Wynton Marsalis w/ Marcus Miller on New Orleans Roots & Jazz at Lincoln Center

Show Notes: Wynton Marsalis with Marcus Miller (Blue Note at Sea 2019)

This compelling episode of Jazz Cruise Conversations captures an animated, insightful interview with legendary jazz trumpeter, band leader, composer, and ambassador, Wynton Marsalis, recorded live during Blue Note at Sea 2019. Hosted by bassist and fellow cruise headliner Marcus Miller, the conversation offers a deep look into Marsalis’s formative years, his rigorous musical training, and the intellectual and philosophical foundations that shaped his career.

Marsalis addresses his upbringing in segregated New Orleans, the challenges of navigating both the classical and jazz worlds, and the profound lessons learned from his highly dedicated parents regarding music and education. The discussion provides rich detail on the genesis of his career and the philosophy that guides the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra (JLCO).

• The Power of Innate Talent: Marsalis recalls his father, Ellis Marsalis, dismissing concerns about studying with a player who couldn't read music by stating, "Son, people can either play or they can't play". Ellis Marsalis believed pure musical ability superseded formal training (though he also noted Wynton's ability to read music as a strength).
• The Classical Challenge: Marsalis detailed the extraordinary demands of his classical auditions for schools like Juilliard, specifically citing advice from trumpet player Thomas Stevens to memorize approximately 25 complex orchestral excerpts, advising him to "learn your audition from memory" and "get the right equipment".
• The Revelation of the Orchestra: His introduction to classical music came from hearing a recording of Maurice Andre, but his first experience playing orchestral music at age 14 with the New Orleans Philharmonic, rehearsing in the "middle of the hood," profoundly impacted his performance perspective. The massive, deep sound of the first chord gave him goosebumps.
• The Struggle with Jazz Changes: Despite being heralded as a young genius, Marsalis admitted that achieving harmonic comfort and learning to "play on changes" (adjusting improvisational notes to match changing chords) was a significant, long-term challenge, estimating it took him until he was about 28 or 29.
• The Substance of Education: Marsalis often quotes his mother, who was philosophically strong and insightful, advising him to focus on the "substance of your education," warning that a diploma could be given in "hating yourself". Her views shaped his strong opinions on black culture and representation.
• Mentorship and Intellectual Foundation: Marsalis attributed his extensive intellectual and artistic education to spending time with figures like Albert Murray, Stanley Crouch, Ralph Ellison, and Romare Bearden. Albert Murray specifically educated him on the value of Duke Ellington's music.
• The JLCO's Mission: Marsalis recounted asking Dizzy Gillespie for advice about forming the big band, to which Dizzy responded, "One should never consider it an achievement to lose one's orchestral heritage". The JLCO was formed in 1992, combining young musicians with legendary "original Ellingtonians," who taught them discipline and the music's heritage.
• The Blues as a Fundamental: Marsalis firmly stated that the blues is the bottom line on everything in American root music, serving as a harmonic concept found throughout music from Eastern traditions to West

• Listen to more episodes of Jazz Cruises Conversations on Spotify, iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts. The back catalog contains more than a hundred interviews from past sailings.
• Theme Music: Provided by Marcus Miller from his song "High Life" on his album Afrodeezia on Blue Note.

Transcript

Wynton Marsalis with Marcus Miller-18181149.mp3: Full Transcript

Host/Narrator: A quick word from our sponsors. This week's episode of Jazz Cruise Conversations is sponsored by the Berks Jazz Festival, which will be held April 2nd through April 15th in the Reading, Pennsylvania area. It really is a great jazz festival located nearly equidistant from New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington DC. And they're shopping, too. It's a virtual mecca for chain outlet stores. Among the performers are Joseé James, Liz Wright, Eric Marianthal, Randy Breer, Terrell Stafford, Kirk Wham, Take Six, Gerald Vasley and many more. For more information about the festival, go to Berksjazzfest.com. Berks is spelled berks. Now enjoy this week's episode of Jazz Cruise Conversations. 

Hi, welcome to Jazz Cruise Conversations, a podcast presented by Entertainment Cruise Productions. I'm your host, Lee Mergner. Every week we present a different conversation pulled from one of our Jazz Cruises, the Jazz Cruise, Blue Note at Sea, or The Smooth Jazz Cruise. This week's episode features an interview with jazz trumpeter, band leader, composer, and ambassador Winton Marcales in front of a live audience during Blue Note at Sea 2019. Winton performed with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra during the cruise and welcomed back two former orchestra members, Wliffe Gordon and Russell Gunn, to each sit in for a set by the orchestra. In this animated conversation held before the orchestra's performance in the ship's celebrity theater, he talked with basis and blueoted sea host Marcus Miller about growing up in segregated New Orleans and later coming to New York City, about the challenges of playing classical and jazz, and about the lessons he learned from his parents who were very serious about education and music.

Wynton Marsalis (WM): What you told him? Well, he didn't tell me that about playing. He told me people can play or they can't play.

Marcus Miller (MM): Well, you know, it don't matter the style, right?

WM: I was telling him about a trumpet player he wanted me to study with named named name named Teddy Riley. We call him Buck. He played Lewis Armstrong Cornet when Lewis Armstrong passed away. You know, in those days, man, we know New Orleans music handkerchief head. We was had our Malcolm X. We didn't want us. He's telling me to, man, I don't want to learn with this this guy. That's so to defend myself. My daddy said, "You call Buck yet?" I said, "Buck?" Man, I didn't call Buck. Did you call Buck? Man, I didn't call Buck. Man, you need to call Buck so you can learn how to play. I said, "Man, I called Buck. Buck can't even read." And my daddy said, "Son, people can either play or they can't play". He said, "Look at you. You can read".

MM: Wow. Wow. Wow. That's coming from Pops, too.

WM: And he was for real about it, too. He wasn't playing with me. My dad, he's not joking. He's after he tell you, he just look at you.

Host/Narrator: So, so next year, Blue Note at Sea sails from Miami throughout the Caribbean from January 25th through February 1st. A cruise with no rule other than great music. Bluenote at Sea is hosted by Marcus Miller, Robert Glasper, and Don. The cruise will feature performances by over 75 top-notch artists. including Kamasi Washington, Christian McBride, Gregory Porter, David Sandborn, Melody Gardeau, Kirk Wham, Corey Henry, Surreal Ami, EMTT Cohen, Joey D. Franchesco, and of course, Miller and Glasper, plus special appearances by comedian Alonzo Bowden, a regular on NPR's Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. Saxoponist Eric Marenthal serves as the music director for the cruise. Learn more at bluenotec.com. Now enjoy this interview with yet another NEA Jazzm, Winton Marcellis from Bluenote at C 2019. Good afternoon. What's happening? Bluenote at C. How you guys feeling?

MM: Okay, so um this interview was supposed to be somewhere else, but there's so many of y'all that we had to move it here and we're going to have a good time. This gentleman, listen, let me tell you how hard it is to have a voice in jazz in recent times. There's so many incredible musicians who happened from 1920s. Y'all been in the history of jazz, so y'all heard me talk about all this. But there so many incredible voices from the 20s all the way through the 60s7s that to find something unique to be able to stand out is almost impossible. But this gentleman has figured out how to do it. He's probably one of the most important name in jazz for the last 30 years and it's really an honor to have him with us. Mr. Winton Marcales. Winon Marcales. Let him hear y'all. How you doing? Have a seat over there.

WM: Winon Marcales. Thank you.

MM: Thank you very much. First of all, thank you for being here. Thank you for doing this. Thank you for uh coming on the ship and uh we're staying here to make sure that you and the guys can do your concert and then get on to whatever else you have to do. But we're really honored to have you here. This guy, let's see, we were just talking backstage. I was the old cat when he showed up in New York. I was 21 and he was 19. And you know, at that age, that's a big difference. You know, I was like, "Hey, young fella." And now we're the exact same age, right? Exact same age. There's no difference. Um, can you tell me about Winton? Um, I want to start right there and then go back to New Orleans and then go to more recent things. What when did you make the uh decision that it's time to move to New York City for New Orleans?

WM: Okay. First, I want to say that I was 17, he was 19.

MM: See? Okay. Right. Oh, that's true.

WM: But I want to I want to say one thing about about him before we start that we I can't even tell you the depth of love that we had for him. We be negative, man. Come on here, play with us, you know. So, I want to just He's yelling at me, "Come on, Marcus. Play the upright bass." I said, "Man, I can't get it in a cab." We, you know, and I mean, even down through the years is this man walk on rainbows.

MM: Thank you, brother. I just want you to know just him who he is as a person. So, when I get to see him, I'm happy, you know.

WM: Yes. Thank you.

MM: I was doing a session with him. I wanted to play the music, right? So, man, he played You remember I was talking to you about the the soundtrack for Third Good Marshall's movie? I called Winon Marcales. I said, "Well, let me call Winton and get a quick no." And you know what? He said, "Yeah, man. Whatever you need." And he came. He played so beautifully on this album. You all have to check it out. It's a soundtrack to the Marshall film. And uh he blessed us with it, man. So, thank you for that, man. Come on, man.

WM: It's my honor. But I I was in New Orleans and my daddy had always wanted to go to New York and I I saw my father always struggling trying to play jazz. There was never any people uh checking him out of this gig. He had maybe a two-year period where he had some people. My brother and I played in the funk bands, right? So, right, we always had people and uh we we couldn't really he could play. We couldn't really play. So, I felt like if if I if I could just get out of New Orleans and go to New York and I also didn't like being in New Orleans. I didn't like the prejudice and the ignorance in the city. I grew up it always hit me hard. I was from little towns like Appaloosis, Brobridge, Lil Farms, and I really didn't like it. Uh and it wasn't just overt acts. It's just little acts of patronization and the way you treated a certain way. I always uh bristled under that and always subsequently had a lot of different problems with what was then considered authority. Um I was definitely somebody who No, I mean I was just somebody who was always a problem like I couldn't just go with whatever it was and it was always like kind of hold on a second why we got to do that you know and uh so I made I called a guy to to see if I could get an audition. I had I got a lot of scholarships that was during the time when black people could get BEOGS and SEOG supplemental grants and basic educational. I and because of how little my father made, how many kids we had, I got the maximum amount of every grant and because my SAT scores were were high. Um, so but I wanted to go to music school. I had got scholarships to non-m music schools and I called a guy Thomas Stevens, phenomenal trumpet player, then principal trumpet for the Los Angeles Filermonic and asked him could I could he give me some advice to what to do on my auditions. He said, "How'd you get my my number. I said I said I got it from the union book. Now this is Los Angeles Union. I'm from from Louisiana. So he said what? He said just just get my number from union book. Huh?" He said okay I'll give you three pieces of advice. One, learn your audition from memory. I said man that's like 25 excerpts on this audition. Like Mer fifth symphony, right? This wasn't a jazz audition.

MM: Yeah. This was not jazz. No, it was no jazz school.

WM: It was classical Jiuliard. Patrushka, Pines of Rome, all these Samuel Goldenberg and Sham post solo for mile first se I mean that's 25 things he said do you want to win he was very tur so I said yes sir I was being very polite once I knew he didn't want to talk to me he said he said get the right equipment you don't sound like you have a lot of money now people would be he said you don't sound like you have a lot of money yeah he said it he said you don't sound like you have a lot of money now people would be offended back then it was like no sir you know, I don't. He said, "Well, you need to get the right equipment, whatever you need to do." He said, "You show up at the audition and people have C trumpets, Eflat trumpets, piccolo trumpets, and you show up with your B flat, you're probably going to lose." Said, "Yes, sir." He said, "And the third thing, don't apologize after you make mistakes. When you make mistakes, keep going. You're human being. You're going to make mistakes." He said, "Oh, one other piece of advice, son. Don't get people's numbers out of the union book." Then he hung up. So, You know, I went to I went and got me a suit from J C Penney. Man, I had a three-piece suit on. I looked just country with some earth shoes. I never been nowhere. And I got to New York and uh just country is corn. And when I went to when I went to play my audition, the three teachers were in the in the room, three famous great drummer players. And they I I just started playing all my stuff from memory. They were like, "Damn, no music." I said, "No." So when I got finished, they said, "Can you talk? Can you say something? something cuz I had I had sent in a tape and then I was really New Orleans my my talking at that time I was very country so I started to talk about something I said what you want me to talk about I talked and he said okay and uh so I got in and then I came to New York.

MM: Wow. Wow. So when you uh when we first started hearing about you Dr. George Butler who then was the head of jazz at Columbia Records and he was talking about about this kid who played classical music and jazz and um usually at a certain point you got to choose but you hadn't chosen yet. You were doing both. What was your practice down in New Orleans? What was your practice regimen? Because both of those disciplines, especially for your instrument, are really challenging. So, how did you find time? Did you go to school or you just skip your classes?

WM: No, you know, I just Well, you know, my but back then it was it was no real jazz. You you never knew my dad is a jazz musician. So I just knew we were sadder than him. So it was it were me and my brothers and all of us, you know, whoever Terrence Blanchard, Donald Harrison, all of us study with the same three or four people, Alvin Batist, my daddy, Kid Jordan, and they all like classical music. They didn't have like a prejudice against it. So I was uh I got into classical music because a guy gave me a recording of Maurice Andre on a street car, a college student cuz back then all the black people sit in the back of the car and there was a white guy in college came back there with a trumpet. I was kind of trying to play him off and he put his trumpet case right down next to mine. Boom. So I was like 12 or 13. He was maybe 19 or 20. He said, "You a trumpet player?" Yeah, man. I'm a trumpet player. He said, "Do you play trumpet?" Said, "Yeah, man. I play trumpet." He said, "I want you to check this record out." So I had to be friendly, you know. Yeah, man. You know, okay. Wow. A record. Thank you. So I looked at the record and it said, The man had come parents were coal miners. Damn, this dude coal miners play classical music. I gotta put this on, you know. I went home and I put it on. It was a great French trumpet player, Maurice Andre.

MM: Yeah.

WM: So I said, man, I wonder if I could learn how to play like him. So I start practicing to play to play to play classical music off the record. And um then I I won a competition to play with the New Orleans Filmonic.

MM: What age?

WM: Uh 14. But but I was sounding like I was 14. Don't clap. But I will tell you the one experience I had because you got to remember in New Orleans everything is segregated. Okay? You got to I'm trying to always try to put you in the world. Now it just so happens that they rehearsed in Holly Grove and where I'm from is called Pigeon Town and we hate Holly Grove. It's it's all this stuff is crazy and provincial, but it's it's real.

MM: Holly Grove is where where Lil Wayne is from.

WM: Okay.

MM: Okay. They're right next to us.

WM: We we're like the high across the highway from them. So I'm thinking, damn, the symphony is rehearsing in high ly growth.

MM: I mean, you couldn't get your mind around it. Why do people who live right next to each other, they're the ones who hate each other the most?

WM: Because that's who you going to see. You can't hate nobody you don't see. You know what I mean? How I'm going to hate somebody I'm never going to see. Sometimes if somebody start messing with me and I don't really know them, I say, "Man, don't don't waste your time hating me. Go home and hate your family. Find somebody you know."

MM: Yeah.

WM: Don't this this not going to affect me. I'mma be gone. I'm not thinking about this. Go get them and and and and ruin their lives. with with with all this vitrio, you know. So, I went to this I went to this rehearsal. This is a So, I went to this rehearsal. I was like, now this is in the middle of the hood. The symphony is rehearsing. They're in a in a kind of warehouse on Apple Street. And then I walked in the room and it was all adults. And you know, when you when you were 13 or we we pretty much we also are segregated by age. You're never really in a room of even back then in a room of adults that's not your family or Not some if you're in some organization, church or something, but just a group of adults who are just there and being adults. And I I said, "Damn, you know, okay, a group of all white people, adults with instruments." And then they started, it seems, it seems like something, you hear me to say, at this age, but I'm trying to take you back and what that was like at that moment. And then they played like they warmed up. They played that first chord of that hiden concern. Unbelievable big E flat. Boom. Man, when that when the when that cord filled the room, it's like I got goosebumps just the sound of it. It was so deep and full and it was like 60s something people playing, you know, now, okay, it's a bunch of people now, they're playing music and they all can play. And uh I never when all the times I play concerto, I play with orchestras, I always would go back to that first sound that I that I heard. And I swear to you, every time I would walk out there to play, I had the chance to play with a lot of orchestras. I always got that feeling when they that that then I just looked around. Wow. You know, it's a blessing to be able to play this.

MM: and that changes your performance, doesn't it?

WM: Yeah. Your whole your whole perspective on on everything. And uh so that's how I got into classical music. But in New Orleans, a person could be not that good and you still could work because not a lot of people how many people even had a Eflat trumpet.

MM: Right.

WM: I was playing funk gigs. I would buy trumpets.

MM: Right. Right.

WM: So I I played those gigs. Jazz was even was harder to play actually because classical music you could at least play with the symphony. or you play with the the Civic Orchestra. I play with the Civic Orchestra. Partner of mine was playing with them. They rehearsed at the Jewish Community Center where we would play ball, right? And he said, "Hey, man. I'm at the Jewish Community Center and and I'm the only brother here. Come down here." I said, "Help a brother out." I said, I said, "Hold on." I said, "No, man. Monday Night Football had just started, you know." I said, "This is when they first started having Monday Night." I said, "No, no, man. It's Monday night. I'm checking out some football. I don't want He said he said, "The weather man is playing Tiffany and we love our weatherman." I said, "What?" He said, "The weatherman's playing Tempany." I got to go see the weatherman play Tony. So, I got

MM: like Al Roa.

WM: Yeah. Like, yeah. That's what it's like. That's what it was like. And we loved him like people love Al Roa. We loved. So, I went and he was there playing Tony drums. And uh this is the first time I played orchestral music. Okay. So, we they were playing Beethoven's fifth and me something it resembled Beethoven's fifth, right? And uh so I went in and then me and me me and LD was my boys and we two afro. We're staying out. That's the era of the afro with the platform shoes and stuff. So, you know, we start playing this big.

MM: some photos and we're going to dig up. Okay.

WM: No, no. Tried to burn them all, but I think I found one. I tell you, my great uncle used to always tell me, "Boy, I want you to take as many pictures as you can with all that hair on your head cuz you going to see how stupid you look later."

MM: Exactly. Exactly.

WM: You know, and look, he was born in 1883, right? So, he was born in 1883 and he hated Muhammad Ali. So me and him always was arguing. He won't fight for his country. He was a old school patriot, you know. He won't fight for his country. He He still could tell you what happened in reconstruction. No, I'm serious.

MM: What was what was his name?

WM: Alonsa Lambert. Alons we call him Fer. He called me Punny. He was more like a he it's hard to explain. Really really old people in 19th century, you know. They grew up on a plantation and they just I can't imitate him. I can't imitate the way they would talk. I I wish I could imitate my great. He drove her crazy. Right. You know, so a lot of times I go back in my mind to to to her like my great aunt used to always hold me and she'd be huming, you know, and you know when you got your ear on somebody body and they humming.

MM: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

WM: That just soul just seeps into seeps into you. You can hear it, you know. And she was real real quiet and she only time she get she'd be mad was she mess with him then she start talking so disgusting or you know she so Yeah.

MM: Tell me this playing classical trumpet. Did you ever run into a situation where you felt like the color of your skin affected how you were judged as a classical musician? Negatively or positively?

WM: Never positively. Yeah, I felt like that. Sure. Um, you know, people we people human beings are tribal and sectarian. I mean, we by nature.

MM: Yeah, we are. That's just a thing that we have.

WM: When I was younger, because I grew up in in the type of stifling prejudice of of the South at that time, civil rights move in 1960s and I took it hard. I took a lot of stuff hard and a lot of stuff was hard. But I remember once being in Japan when I was 19 and I I was standing on the corner. I looked around. I said, "Damn, there's like no white or black people here." So I I was thinking, well, who do they hate, right? You know, so I This is true. Y'all y'all have it. This is This is really the truth. So I was talking to I was talking to to a Japanese. I went in their family. I was talking to them and a guy told me, "Well, we hate Koreans."

MM: Koreans.

WM: I said, "Well, okay." But at that time, I was not sophisticated enough to know the difference between Koreans, Japanese, just just a lack of sophistication. I'm being completely honest. I just I said, you know, when I was when Martin Luther King got killed, my mom made us go to white schools and people were very very prejudic. And a girl came to the school who was not as prejudice as everybody else. And I asked her, why you not prejudiced like everybody else? And she said, "Oh, I'm from Montana. We hate Indians there, right?" So, you know, you can't make this stuff up, right? So, so um you can't make.

MM: jazz. Your dad's a jazz piano player. By the way, you mentioned your dad.

WM: Yes.

MM: Is Hester here because where are you? Hold up your hand if Hey, Ha. Can you see her? That That was your father's music teacher right there. Was he a good student? her. Wait, he wants to know was he a good student? Did Did he do his work? Ha. You taught him music theory. What else?

Audience/Hester: History and piano.

MM: But was did he get his work done? Wait, don't clap. I want to hear cuz I'mma call it. Y'all hear that? She said she would scold him that he had to learn the classical repertoire and if he did learn it, she was going to flunk him.

WM: See, he he didn't tell me that.

MM: Uhoh. So, we going back before Mr. Ellis Marcales. Thank you very much. Give it up for Hessa, y'all. He didn't tell me that. He didn't tell you. No, we'll verify that. No, nothing about what you told him. But he didn't tell me that about playing. He told me people can play or they can't play. Well, you know, No matter the style, right?

WM: I was telling him about a trumpet player he wanted me to study with named name named name named Teddy Riley. We call him Buck. He played Lewis Armstrong Cornet when Lewis Armstrong passed away. And you know in those days, man, we know New Orleans music handkerchief head. We was had Malcolm X. We didn't want to. He's telling me to man I don't want to learn what this this guy to defend myself. My daddy said you called Buck yet? I said Buck call Buck. Did you call Buck? Man, I didn't call Buck. Man, you need to call Buck so you can learn how to play. I said, man, I called Buck. Buck can't even read. And my daddy said, "Son, people can either play or they can't play". He said, "Look at you. You can read".

MM: Wow. Wow. Wow. That's coming from Pops, too. And he was for real about it, too. He wasn't playing with me. My daddy, he's not joking. He's

WM: after he tell you, he just look at you.

MM: So, so, so my man Buck. Who else?

WM: Teddy. Teddy Riley. Who else were you listening to? Oh, I listen to all, you know, Miles and Cliff. When I started to listen to jazz, I started to wonder if I could learn how to play jazz because what we thought was jazz was like the Crusaders, right? We was playing that. We was enjoying it, but it wasn't like what Clifford Brown was playing, right? So, I was like, man, I wonder if I could if I could learn how to play like these people.

WM: And uh, you know, nobody was playing like that. And then I got a gig with some college kids playing at a club. When I was 15, they called me. One guy named Alvin Young was a bass player. He he called my house. He said, "Are you Ellis's son?" I said, "Yeah, there's like five of us." He said, "Are you the one that play trumpet?" I said, "Yes." He said, "Can you play a gig with us at this place called Tyler's Big Gardens?" I said, "What y'all playing?" He said, "You know, tunes like Chick Korea." I couldn't really play on changes at that time. So, I was like, "Well, man, I like to play the gig, but I can't really play on changes. Like, if you playing hard music, I'mma be sad." He said, "It's all right, man. You know, we all sad. you know, you'll get better. So, I started playing with them and that was like how I started to learn how to play jazz more listening to records of, you know, Clifford and Miles and Dizzy and John Cold Train was the first person I actually liked. But different from because my dad was a jazz musician, I had all his the music I could check out. Duke Ellington and stuff like that that nobody really was listening to at all in my neighborhood or people I knew. And uh that made me want to see could I could I learn how to play the music.

MM: How did how did you do uh with changes eventually? How long did it take you to feel comfortable? By the way, when we talk about changes, you know that when you're improvising, if you hear a certain chord, there are notes that work and they're notes that don't work, right? And then in a normal jazz song, these chords change and you got to change the available notes that you're improvising with to match the the chords or else it's going to sound sad. Sad. All right.

WM: Extremely sad. It's a big challenge, you know. It's a big challenge to learn how to play and adjust to these these core changes. It's like life changes. Somebody say what you doing going through changes. That's the ability to negotiate different terrain and keep moving. It took me probably till I was 28 29.

MM: Come on, man. You're already a recording artist.

WM: But look that everybody's recording, man. You don't have to be able to play at all to get make a record.

MM: So when you you felt like at 28 29 I feel comfortable.

WM: I felt like I was but even my daddy called me maybe six years ago. So this is true. I'm now I'm 51 then. And he said, "Yeah, man. I was listening to so and so. You ain't learned how to play on changes yet?" And look, he's completely serious. So I I had to

MM: Hey, man. We got to invite Ellis Marcellis. He was serious. He wasn't playing, you know.

WM: So, but it took, you know, now I'm comfortable on some some things, but I'm always trying to uh get to different harmonic approaches. And here sometimes with cats in a band, everybody can play. So the guy sitting next to Ryan Kaiser is unbelievable hearing as a trumpet player. So sometimes we have a progression and I said, "Can you play on this progression?" Because I try to hear what his approach is. And for all of us, we all, you know, because harmonies, as you know, we all hear different ways, right? And uh I I was grump too. He could always just hear Brford man. He could natural natural just hear anything. He can just hear anything. And my little brother slide taking a leak on toilet paper. Anything he Oh. He Yeah, that's a G sharp. Yeah, Gar Gar, right? That's And my little brother is like that, too. He's playing with us to tonight. He has like perfect pitch and all these kind of different skills that he has. And now, I mean, now I've been dealing with a long time, but I I try to work on a lot of different harmonic approaches, you know? I mean, I've written so much music at this point. I've been out here for such a long time.

MM: Man, stop sound like a old man.

WM: I am, man. We're both old.

MM: Now, check it out. When you first me Yes, I'm older than you, so respect your better, but you older. When when uh when you first came to New York, Winton, uh I had my style of dress. I had purple shoes. I had I don't even know what the name of this color of my pants. It's in the purple family. I had some Michael Jacksones s curls going on that were very, very well done. By the way, you showed. And I wasn't the only one dressing like that in New York. That was how we were walking around and you showed up in these suits.

WM: Yeah.

MM: And we like, who is this dude? Right. And not just you, your whole band, your brother and the rest of the band. You guys presented yourselves in a manner that was reminiscent of maybe the 60s, like 1963, 64, 65. Was this something that you always did or is this something that you decided to do when you knew you were coming to New York? When did you decide that the aesthetic for yourself and for your musicians was going to be that? particular style.

WM: Well, for me, one day we was my brother and I, we were we were in and I we're still living at home where with our daddy. We had all his records on the ground and all of ours. And we start looking at our records. I say, "Man, why daddy records? They look like they got sense and everybody on our records look like fools."

MM: So, so we So, we This is This is the 70s. We talking about Funkadelic. Talking about

WM: Yeah. You talking about Honey, you talking about I can remember the records that were laid out there, you know, the Ohio players.

MM: Right. Right. Right. Exactly. And you know it didn't you know some it was a little extreme that that

WM: Yeah. It just it just looked you know but we were just looking at it so it wasn't nothing wasn't philosophical like a lot of stuff got attached to it. And I noticed Cold Train looked a certain way. Miles looked a certain way you know the modern jazz quartet. We just man why they look and why we look. So I just said okay when I get the chance I'mma look like them. I don't want to look like this. We looking like this now. We have our mama making all these old crazy costumes. for us. She'd be like, "Boy, y'all going to look like y'all look like something that fell out the sky, right? You got me waste my time on this. Look at what y'all look like. Lord save us." Cuz she was real funny. She said, "Where they where they shooting a science fiction picture at After she make it, she say, "Let me see y'all." And then when she look at it, she go, "Lord have mercy. I have never seen anything as ridiculous."

MM: And we'd be like, "This is it, mama. This is perfect. This is perfect."

WM: She say, Perfectly ridiculous. Lord have mercy. I like the way she would say that. Lord have mercy.

MM: Lord have mercy. Lord child, what has gotten into y'all? So when we when you when you guys showed up, we're like, look at these guys looking like old men. They're younger than us.

WM: Thank you.

MM: And then

WM: I was so happy about that.

MM: Yeah. And y'all were and y'all were playing. Y'all were playing. And especially you. We were like, you know, um, the horn players are, like it or not, the leaders of jazz. You know, when you talk about the leaders of jazz, you talk about Bird, Diz, Freddy, you know, you're talking about trumpet and saxophone players. And this gentleman was a trumpet player. And he had absolute, no matter what he says about how sad he was, he had absolute control over his instrument that we hadn't heard in a long time. Maybe since like Woody Shaw was still around, I think at the time was still. But but you had tremendous ability and it created an excitement and what did it feel like to be heralded when you showed up on the scene you were 17 18 19 years old and they're going particularly Dr. George Butler who was the head of jazz at Columbia he was like this is the next guy so was that a heavy weight to bear how did you deal with that as a youngster?

WM: no you know I would be teasing George messing with him about his clothes and stuff he had on I call him bells and lapels but I was coming more from my father and and those musicians and I seen them struggle. So I wasn't looking to be liked or to be heralded or I wanted to really to learn how to play and I really want my wanted my father to respect me as a musician. Not because I was mad at him or not because I needed to prove something to him because he was cool. He didn't he didn't really care what you played. He was cool with you no matter what you did. But I had such an affinity for them and they struggle and I could tell at a certain point they start to give up, you know. Everybody starts to give up. It's like how we we given we give up on a certain humanity. And I've seen all these ages come in just for the age that I'm in. You know, we're in the civil rights movement. When I first had my consciousness in the 70s, we were in the whole kind of black kind of consciousness post after King got killed and how we going to force an integration. Then we we retrenched from that. Ronald Reagan came in office and we did kind of the reverse like what we did during the reverse of reconstruction and in the 1870s. We did that in the 1980s. Then everything was uh segregated again and people equated me kind of with a conservatism because I had a suit on. I mean, I didn't even know what the terms man I wasn't sophisticated enough at that time.

MM: You read you're reading articles going conservative went to Marcel. You had to look it up, didn't you?

WM: Yeah. I didn't Well, I didn't understand how how you could be a conservative and not be like anybody else, right? So, it was it's it was But then I start to understand kind of the intellectual manipulation and the I start to understand just the terrain. You know how if you when you when you being outsmarted, you got to know the terrain.

MM: Mhm.

WM: Then once you start to understand the terrain, then you're like, okay, you know, something my mom used to always tell me, child, I got I got a lot of scholarships to school. She said, well, you know, you can go to these schools and you can, and my mom also had a college degree and was extremely intent to do all my chemistry homework. I don't want to give people the concentration. She was like, good times or something. She would I used to tell people when they came to my house, don't come in playing with my mom because she not right? She ain't going to play with you. And if you make her mad, she going to address you in a way that's going to rattle you. And it's not going to be something it's not be something you saw on a TV show. You be like, so she she and she always had these nuggets like she was insightful. She said, "Child, you can go to all these schools, but what is the substance of your education? I could give you a diploma in hating yourself and you'll go around the world just as proud as can be. I hate myself. I hate myself." It's just like the that that boy in Ralph Ellison's book, Keep this boy running. That's what they gave him from that university. So when you go to a school, you make sure you learning something that means something to you and to your identity, right? So she was always like that was how she was when she talked to you. She didn't play, you know.

MM: Yes. Yes.

WM: So So I was I was more uh the the transitions things go things changed. Then the computers came in and you know the minstro show came back and my mama also knew that she saw When she first encountered all the cursing and people acting ignorant on these rap records, my mama looked at me and she said, "Oo, child, they're going to have unlimited resources now." See, she understood something about

MM: the oppressive.

WM: No, the the people who were doing whatever it was to oppress themselves.

MM: Mhm.

WM: She said, "This form will have unlimited res." She hated all those movies in the 70s that we loved. She hated all of She hated all that kind of pimp, boy. She hated that, right? Me and my mom would just go, I have to get get my friends out my house. Say, "Let's Go, man. Don't get my mama started on this, right? Don't, you know, don't get But, you know, she would, oh, where you going to go from there?" She could just

MM: Well, the thing for us is that we had never seen ourselves in any fashion.

WM: She would cover that. She would say, well, you might not have seen yourself, honey, but why you won't see yourself being a a dirty low down dog ass pimp.

MM: Right. Right.

WM: Like she would tell you, she'd talk to you plain. You be like, you know, I'd rather not be seen at all and be seen doing that. Don't you, you know, and she could uh so I was, you know, it just she from a philosophical standpoint My mom was extremely strong.

MM: Yeah.

WM: Like if you laid stuff out for her, she could just listen to it and she would say, "Hm." And she would say stuff and you'd be like, she look at like popular stars on TV or something and they got they naked and you know and she wasn't approved. My mama grew up hard. She look at and say, "Huh, look at this girl here with all her with all her clothes off and all in the name of feminism." She had a way she was looking at it. She wasn't looking at it like you think.

Marcus Miller (MM): What did your mom think about Muhammad Ali?

WM: She loved him. She loved Muhammad Ali. She He make her laugh. She said,

MM: "You make her laugh."

WM: Yeah. She loved him. She said, "Yeah, he just speak his mind, child. A lot of what he's saying, you know, and and and which side was she on Malcolm and Martin?"

MM: She or was she on a side?

WM: You know, my mama would, you know, she she's from Christian, man. You know, so right when a lot of you can't people they not gonna you know,

MM: right? They're not going to go too far.

WM: No, they're not going to go away from their identity. They just not. And her thing was, well, you know, they she talking about about this in the in the Muslim, they had a lot of slaves there, too. Like, you know, my mama was conscious, so she Right. But she I don't want to misrepresent her. You know, she ain't here. She passed away. Uh

MM: we can tell we can tell how influential she was.

WM: Yeah. No, no, she's my mama. So, but I don't want to I don't want to get into like a delicate viewpoint cuz she if she was here, she'd be saying, "Boy, you don't don't you tell."

MM: Right. Right. Right. You don't I don't need I don't need you to speak for me. You don't even know what you talking about. So, I'm not I don't want to misrepresent her. But we're glad that you're speaking for her in a certain sense because we feel like we already are getting to know your mom and that's and your father.

WM: She was Yeah. My mom was deep.

MM: Yeah.

WM: My mom was deep

MM: because because it starts to explain to us. Okay. When Winon Marcales hit the scene, he became as well known for what was coming out of his mouth as what was coming out of his horn, you know, and he was like, he has some pretty strong views. And all of a sudden, it's getting put in perspective now. You know what I mean? Cuz I can hear I can hear your mama. And you

WM: Yeah, that was my mama. Most of my stuff I would be where I was coming from, it was really coming from where she was coming from.

MM: So in terms of your views, the stuff that came out of your mouth, okay, the ideas, the the the kind of um the the the things that you felt about music and life, your dad really your mom. Who else helped shaped your viewpoint specifically in music?

WM: You mean musicians?

MM: Anybody? In other words, where I'm getting at is um I know that you were friends with Mr. Crouch, who I just saw a couple of a couple of weeks ago. He's he's uh he's struggling a little bit.

WM: Yeah.

MM: But um you know, who were your influences in in in terms of your thought?

WM: Well, you know, at that time because because because I was young, like 18 or 17, then I knew who Ralph Ellison was and they read his book and knew about Rom Beard. I had like a kind of artistic understanding because I was always like one of the five black people at stuff that my daddy never would make us go to, right? In New Orleans, you know, it's always like that group of of people that you have to be forced to go to something that you don't really want to go to. And so when I would meet those kind of figures, they would always, man, come to my house. And I would always go hang with them. So I got an unbelievable education from Albert Murray, Stanley Crouch, uh uh Ralph Ellison, Rome Bearden. Now, the thing is I got to play at almost everybody's funeral.

MM: Yes.

WM: So, I mean, you know, but I I spent a lot of time in their homes reading books they told me to read, studying things. So, I got an unbelievable education. And it never stopped cuz you know, you never It's like kind of like with your own daddy. They still your daddy. You be 80.

MM: If they're 103, they still telling you you stupid, right? It's like you don't

WM: I'm 80 years old that you're still stupid. Go make your bed. you know, I just it just that never changes. So, with that with that type of mentorship I got from them, yeah, I got a really thorough education like uh Alberta Murray's the one who who made me understand about Duke Ellington and his value to to tonight we're going to play all Duke Ellington's music. So, you know, his music is so great, but we never played any of it. I mean, growing up, we didn't we one time I had a chance to go hear Duke Ellington play at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. My dad asked me if I wanted to to go. I was like, "No, man. I street play some street football or something." So when people ask me, I see Duke. No, I had a chance. I didn't go go see him. That's why your parents, you got to make people go to stuff. Just make let them be mad for two hours.

MM: Let them be upset for two hours, but they're going to remember this. It's going to affect

WM: Yeah.

MM: We're We're um 1979 Winter Marcel is playing funk.

WM: Yeah.

MM: I got recordings. I got recordings. That's That's what I Charles recording that I was producing. Couple of records. But I read that Ellis Marcellis said at a certain point you have to choose, right? Is that a is that a fair quote?

WM: He never he never told No, that's not his thing. My daddy would play every anything. He didn't He's not uh He don't have a He's not He's not judgmental about stuff or have he don't have a judgment like like how I am. I'm more like my mama. I have a much more kind of moral conception and stuff. He's like, "Man, you know, it's hard enough out here, man. Leave people alone. Do your thing."

MM: Yeah. Whatever. Whatever. This Are you committing a crime? If it's not a crime, good luck. You know, you know, you know, the funny thing was that there's always been jazz educators, people who need to remind you of this glorious history of of jazz, probably one of the most incredible inventions of mankind, particularly artistic inventions. But they were always, you know, musicians who had a solid knowledge of the music, but they weren't like the the most incredibly gifted um musicians. No disrespect, but I'm talking about like Maryanne McPartland. She's a great educator, great historian, Dr. Billy Taylor. They were all great. You were the first one who arguably was the most talented of your generation on your instrument. Yet, you decided to be an educator. You tell me if if if you agree with my with my description of yourself, but you you started talking about Louisie Armstrong. You started making sure that people knew about Duke Ellington.

MM: So, what made you decide that that was as important as just being a trumpet player?

WM: Well, I just I felt like we needed that because I mean I know I was ignorant of the music. I grew up with it. I was still managed to achieve a level of ignorance being around it. I was very proud of being ignorant of it and I was and I also think I had a a good opportunity. I was always around the music and I I got to know all the musicians, you know, the white musicians and the black musicians and the white musicians gave me the respect of talking very directly to me also. Jerry Mulligan, Melians, I would see Jerry every year and we would talk about all the racial issues in America and he would be very direct or he didn't beat around the bush or he'd say this is what you you have a responsibility. We tried to do this and this is what we ended up doing but you need to know X and you need to be about this and you dizzy Gillespie said you got to bring the music and people together. Y'all got to deal with a level of integration. You got to this is what we were trying to do. It's hard in this culture and all the musicians would be uniform. Louis Bellson I can just tell you conversations I have where they talk very directly to me uh with the type of honesty honesty and directness that would make you act on stuff and understand. So as I began to learn more with that type of investment I there from so many of the musicians. Um, you know, I was having I grew up seeing my daddy teach classes and being in the community and I love doing it. I love to teach people's kids and to be a part of it and I have just an ability for it. I like to communicate about it. So, I was blessed to to to be able to to be able to do it, you know, and it's uh

MM: Yes. Just a lot of people leave that to the people like the historians, right? You one of the first ones who combined the two.

WM: Yeah, I think we all but in our band a lot of cats run our jazz programs and everybody teaches. Sometimes I get some of our teachers just so I look at them so I can learn how to to I mean the band is is it's is unbelievable the type of musicians we we've had and they all composers and arrangers. Sometimes even when I'm working on writing a piece I'll send a passage out to different Sherman and Carlos and Ted say hey can y'all arrange these eight bars and let me see what you would do with it right and then I I look at it and kind of study their approaches to it and we all we all kind of do that. Yeah. And uh now people teach. I try to tell my students at at Giuliard about teaching. They say you can't teach jazz in a conservatory. I always tell them it's not the conservatory. It's not not the fact that you're in a conservatory why you can't teach. It's the values that you being taught. It's hard to teach jazz values.

MM: Yeah. It's hard to teach jazz values in a conservatory anywhere. My suggestion is take them up to the club and make them play for drunk people, you know. Hey, I got a lot of drunk friends. Hey, hey, do you do y'all remember um the movie Whiplash? Who saw that movie? That's the That's the one with the drummer. Remember that? Okay. Well, the the professor was talking about one of his former students and talking about one of his former successful students. He said, "Hey, man. That guy's playing with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra now. He's at the top." How's that feel, man? You saw that movie. Don't lie,

WM: man. The guy was too harsh on the people. I didn't like that.

MM: Yeah. Yeah. No. Forget forget about um forget about cuz he was teaching them all wrong.

WM: Yeah, man.

MM: But just the fact that your group was listed as the pinnacle of success for jazz musicians, you know. I don't I don't know. I'm I'm so we all I'm dedicated in an unbelievable way. I am I'm even when the country is like how we are now, I'm more for real about it. Like I'm I tell I've been dedicated since I was eight years old just about working and all of us are dedicated.

WM: As I look around, I've been blessed to play with these musicians. They dedicated. They play, they teach, they work, they they get up, we on the road, we learn, we play music to cats. Everybody can solo. They might play one solo tonight. We in a big band some some of our best soloists don't even play.

MM: They sit up and you know, so I used to always say the hardest part of my job is to figure out how to call a set that allows everybody in the band to play at least once a night. But now the band has evolved to a point to when we get to that third to last tune, other cats in the band are saying so and so hasn't played or right, so and so has not played, right? And I can't describe like the kind of depth of how how does it feel that we I didn't want to play in a big band. I asked this I I was playing gigs on my own, the small band. I asked Dizzy, "Man, you think we should work with Lincoln and do this this big band, and I was my vibe was like, I don't want to do it." And he looked at me and said, "One should never consider it an achievement to lose one's orchestral heritage". And he said, "If you can get a big band together and you can keep it together and you can raise the money to keep that band together, get that damn band".

MM: Yeah.

WM: And put that band together. And we started with members of my septet. We were in our 20s, members of Duke Ellington's orchestra that in their late 60s and early 70s. We have five or six original Ellingtonians. Jimmy Hamilton, Jimmy Woody, Clark Terry, uh uh uh Willie Cook, Brit Woodman. Um we had we had a lot of uh Norris Turney who was a late Ellingtonian, Joe Templey, also a late Ellingtonian. Uh but we had a good mix. We had Roland Hannah from from Thad Jones, Mel Lewis's band, and we had Jerry, Sir Roland Hannah, and and and Jerry do. And that sir was was apppropo for him.

MM: Absolutely.

WM: And we learned to play the music from them. You know, we had never played in a big band. They always say, "Y'all playing too loud." They be cussing us out. I can't use their language, but it was like a family. We went on the road in 1992 and we on the road with they be up with suits on and already half drunk by 7:30, you know. Man, we come rolling in there with with gym pants on 30 minutes late. One day the whole bus was quiet. We was like then Norris Turner stood up and spoke for older cats. Were you young? Right. 7:30. We was on time after that. So, you know, a lot of stuff we learned from them and now they all have passed away. So, we have a certain Yeah. We have a certain pride and we've been having it for a long time about I would say we were really sad from like 91 to like 98.

MM: Then Brahman, seven years of sad.

WM: Seven years of sadness. We got tapes to prove it. We like Yeah, seven. We have seven years where we were. Then all of a sudden we started to like 98 we started to get much better. 99 2000 then we then we started to Okay. Then once we got got in that late 90s period now we we've been consistent pretty much for the last 14 or 15 years on a certain on a on a certain level. I mean we have some problems sometimes and you know now we down a couple of couple of members you know we

MM: Yeah. You all lost a member last year correct?

WM: Yeah we changed we almost you know we almost we We didn't change positions for a long time. And it's hard when you change a position because we play so much different music. Tonight we're playing Duke's music, but we write a lot of original music. We play a lot of our own music. We play New Orleans music. We play music from the 50s, 60s. We play a lot of a lot of music, but it's it's it's a blessing to play it and to do the work. And somebody refers to it. If they like it, great. If they don't like it, that's great, too.

MM: How's your um your playing changed from when you first hit the seen. Oh man. To today, you know, I mean, what's what's the most obvious difference that you hear when you hear an older

WM: Oh, man. Russian. No real sound. Ahead of the beat. Did you say

MM: Oh, man. Ahead.

WM: I used to always ask my brother, "Am I Russian, man?" He say, "Bring." Brev. He started naming Russians. Pushkin. Russian. I said, "Yeah, like Brezv." Yeah. Brev. I said I said, "Am I Russian?" Pushkin. Pushkin. You know, so I mean just just brushing my sound, not really constructing my solos, harmonic sophistication, just knowledge of the music. I mean, I didn't have real depth of knowledge at that time. I start trying to fill in my knowledge. Like, do I know the music of the 20s? I know El Murray used to always tell me, "You're a nice guy. I like you." But if I need you to have our music survive, I'm going to fail because you don't know enough of it. You need to know the music. Like, you need to know what Count Bas played in the thirds. You need to know what Scott Jobs, you need to know what happened in the fourth. You need to know this history. history because if it comes down to you, you're going to be too ignorant. You have the heart, but you don't know anything. So, it was just always I was lucky to have that type of uh of teaching across the board, you know, from there. Even to the avant guard, like Coleman, my father had played with him. He lived in New Orleans in the 50s. I could go by go by Arnett's house 1:00 in the morning, you know, and just uh sit up and play and uh talk with him.

MM: Who's your uh I want you to name me three of your favorite R&B singers, you know? I mean, I'm from from my from my generation. Marvin, you know, Marvin Gay.

MM: Marvin Gay.

WM: Yeah. Come on, man. You know,

MM: Sam Cook.

WM: Sam Cook. We little too young for Sam Cook.

MM: Huh? No, man. You had to do some research. No, ma'am. I got aunts. I didn't have to do no

WM: No. No. You know, I I got to go with with with the with with the Eley brothers, man. Drifting on the go with that. I can't.

MM: Do you know that the Aussie brothers had a hit in the 50s? Twist and shout the 60s. Uh, it's your thing the 70s, you know, fight the power.

MM: Yeah. Plenty of them all the way through every decade.

WM: Yeah. They had they had they had a thing. We playing a we we're playing a a frat party and we our band almost got in a fight with a whole fraternity cuz they broke our monitor line. We were playing Makes me want to shout. I never forget that song. We was like, "Hold on, man. We can't we can't fight this whole fraternity. We had to start holding members down. Wait a sec. We going to get killed in here, man. This we had some hotaded Hold on. Wait. We got to No, we on the wrong terrain for this type of behavior.

MM: What about What about What about the blues? I was just talking to people yesterday about the connection between the blues and jazz. And people came up to me since we spoke about and said I only thought the blues was, you know, BB King, Albert King, you know, like the obvious blues, but the blues plays an important part, doesn't it?

WM: The blues is the bottom line on everything. The blues is everything. If you want to know that blues is like blood, blues is a harmonic concept. ception. It's a pentatonic scale doo everything in the east angloeltic music the blues country music African everything that's this shuffle rhythm uh the one to four and the five chord three basic harmonies of western music and Pythagoras discover discovered those intervals it's the blues. all the near harmonies of eastern music it's the blues. three act play three sections with one chord being added each section is the blues called three. These three stanzas call in response. Generally two say something bad and the third one takes it back and people have generally sometimes they all say something bad but the groove says something happy. More room for response than call. Duke Ellington is the greatest blues musician. He used to always say I dress the blues up in their Sunday's finest but it's still the blues. I'mma play a blues for y'all to Ed Lib on the pond that Duke wrote in the late 60s. There unbelievable blues that he he said that about that and the early blues musicians I love, you know, I love uh Sun House, Robert Johnson, Charlie Patton, um, and I I mean, I listen to a lot of that music. I try to have my students listen to the music and sing it and play it and understand the depth of the blues and how it's reflected in all strains of American root music because all these musics are are connected. Um, and and we we need to know these musics to keep our way of life alive. We lost when you get lost in who you are, you need to have your fundamentals.

MM: What do you think about the families, black families particularly like in the late 60s7s who barred blues from being played in their homes because it reminded them of the bad times and they were trying to move forward.

WM: You know, we all we have we all have ignorance for different reasons. You know, I'm as being someone who was profoundly dedicated to remaining ignorant around educated people, the reason I the reason I was ignorant was different. I mean, And we all have and it can be delicate with people about their ignorance. You know, you have to over the years of teaching, I learned how to, you know, let me just see how deeply held this ignorance is and let me let me not just give information. Let me pull out some warm pom or something and just

MM: Yeah. You you had to figure that out. It had to take time to figure out. It

WM: took a long time for me to figure it out because everybody knows this. No, they don't. You know, we're Okay. Let's work on this. Let's find some blues that's not about bad times. And uh I think yes, you know, for for black and white people, we we're in America, we're connected. A lot of times you don't I was looking at a thing on Martin Luther King and it it was the recent documentary. It show Stokeley Carmichael just talking and disrespecting him, you know, just like a young person does to older person who they think is oldfashioned. And King is very patient. He just talking over him. just you all this fantasy talk they was doing at that time. King is like you know he's okay he's going through his thing. Then you know King ended up on the where he was on the wrong side of the government and he was was assassinated. Stokeley Carmichael ended up too being run out of the country on the wrong side of the government. I thought about okay now here's two

MM: the one young guy thinks he's fighting with the older guy but he don't understand they have a common enemy.

WM: Exactly. And that common enemy is going to run both of them. kill one and get rid of the other one. And I think uh

MM: Stokeley ended up living in Africa for I think the remainder of his life.

WM: And yeah, and I think in our country, you know, we we're we're battling to make sure certain groups of people never get any resources. But you have to realize it's not just a white black issue, but you like Stokeley, he could only see him and King, he couldn't see nothing but that, right? And all of this was going on, right? But he was in here. And we in our country, we need to wake up because democracy is not a for on conclusion in the world at all. Let me tell you don't and you know people, you know, you you we just we need to we need to reccalibrate our understanding of each other and uh absolutely you know we got to we and I'm not like a kind of flag waving let's be happy and there's no racism in this country. I would never dis deceive people I respect. Like I said the white musicians would talk to me with respect, right? That means they would tell me stuff like you like Jerry Fullan asked me one time, "Do you know who Adrien Rolini is?" I said, "Man, I don't know, but I know he's going to be a white musician, right?" He said, he said, "But are you a better musician?" Because you don't know who he is. Okay. So, so now we up in here. Well, now what am I going to say? Yes, I'm a better musician for not knowing who a great musician is, right? I said, "No, I'm not I'm not a better musician." He said, "Okay, next time I see you know who he is." Gather all the information, you know." Yeah. What you going to segregate yourself? from information because you mad because some people called you a n**** in 1968, right? Okay, let this what you need to and it go I could go through conversation to conversation to conversation where there was a level of respect and directness accorded and I think for us we have to speak honestly about stuff because if you don't speak honestly about it then a lot of lot of other agendas come in right you know people want revenge they got this every they're so sensitive every time I tell them something their feelings get hurt

MM: well that's that's what makes it difficult is there so many phrases that set people off And if you're trying to tell the truth, you know, the the PC thing, the political correctness thing. And I there's a video, man, that starts off with a black guy on a chair and a white guy pointing at him. No, it's the other way around. It starts with a white guy in a chair, black guy pointing at him, and he's saying all these hateful things, all these kind of hurtful things. Hurt on both sides. He's he's hurting inside, and he's addressing this guy trying to hurt him. do the half the video, then they switch and the white guy gives his perspective and it's the same deal, you know, and it's a beautiful video, very strong, because in the end they were both so powerful with it that they end up actually having to hug each other and they leave the video together.

WM: You know, I don't if if I love that kind of stuff if we were actually will come into that in our country. But we're not. We hate each other.

MM: We do.

WM: Okay. We have to be for real. Now, that doesn't mean every person. That doesn't mean all my friends and you and your friends. friends and a circle of people that you love regardless of their race. I mean, we as a nation when the world perceives us, the images we put out and the things we do, let's let's get out of whatever our particular and that's the important thing about our music, jazz music, from a symbolic standpoint. Our music people were always embracing each other. It taught me that. I grew up in the 60s with the whole kind of black nationalism and was into that. Our music educated me out of that, not through no feelgood Drew, that's the reality of the music. Like this music, this this music brings people together in a I never forget seeing Willie Nelson and uh and Ray Charles talking. Man, it was the damnest thing. They sitting backstage and they talking about 1949. You have no idea that they know each other. Yeah, Willie, you remember 1950? You remember 1951? Then Ray Charles goes, "Yeah, we the only ones sang it up." They've been known each other for a long time, man. I mean, they really Because you know Ray wasn't he didn't suffer fools. He he wasn't a was a certain type of Yeah. Oh and he just love Oh yeah. Willie in the time we said we the only ones sang it all. We uh country music, American popular song, jazz. He started naming all and and Willie Bell saying wait hold on a second don't forget about Lewis Armstrong. And Re said that guy wasn't human. I'm talking about human beings. And you know when when Ray Charles died for when Ray Charles died. I had run into Willie Willie Nelson's bus on the road. This just kind of things that happen in life. So I whenever I see his bus, we stop. You know, sometimes you're on the road, I see him with it with with his bus. I got on his bus. He said, "Yeah, I'm going to Ray's funeral. You want to go? You could you could go with me." Me and him went to Ray's funeral together.

MM: Wow.

WM: And uh I remember just the education of just hearing them talk. I can remember Jerry Mulligan and I talking about the birth of the coup. I told Jerry Mulligan, "Yeah, man. I thought it was just like some publicity thing, white people playing black people." He said, "Listen, man. We were all like 20, whatever." He said, "And Miles was rehearsing a band and we had a place that we could rehearse in at Gills Gil Evans's crib." He said, "And Miles and Max Roach got into a fight and then we got different drummers that was not Max and it didn't work the same. Good drummers, but they could it wasn't like Max and then it wasn't viable." And then when he finished telling me the real story of it, he said, "Was that in the sociology class?" You know, so a lot of human life and a lot of things that go in between I think people can't be reduced to sociology or can't be reduced to some of it can be. But Quincy Jones told me stories about trying to keep his big band together on the road in Europe and they ran out of gigs and he had his musicians, their wives, their babies. It's like a huge family, right? And he just told me it was the most stressful period of his life trying to keep this big band together. It's no easy feat to keep a big band together. It was probably one of the main reasons that that era went away because of finances.

MM: Anyway, I just want to congratulate you on keeping this group together because I know it's no easy feat.

WM: Thank you.

MM: And we're going to have to let you go so you can relax a little bit before your before your performance. But please give it up y'all for Mr. Winton Marcales.

WM: Thank you, Marcus.

MM: Let him hear y'all. Come on. Come on now. Winter Marcales. Thank you, ma'am. All right, we'll see you guys on the ship.

Host/Narrator: Thanks for listening to this episode of Jazz Cruise Conversations. If you're visiting New York City, be sure to visit Jazz at Lincoln Center, known as the House of Swing, located on Columbus Circle. The facility features two state-of-the-art concert halls, the Rose theater and the Appel Room as well as the wonderful nightclub Dizzy's. And it's home to the Jazz at Lincoln Center orchestra led by Winton. Learn more at jazz.org and join us on Blue Note at Sea 2020 and hear interviews like this one as well as incredible performances by dozens of great contemporary jazz artists. We sail from Miami to the Caribbean on the Celebrity Infinity January 25th through February 1st. Among the performers sailing with us are Christian McBride, Melody Gardeau, Gregory Porter, David Sandborn, Corey Henry, Marcus Miller, Robert Glasper, Surel Ame, Joey D. Franchesco, and many more. Plus, a special appearance by Kamasi Washington. Learn more at bluenotec.com. You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Special thanks to Michael Lazerof, Joey Fairchild, Brian Roco, and the production team of Entertainment Cruise Productions for everything they do with the crews, including sessions like these. Our theme music is Marcus Miller's high life from his album Aphrodesia. Join us next week as we listen to a conversation with pianist Bill Charlotte recorded during the Jazz Cruise 2019.