing him play it also loved watching him I mean he did the show hold on to the side pelvic thrust he had great rhythm he was great to look at was a lot of us were no fun to look at was just not but he was great to look at and I I just know it because on the on the jazz of the Philharmonic things you can hear the people in the audience cheering in the middle of his solos they're not cheering because he's just going wow one note yeah that's not what it is that's clear what's happening is that he's moving to the music and people are digging it it is possible for a musician to use the sound of his or her instrument via the saxophone or a voice to create an emotional template and then you can tell when they're doing it because every song sounds different every song sounds different because they're responding to the sequence the melodic sequence in the song I think that one of the things that jazz musicians have forgotten how to do is just play songs if you play it at the temple it was meant to be played it kind of spells it out for you so you just have to not get in the way of it just get out of the way of it and let it exist and that's one of those things that Lester did I mean that's one of the lessons I learned from him he had the whole package handsome devil looking clean playing great you can find pictures of guys all the way up to the 70s and they are always clean and one of the reasons is that they truly understood that we're in show business you would find no jazz musician in the 30s or the 40s Charlie Park included that would argue with the fact that the music is show business you know like yeah there's a huge artistic component to it but most people that listen to music don't even appreciate music in an artistic way which is why in our country they're always saying I'm going to see such-and-such they never say I'm going to hear anything and being a musician back then for a black guy I mean there wasn't a whole lot that black people could do it just wasn't a lot you could be your own gangster where the big gangsters like Pendergrass would let you exist as a gangster as long as you knew the rules and told the line you could be a preacher or you could be a carpenter I mean you compare those things to you know being a musician to most people at that time so you have a guy playing the piano and making well over $100 a night bad night is $100 I mean Wales in New Orleans could a black man in 1919 make $100 a day in New Orleans it's one of those cities where the music is just so intertwined it's ingrained in the culture you have a bunch of kids sitting on a bus clanging out rhythms with pencils on the glass I mean it doesn't happen anywhere else you know and we would just sing these songs iko iko and two-way party way and it was just like that I think that stuff has more of an impact even on non musicians as it does it's kind of like when you go to a place like Cuba and have national songs and and Brazil they have one song that everybody in the country knows the song there's something about that and about music having that kind of place like we don't have that kind of relationship with music in our country we don't have a national song but in New Orleans we have several they like national songs this is the nation of New Orleans we have our songs you know Mardi Gras Mambo and Big Chief and iko iko we have all these songs that that symbolize New Orleans st. James infirmary they're the embodiment of New Orleans and I think that it is definitely haven't ages to grow up in a culture that has a relationship with music like that as Lester Young is an amalgam of you know New Orleans and Louie Armstrong and stuff that he heard when he was up there and where's he Minnesota I mean he's all these things he is a griot he's an American griot and he's reciting the tale of America because he's checking out everybody to make himself better I mean that's what I love about him he's actually the embodiment of what the idea of America is actually supposed to be jazz musicians have always been kind of polyglots the great ones the great ones have always been polyglots but Lester was one of those guys and Charlie Parker was one of those guys and he's gonna steal from whoever and that's that's what I love in Sonny Rollins too I mean just like I love guys like that I love guys that are just gonna you know I'm gonna take this stuff from wherever I need to take it from the move me to the next place Lester Young say Amen we got the info I need that Kent I'll care if he's green that's my kind of guy

Channel: FerriniProductions

Views: 18,202

Rating: 5 out of 5

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Id: 5QUy5oVrBVM

Length: 6min 6sec (366 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 26 2014