My name is Monk Rowe and we are in New Orleans
for the Jazz Education Network conference in 2020 and I'm very privileged to have Ellis
Marsalis with me today. Thank you for your time. I've been reading about your accomplishments
and your career. And it seems to me that you've got a number
of legacies as a performer and educator and mentor, and as the Marsalis family's been
added; to the Battistes and the Humphreys and all that. So congratulations. EM: Well thank you. MR: I wanted to start out with a quote from
a younger musician who's amongst the people that you've assisted. And this is the quote that he said about you
only about four months ago: "One of my great experiences was playing with Ellis Marsalis
when I was in New Orleans and starting out. I used to do his trio gig every week at Snug's
and he would inevitably call a tune he knew you didn't know. And he'd kind of go through it rubato, kind
of modern like a standard, and then he'd look at you and kind of laugh 'cause he knew you
didn't know it. And he'd go, "3, 4" and you just had to hear
your way through it. And that is from Neal Caine, the bassist. So you were teaching them on the bandstand,
is that right? EM: I think I did. I mean I didn't really teach Neal per se. You know he's interesting, I met him in St.
Louis. He had just finished high school and he was
coming to New Orleans. I think he told me to go to Tulane to major
in something. I don't think it was music, but he just kept
the musical situation going. But that is an example of how I learned. I played with a singer who had a band, the
singer's name was Earl Williams. And they did a lot of standards. This was in, what, fifty something? '58, 9, around that time, or even a little
earlier. Because I remember I wasn't married yet. And
he would call a tune and I'd say I'm not really sure if I know it. He'd say, "All right, you'll get it." Bang, and he'd kick it off. And a lot of times I would listen and try
to hear the form of what the song was. And I'd guess at the bridge, you know. And if I would guess right then I'd say okay,
then this must be where it is. And the next time around I would go back and
do, at the same point, just from listening. MR: Did you have a bass player then who you
could - EM: Not on that job. No, not really. The guy who sang had a bass but he didn't
really play. You know he would thump along. But I didn't really have a bass player., There
was a guitar player on the gig. And the drummer was Earl Palmer, who went
to L.A. eventually and was notoriety. Yeah but Earl was on that gig. MR: This might seem like a funny question
but do you remember how much money you would have made on those gigs back, this was you
said mid-50s? EM: How much I would have made? MR: How much did you make? EM: As I remember we were doing six nights
a week at a club called [s/l Gordon Natale's], about 125 or something like that. MR: For the week. EM: Yeah. MR: Okay. You make more than that now though I bet. EM: Well I just reduced the amount of time
that I get on the bandstand. MR: Can you tell me what kind of music you
heard in your house growing up? You were -
EM: You mean in the house growing up with my parents? MR: Yes. EM: Whatever was on the radio. Other than that, you know. MR: So they didn't have a record player? EM: No. Neither of my parents were musically inclined. MR: Okay. EM: They were very supportive of my sister
and I as parents, but they were not really musically inclined. So there was a radio station, the call letters
was WJBW, and it was the only radio station that actually played music. And it would change I think, as I remember
during the day. As it got later in the evening there would
be different kinds of music, some orchestral types of music. I don't know that they ever actually played
some symphonies but earlier in the day they would play recordings of like Bing Crosby
and maybe Louis Armstrong. And - but it wasn't - it was sort of like
the Broadway-pop kind of music. MR: Did you have a piano in the house. EM: Not at first. We got a piano
MR: So you got a piano later on? EM: Yeah, well my father bought this house. See we were living in Orleans Parish. Most people have counties, Louisiana has parishes. And we moved from Orleans Parish to Jefferson
Parish. I was about ten years old. And eventually we got an upright piano and
I would fool around with it. You know. But later on as we got - we meaning my sister
and I - as we got closer to graduating from high school I had pretty much figured out
what I wanted to do but I didn't have a lot of understanding of how to get there. When I was in high school I went to a concert
at the Booker Washington Auditorium and Dizzy Gillespie's big band was there. That was what, 1949 I think. And I knew when I heard that band that that
was what I wanted to do. I mean I had no way of knowing how to do that,
but as I got a little older and I was able to so to speak go out on my own, you know,
and meet other musicians that was local musicians, you know, musicians like Earl Palmer, and
other local musicians. There were a few who was really trying to
learn to play jazz and some was pretty good at it already. And they were usually older than me. Now there were the traditional guys who had
been playing trad for a long time, like the Humphrey brothers, Percy Humphrey and his
brother, and Alvin Alcorn, who had also been playing trad for a while, and there were some
that I would hear about but I never heard them play. Because see we were all living under racial
segregation. So the mobility to hear some of these guys
was limited unless they were related to you. What I mean is like Alvin Alcorn played trad
and he would play in white clubs or white establishments while Sammy, who was his son,
he would bring his son with him. So his son was able to learn some of that
music as a result of going with his father. You know. And Albert French, who played with Oscar Celestin,
his sons did similar things. You know. But -
MR: You didn't have a father who did that. EM: I didn't have anybody. You know. It didn't even have to be a father, just had
to be somebody who could negotiate in that situation and had gigs in different places
where the music was being played. MR: So 1949 you saw Dizzy Gillespie and the
years right after that, if you wanted to hear some of these fellas you just mentioned you
couldn't go in the clubs where they were playing. Is that right? EM: Well there were some clubs I went in. The black clubs. But there was nothing like Dizzy's band. I mean Dizzy's band was totally different
in 1949 - it was totally different. But I did begin to meet other musicians and
there were people who actually had studied music, for example at the end of the second
war the GI bill was introduced by the federal government and there were guys who had been
in the military and had the options - you want to go to college you could do it on the
GI bill. If you wanted to study music there was a school
called Grunewald, where there were people who were teaching music. Because that's where Earl Palmer went, and
other people, some I knew some I didn't know. But there was a fairly high level of musicianship
among the popular music idiom. You know there were guys who could really
play, the opportunities were not there beyond a certain point, but if you wanted to learn
there were ways for you to get that information. MR: Was there a distinction between, in New
Orleans, between jazz and popular music like R&B, or was it all sort of just one thing
and whatever the gig demanded that's what you should play? EM: Well basically that's true. If - jazz was not very popular as a term,
nor as a music in the general sense. But the few of us who decided that we really
wanted to learn, like we would go to each other's house and like if you was a piano
player you might be listening at Bud Powell or you may be listening at other pianists
who were playing in jazz groups and go home and work on it you know. And there were jam sessions, one at a club
called the Dew Drop Inn, they'd have jam sessions on Sundays and you could go and try out what
you had learned. But for the most part if - the working musicians
were all playing rhythm & blues. You know that's what we did because that's
where the people were paying money. There were shows, the blues singers, and then
there were instrumental blues type songs that we would learn because people enjoyed that. And then see another thing, people, men and
women, used to dance with each other during that time. So that was a lot more common. From what I can see, now dance has become
a spectator sport. You go buy a ticket and you watch Beyonc�
and all them other people dance. I mean and it may be something that I'm missing
because I don't hang out, but as far as I know the social dance has gone the way of
all things. MR: So it was the band leader's job to make
sure that the dance floor was not empty too often. Is that right? The leader of the band wanted to see people
on the dance floor and call those tunes that would get them there. EM: Yeah. All - listen, all of those bands in the early
years were billed to publicity dance band. Stan Kenton's band was a dance band. Ellington's band was a dance band. Eventually Basie's band was a dance band,
because his band came out of Kansas City with the Blue Devils, er, and Tommy Dorsey's band,
Benny Goodman's band, all those bands were billed as jazz bands and dance bands. You know, 'cause the famous 1933 concert that
Benny Goodman did, you know, was at a dance. And basically that was a part of the social
structure, you know, the social aspect of the way people function, males and females,
that's how they functioned. MR: Were the groups that you played with around
that time, the early 50s, were they integrated? EM: No. MR: When was the first time that you played
in an integrated band rather than a jam session, like a real gig? EM: The jam session wasn't integrated either. MR: No kidding? EM: Ut um. MR: Was there a black and a white jam session
that you could go to? I mean -
EM: Not in them days. I think the first band that I played with
which could be considered an integrated band was when I started playing with Al Hirt. But that was in '67. But before that no. MR: Okay. So at that time if you wondered what is a
B flat 13 chord, where did you go to find that information? EM: Harold Battiste. MR: Okay. EM: Harold Battiste was a mentor for me. He was about three years older than me. He went to Dillard University and had been
there maybe three years, and I went as a freshman. And he was a mentor for me in terms of saying
this is chord changes, you know, this is like C7, this is how you voice that. A lot of very basic stuff. MR: I'm glad you told me that. It's interesting that mentors don't have to
be a lot older than you, right? I mean when you're that age, three years seems
like a long time but then later on it's not. But wow. I think I saw him years ago at a concert. It was very, very interesting. And you had a big decision to make about the
military? You ended up joining the Marine Corps? EM: It wasn't so much a decision, you see
the military was still conscripting at that time. So when I finished from Dillard I had been
playing locally with Edward Blackwell, Harold Battiste, Alvin Battiste, who was a clarinet
player; and Peter Badie was the bass player, or Richard Payne who was also a bass player. You know and there's recordings of that group
available. And eventually Edward Blackwell told me, he
said, "Man Ornette Coleman, he's going to send me a ticket so I'm going back to California." You know, so I thought about it for a minute
and I said man, I'd just graduated from Dillard and I was working in my father's business. He had a motel business. And I said, you know, I think I'll do that. You know? Because I was - as they say - free, single
and disengaged. So the two of us, we called Harold and said,
"Hey, man, we're getting ready to go to California, to go to Los Angeles." And he said, "What?" I said, "Yeah man." He said, "There's no problem, you'll be able
to get a piano player and a drummer for whatever you can do." He said, "Oh no, no, no." He says, "Well if y'all going, I'm gonna go." So we ended up going to Los Angeles in Harold's
car. MR: Road trip. EM: You know, to Los Angeles. And we stayed at a little place in East L.A.
- I don't remember much about it. It wasn't a lot. We didn't have a lot of money anyway. But eventually Harold - I don't know - no,
he didn't stay, not at that time. But I don't know when he came back because
my mom tracked me down and said well your dad is not feeling good and you need to come
home. So there was a guy I knew who had gone to
school with my future wife who was coming back to New Orleans so I hitched a ride with
him. So when I got there my dad had said well look
I'm doing all right. You know. If you want to go back to California you can
do that. But before I could do that I got the greetings
from everybody's favorite uncle, named Sam. So I had to go take a physical and it didn't
make sense for me to go back to Los Angeles because I was going to be drafted and I'd
have to come back here. You know years later I started thinking about
exactly how similar that situation was to Caesar telling all of the people to go back
to where you were so that they could be taxed. But we would have to be wherever we were from
to be drafted into the military. You know. And I thought about that much later. I said wow, there's a similarity to that. And so I started, a friend of mine, let me
see how did that go, I started teaching at this high school, a marching band kind of
thing in the fall of that year because well during the time I got the greetings and got
the physical, the guy from the Marine Corps called me up about volunteering for the draft. And I thought about that and I said I don't
know about them guys, you know. But I never heard from anybody, not the Army,
the Air Force, none of them. So after a while, because by this time I was,
what was I, 22, 23, something, about that age. And I said man I need to get this military
thing behind me, because I'm trying to figure out what I'm going to do. The guy from the Marine Corps called me again
and he said, "I'll tell you what, you can volunteer for the draft," which really meant
that instead of having to do three years, you could just do two years. So I says okay, I'll just do two years in
the Marine Corps and get that over with. MR: Was there a concern about going to Korea? EM: About what? MR: About going to North Korea at that time? EM: No, no, no. Not at that time. Korea finished pretty much in 1953. MR: So you're talking, it was after that. EM: See I finished college in 1955. MR: Oh okay. EM: So it was after Korea and before Vietnam. MR: Yeah. So I understand you ended up playing in a
group called the Dress Blues? EM: The Corps Four. That was the name of the group. MR: Oh okay. EM: And well I went into the Marine Corps,
you know I went through the boot camp and the infantry training and all of that stuff. So when I was assigned
I remember the recruiter, once I'd decided that I would join, he says, "Yeah, man, well
you can go to Parris Island," I said whoa, stop right there. I said, "I am not going to Parris Island." MR: It had a bad reputation. EM: I had heard about Parris Island. And he said, "Well what about, you could go
to MCRD," the Marine Corps Recruit Depot, which is in San Diego. I said well that sounds a little better. So I'll do that. You know. So that's what I did. And I went through the training, basic training,
there, and then in Lackawanna - I'm thinking California, I'll think of the name of it. It's nothing but hills. And it was after boot camp that we went and
all we did was run up and down them hills man, you know. So when my orders came after I finished with
the training, they give you a ten day leave, and my orders came to report to El Toro, at
the time, El Toro was an air base where fighter pilots trained and there was a band there
attached to that particular branch - not branch -
MR: Division? EM: See the main station at El Toro was like
stable, stationary. Like the people who were there, they were
there to sort of run the base. The air wing was a part of what they called
Air Pacific which meant that the training was preparing Marines, if anything happened
in the Pacific these were the guys who were going to go first. But the base, if you were on the base with,
I don't know what it would be called, then you would stay there. But the band was a part of Air Pacific so
if they went then the band went with them. If it happened you know. So I was in the Marines band at El Toro and
a guy came up to me one day, he was a sergeant. He said, "Hey man, how'd you like to be on
T.V?" You know and I'm looking at him and I'm saying,
"Hey, man, that's a funny joke, right?" He said, "No, man," He said a piano player,
his enlistment was up. So we need a piano player in the group. So I said yeah, okay, I'll go and audition
for that. So I did and I was accepted into that group. It was four players. That's why it was called the Corps Four: guitar,
string bass, drums, and piano. And that's what I did. The T.V. show lasted maybe about a year after
I got on there, or a year and a half, something like that. So then the lieutenant who was in charge,
he got this radio show which featured us, basically doing the same thing we were doing
on the T.V. show but it was on his radio show. And I did that until my enlistment was up. MR: Nice. EM: So that was pretty much what I did. MR: I'm going to fast forward a little bit
- you came back to New Orleans and got married and started a family. Did the fact that you started having kids
and that whole family thing, did that affect your choice of what you were going to do for
a living in music? EM: No. I had a high degree of immaturity. And at the same time I had a fantastic wife
who liked jazz and understood it. I mean I was still working in my father's
business. You know, but eventually when I look back
it, see things were beginning to change, and something that I noticed when you are in the
midst of whatever happens to be changing in your environment or even in the country but
in your particular environment, you don't see it. It takes a while to figure it out. You know, this club over here don't exist
no more, this one over there, they've got musicians playing a lot of guitars. You know, and eventually you begin to try
to figure out well what am I going to do? But I think working in my dad's business allowed
me to pursue jazz, because there were still some good musicians in the city. Alvin Battiste became a school teacher, which
he eventually left and started at Southern University in Baton Rouge. He did that 'til he retired and they brought
him back to do the jazz group. Harold was teaching but he left the school
system and at some point, I'm trying to remember, I don't know exactly what Harold did because
during the time that he left the school system I think I was in the military. Because that was when he started a recording
company called AFO. And there were people who thought that I was
a part of that but I was in the military when it got started so I was not a part of AFO. The first jazz recording that I did with a
quartet was on the AFO label. But that would have been sixty-something. Sixtyish. Early 60s. MR: About that same time, maybe '62 or so,
I think you did something with two of my favorite musicians and that is the Adderley Brothers? EM: Yeah. There was a tenor saxophone player in the
band named Nathaniel Perrilliat. And there was a drummer names James Black. Well Cannon and Nat had heard about Nathaniel
Perrilliat so they came to New Orleans because they wanted to check him out. They didn't know about James Black, you know,
but when they heard James Black, you know, they really wanted him to go in his band but
he didn't go for whatever his reasons were. But we did do a recording with Sam Jones,
Cannon and Nat and Nat Perrilliat, James Black and me, which was a different recording session
from what we did with AFO with Harold. MR: Cannonball had a reputation already at
that time, didn't he? EM: Hum? MR: Didn't Cannonball have a pretty good reputation
at that time. EM: Oh yeah, he had an excellent reputation
because he had already gone to New York, and as a result when he came to New Orleans to
do the recording he came with Orrin Keepnews, who was with Riverside I think. MR: That's right. EM: You see? So Cannon, Cannon was pretty astute about
the business of music, a lot more so than some real good jazz players were. And I remember seeing him hosting a T.V. show,
I don't know - MR: Yes. From the West Coast. EM: Yeah. I don't know if he was a substitute or what
it was. But I mean he was good at that. MR: He had the gift of gab didn't he? EM: He did, but not just the gift of gab,
see Cannon had a way of expressing things which was always near some aspect of humor,
which is what people would relate to. I mean if you think about later, you know,
when the talking heads, when Carson came on NBC, after - I can't think of his name, but
anyway he was pretty straight up and down. MR: Right. EM: He was good at what he did but what he
did was sort of getting to be out of vogue. So there's the whole aspect of humor was finding
its way into that medium, and like Cannon had that, I don't know, I never knew anything
about that T.V. show. I was surprised when I turned the T.V. on
and saw it. I don't even remember what network or any
of that. MR: No, I didn't know about it either and
Roy McCurdy told me about it. Roy played with Cannon for a long time. So I want to go back to something you were
talking about with the scene was changing and the guitars started to come in. Were you enlisted or were you tempted to play
rock & roll? If you listened to Chuck Berry, you know,
you've got Johnnie Johnson, a very important part of the group. So there was piano that could be done in rock
& roll. Did you ever need to play in that sort of
fashion? EM: Yeah, I know how to play that. MR: Yeah. EM: Yeah I could do that Little Richard thing. I mean it was all a part of learning. You know you learn how to play them shuffles
behind them singers, and the boogies and all of that. And because it wasn't a big thing. You know, it's not like you know you're condescending
to do anything. I mean it was a part of an environment that
you were a part of, and when you went to play like when somebody called you on the phone
and said, "Hey man, we need a piano player for tomorrow night." And when you went, you went expecting whatever
it is that they wanted you to do within a certain, you know, coterie of stuff. You know, there wasn't a wide variety. But it would be, I remember Big Mama Thornton
came to the Dew Drop and she called, I forget the name, it was a blues I think. And she counted it off and I started playing
a shuffle. And she stopped. She said, "No, ut uh, no, I don't want that. Just straight ahead." So it was more jazz influence of what she
wanted, you know, in terms of what she was singing. MR: She wanted straight eighth notes? EM: Well she wanted, I don't know, she never
expressed it in musical terms. But what she wanted was us to do an element
of swing which supported what she was doing. Not just to shuffle. You know. But anyway -
MR: It's like play what the situation calls for. EM: Oh yeah. MR: Okay. What made you decide to get into higher education. Was it something that just came along and
you said I can do this also? EM: I guess in a way it came along, in a way. See by the time I started to teach as an adjunct
at Xavier University. And I became real good friends with a visual
artist named John T. Scott. So he and I would cook up these schemes of
things that we thought that we could do at the university, like have students come in
and for the entire year work as a team, the visual artist, the music, and a theater person,
on a project to present at the end of the school year, you know. And there were other things that we actually
did beside that, but there was something that we thought that we could do and John presented
the idea to - there was a nun who was there to get grants for stuff. And he presented the idea to her and she took
it to, you know, whatever was giving grants. We didn't get the grant but somebody else
got one and was doing the exact same thing that we were talking about. But anyway, I was adjunct at Xavier and I
had been teaching in the little town of Breaux Bridge for a couple of years as a band director. Because the family was growing and I really
needed a job. I preferred it to be in music than what I
was doing. And at the end of the second year I didn't
really mesh too well with the superintendent, so I resigned. So and I went back to New Orleans because
when I had to chance to teach in the elementary school in Lafayette, Louisiana, which is much
bigger than Breaux Bridge. It's a town, and it's a university town also. Because we had a group while I was living
in Breaux Bridge of band directors that we called The Directors. We would rehearse sometimes in my band room,
and they were from different parts of Louisiana. The drummer was from MaMeaux, one saxophone
player was from St. Martinsville, another one, a baritone player, he was, where was
he from, I forgot now. But they were nearby places. And the trumpet player who had been in Breaux
Ridge before I got there, he was in Opelousas. And so we would play. And just before I resigned the saxophone player,
who was David Pipkin, he said man we would like for you to stay in the area. He said, "I think you could get a job in Lafayette
as the elementary school teacher," which means no more football games, half time shows, no
more parades on Saturday, 'cause man, if you were a band teacher, especially in high school,
there was the Yambilee parade, the crawfish parade, the strawberry festival, man it was
one after the next. But anyway, I went and I talked to my wife,
I said look, because I knew she didn't like the town anyway. MR: You moved the whole family there for the
job? EM: Yeah. She didn't like that town anyway. And I understood it. You know, because she was in a town in which
everybody around her they spoke Patois all the time, and that was not her culture, mine
either for that matter. RB: They spoke what? EM: Patois. That's like some people say broken French. But that's really what it's called Patois. And they may say Cajun French. The essence of that language is that it's
very idiomatic so to speak. For example, there are no tenses. Like if it's French and you want to make a
statement, there are tenses. You know like il, elle, like je, and then
the Patois if you want to say I have four, instead the French may say "J'ai quatre." You know? And the Creole, they'd just say "Mwen gen
kat." So that's why sometimes they called it broken
French. But it was a dialect. It was not written. It was a dialect. So after I talked to my wife she said man
I want to go home. So we packed up and went back to New Orleans. I was still working with my dad at his place. And got a call from the straw boss in Al Hirt's
band about joining his band. And that's what I did. MR: How big was that band at that time? EM: Let me see here, the horn player, the
drummer, he was playing trumpet, he had a clarinet, saxophone player, and a saxophone
player - it was five I think. MR: So he became a pretty well known name. Did you get to play on his recordings or did
he have a separate recording band? EM: I did but the way it was recorded, the
piano was insignificant. You know we had, I played whatever the part
was. You would never know who was playing piano
'cause the arrangement basically featured Al and the band behind him. MR: Right. What was that tune [scats]
EM: Oh "Java"? MR: "Java," Yeah. EM: Yeah. Yeah. Allen Toussaint wrote that. MR: There's so many names that come out of
New Orleans. Do you know, what is it about this city, maybe
not now, but for all those decades that just fostered so much wonderful music? EM: Well I don't know how wonderful a lot
of it was. It's hard to pin down, because there's so
many rumors going around about how the music got started. But if you examine the early music, say of
King Oliver and the group that Louis Armstrong was in as well as the Louis Armstrong group,
you know, the Hot Five and the Hot Seven, the major influence musically was John Philip
Sousa. The instrumentation, you know you had a trumpet,
the clarinet on the high parts, the trombone and the tuba player and the bass. And you had a bass drummer and a snare drummer. And the drummers, instead of playing the military
rudimental approach to music, they would play with accents that suggested a dance or strut. Now exactly when that started I don't know,
you know, but there are some pieces that you can trace directly to a march. Like there's a clarinet solo that I think
Alfonse Picou was credited with playing in "High Society" and when you listen to that
it sounds like a Sousa march. So I played the job once much later than that
at a club, no it wasn't a club it was a hall with Papa Albert French. And the whole night all we played was waltzes. Yeah. MR: I take it people were dancing then. EM: Oh yeah, that's right. And that was basically man, what we did. Play waltzes. And I had never played a job like that, but
that, I think that that was an influence, at least in part, of the French that came
into New Orleans. I think, anyway. MR: Yeah, the quadrilles and some of that
music that came over to New Orleans. EM: Yeah. MR: Did you get in on any of the recording
work that happened, a couple of the studios in New Orleans? Like recording sessions. You'd just get a call to come down and -
EM: Very few. Most of the rhythm & blues sessions were done,
the biggest studio was probably Allen Toussaint's studio at Sea-Saint. And Allen was the piano player. And there were sessions where he would call
somebody, like Eddie Bo, who was a piano player. And then there was James Booker. He would get James Booker and he was also
a piano player. So I was never called to do any of that. I remember talking to Dave Bartholomew one
time, I said, "Man, look, I need a gig." He said, "Oh man, you don't need no job." Well see he was thinking about the success
of my father's business and me working with him. You know. And I didn't have none of that in mind. MR: You wanted a music job. EM: You know, but that was basically it. MR: I wanted to ask you about, I asked you
early on about music when you were a kid in your house, then I started thinking about
your own household with your own kids. I know my father used to walk into my room
if I was playing John Coltrane or something, and he would be totally mystified by what
was going on. And I wonder if your kids, when they were
growing up, were playing music that you didn't dig, and what was your reaction to it? EM: You mean with their peers? MR: Yes. EM: No. I liked all of that. You know because they would play Earth Wind
and Fire, they would play - some of the groups I don't remember right now, but see when I
started to teach at NOCCA the first thing that I found out was that the kids in high
school that were still in high school anyway, they cared nothing about jazz at all. So if I was going to be a success I'd have
to meet them where they were. So I had already played the popular music
of my day, so then I started to understand where they were coming from in terms of the
music that they were playing. And so the two older boys, Branford and Wynton,
they joined a band called The Creators, and they were playing the popular music of the
day, which I was reasonably familiar with, you know. It wasn't foreign to me. And I remember one of them told me that - I
didn't really go to a lot of their jobs but I went to one and I sat in and the other guys
in the band, they didn't know what to expect. So when I played with them, played the piece,
they were totally surprised that I could do that. I don't remember which piece it was you know,
but I used everything that - any and everything that I could to reach out to the kids who
was coming in. MR: That's a healthy way to teach. I wonder if your kids asked advice of you. I mean they must have learned really early
on what it meant to play a gig, even before they played any instruments, "Dad's going
to another gig." And later on when they were making their career,
did they ask you for advice about making certain decisions? EM: Not that I remember. None that I remember. MR: Well it's very interesting to see what
they've done. You must read, you know, all of them have
been praised and then of course there's always, especially if you're in a powerful position,
some people are going to criticize the way you do things. I wonder if you read things about your own
kids that aggravate you, from critics and so forth? EM: No. I don't think the critics even pay attention
today. They don't bother with that. They - I'm pretty sure they don't review Wynton
hardly at all. And even if they did, I don't know that they
would really understand you know. He just sent me some music that he did which
was commissioned by the Berlin Philharmonic you know, which he called like a "Swing Symphony"
which included the Berlin Philharmonic and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, which is
through composed. Well I say through composed, I haven't gone
through the score, some of it I think is improvised but for the most part it was all written. And he's finished another piece without the
Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra that's totally just for the symphony orchestra. He composed a violin concerto which Nicky
Benedetti has been concertizing you know, so I mean and I haven't seen any reviews or
anything. I mean even if they would say it was lousy
it'd be like somebody - as Miles Davis one time, he said, "Man, this guy, this critic
was putting you down and all of this, and what do you think of that?" And he said, "Did he spell my name right?" You know. So sometimes being on the right side of a
moral issue, there is no bad publicity. MR: Excellent. I think it's terrific that you got to record
with them and speaking of having people write about you, this is someone's opinion in a
CD Guide to Jazz book, and this is what they said about your piano playing: "Ellis Marsalis
was influenced at first by Bud Powell but by the 1960s he adopted a percussive melodic
style filled with blues based figures and was using left hand voicings typical of later
bop players." EM: I was really not influenced by Bud at
all. I became more aware of Bud later when I really
started to listen at Bud. But I was really not influenced by Bud Powell
at all. My first major influence was Oscar Peterson. MR: Good place to start. Were you a record, LP buyer? Did you buy a lot of records over the years? EM: I did. My mom thought I was crazy. I used to buy a lot of records. I ended up with a total of 376 long playing
records which I eventually gave to the public library, which, you know, they're probably
still over there. MR: I don't know exactly how to ask this question
but what's the most progressive music in jazz that you liked. I was thinking of Kidd Jordan. He called himself the last free man in New
Orleans. And I wonder, so I'm going to change my question
a little bit. Did you ever participate in what we might
call free jazz? EM: I think I did once on a live concert. It was an alto saxophone player who came through
New Orleans and I was in the rhythm section. And what was his name - he's still on the
faculty at Oberlin. MR: Was it Roscoe Mitchell perhaps? EM: No, no, no. Anyway, he - when he came on the bandstand
you know, he said, "Well what it is, fellas," he says, "everything is going to be like totally
free." We said, "Yeah, okay." So we played totally free for a couple of
hours. And at the end of it, while I was waiting
for him, he was going to see about the business, I just started playing this Fats Waller tune,
"Jitterbug Waltz." And he said, "Hey, man, if I had known that
you knew how to play that we could have played it." MR: He should have asked. EM: There is one recorded example of me doing
what might be called free jazz and that was with Eddie Harris you know. It was called "Homecoming." It's a duo, just the two of us and part of
that recording there's a section of it which is kind of free. And there was some people who had heard it
and said, "Man I didn't know he could play like that." MR: You're always surprising people, first
your sons and then - this is also sometimes a tough question. Do you remember a musical train wreck on a
gig, like a gig that was just, for one reason or another, a musical train wreck? EM: What? MR: Well you get on a gig and for one reason
or another the thing is just going awful. Do you remember a terrible gig that you've
played in the past? EM: You know I don't know. I really don't remember that. I don't remember anything like that. MR: Well that's good then. Because they're not fun, right? EM: I really don't remember. No I really don't. I don't remember anything like that. MR: All right. How about the best gig you ever played? EM: I don't know. Let's see. I think the most interesting job that I have
ever played, it was really at the Kennedy Center and there was like a trad gig. I was playing piano and Louis Barbarin was
playing drums, Louis Cottrell was playing clarinet, Alvin Alcorn was playing trumpet
and Waldren Joseph was playing trombone. And we were doing like "Sensation Rag" - the
traditional music. And it was the first time that I can remember
being able to really play on a good piano with the older guys. Because I'd never spent a lot of time, I had
played individually, like I had played with Alvin Alcorn for a couple of jobs. But I had never actually played with a whole
group of trad musicians, you know, and that was a very interesting gig. Because the first thing that I realized was
the polish that they played with man, like they played soft, it wasn't a lot of loud
stuff, and like they were all excellent musicians. You know, and that was one of the fondest
memories that I have of playing a gig. There have been other examples. Not long ago I was playing at Snug Harbor
and Jason happened to be in town because he's not always there. And he was playing drums on the gig. And Branford shows up, and he had his horn
and we started playing, you know, a kind of uptempo tune. And like I just strolled on a lot of that
because he, Branford and Jason, got into the saxophone-drum thing and it took me back to
Elvin and Trane, because I mean it was memorable you know because I mean it was like fire. That's a rarity because there again for all
of - even when we did a family gig, we did a tour once, I forget the year, we did a family
tour. But we never played anyting like that. I mean we played, we pretty well mapped out
and planned so that, you know, we could really perform like together. It was little or no freelancing. MR: Freelancing. EM: The one thing that was surprising me when
we did that family tour - again I think we were playing at Kennedy Center, that Wynton
and Jason did "Donna Lee" that piece by Charlie Parker, and Wynton was playing and Jason was
whistling, and he whistled that chart along with Wynton playing. And before I heard them do that I didn't even
know that they could do that. And you know it was probably Wynton's idea. But when they come down to it, I don't know,
it's hard for me to remember any one gig that would be considered the best, because I look
backwards for things for which I was either learning something or teaching something. Like I did learn one thing, there was a club
owner on Frenchman Street. I had Victor Goines was playing tenor and
Noel Kendricks and Reginald Veal was playing bass, you know, this was all these young cats. So we got off the bandstand and the club owner
said, "Man the customer said they wish you would play more." And my first reaction was content you know. Like I thought they meant you would play more
than you was playing. But then when I thought about it, what I was
doing for the paying customer was to invoke the classroom on the bandstand. I would play a tune, I'd play one chorus and
then I'd sit there and I'd listen to Victor, I'd listen at the drummer, and the bass player. Unmindful of the fact that these people, man,
they didn't come here for that. They're not paying the freight for me to be
- and it's not that they couldn't play, it's not that. You know, I mean he's with Jazz at Lincoln
Center now. But that was the first time that I realized
that I had been doing something like that you know. And I have been mindful of that ever since. MR: Always something to learn? EM: Huh? MR: There's always something to learn. EM: Yeah. MR: It usually happens on a gig. EM: Yeah. MR: Well just to wrap up here, if, let's suppose
we went down in the lobby and we sat down for a cup of coffee and one of the hundreds
of young musicians that are here at this convention happened to join us and said, "Mr. Marsalis,
I really want to make a career in jazz. Do you have one piece of advice for me?" EM: Only if he has to. I borrowed that phrase from - there was a
show on T.V. which featured actors. I can't remember the host's name. And it was like a class and the actor was
- with the guest would come on and he'd talk about his career to a class of would-be actors. And at one point one of the people at one
of the students said, "I really like acting and I was wondering, you know, do you think
I should continue being an actor?" And that's what he told him. He said, "Only if you have to." And it's a strange way, not everybody would
really understand that. You know. But I realized that that was pretty much how
I lived my life. That was something that I had to do. It wasn't about well man you've got five sons,
six sons, one who is autistic who is still living with me now, and you know all these
mouths to feed and how are you going to do that? But I never developed a defeatist attitude
about it. I always figured that somehow it would work
out. I mean I just believed that. Now that can be very naive, in some cases
it might be very stupid I don't know. But I really believe that somehow it was going
to work out. MR: And it looks like it did to me. EM: Well at my age if it didn't it's too late
to worry about it now. MR: Well Ellis Marsalis, thank you very much
for your time today. EM: You're welcome. MR: I really enjoyed talking with you. And I hope we cross paths again soon.
