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You need a team. You need people to push you. You need opponents.

Wynton Marsalis

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Wynton Marsalis
Age: 63
Born: 1961
Born: October 18
Bandleader
Composer
Conductor
Jazz Musician
Trumpeter
New Orleans
Louisiana
Wynton Learson Marsalis
Team
Need
Needs
People
Opponents
Push

More quotes by Wynton Marsalis

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The first jazz musician was a trumpeter, Buddy Bolden, and the last will be a trumpeter, the archangel Gabriel.
Wynton Marsalis
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The blues is always there. It's going to be hard out here, but it's all right. It's all right, and that's what the blues teaches you. You got to roll with the punches and find your equilibrium.
Wynton Marsalis
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Benny Goodman's band was integrated before baseball. Even before it was physically integrated, music was integrated. Everyone listened to Armstrong and Ellington. The 20s was called the Jazz Age. It's part of being American.
Wynton Marsalis
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Trumpet players are just belligerant, and cocky, and you know, just hard-headed.
Wynton Marsalis
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One thing about excellence, it&Mac226s an exclusive club. And it&Mac226s only for those who really want to pay dues to the s--. My daddy told me when I was a boy: The only way you can be different from other people is to do some s-- they don't want to do.
Wynton Marsalis
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When I first came to New York everybody on the scene would treat me like I could play but I couldn't.
Wynton Marsalis
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Thank the good Lord for a job.
Wynton Marsalis
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Jazz comes from our way of life, and because it's our national art form, it helps us to understand who we are.
Wynton Marsalis
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We looked up to our father. He still is much greater than us.
Wynton Marsalis
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The musicians I respected were much older than me. I expected them to cut my head, and they did.
Wynton Marsalis
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When I auditioned for my high school band the band director was excited because my father was known to be a great musician. When he heard me, he said 'Are you sure you're Ellis's son?'
Wynton Marsalis
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I didn't want to get that ring around my lips from practicing the trumpet, because I thought the girls wouldn't like me. So I never practiced.
Wynton Marsalis
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Don't wish for someone else to do later what you can do now.
Wynton Marsalis
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My mother always took my brothers and me to music lessons. There were six children. Our parents attended our concerts and encouraged us to study and enjoy many different types of music.
Wynton Marsalis
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When I say our, I definitely mean all of America. It's not less pertinent for you because it comes from a Black person, just like a great achievement by an Anglo American is less important.
Wynton Marsalis
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The main three components are the blues, improvisation - which is some kind of element that people are trying to make it up - and swing, which means even though they're making up music, they're trying to make it up together. It feels great, like you're having a great conversation with somebody.
Wynton Marsalis
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There was one thing Beethoven didn't do. When one of his string quartets was played, you can believe the second violin wasn't improvising.
Wynton Marsalis
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Don't bullshit' just play.
Wynton Marsalis
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Don't worry about what others say about your music. Pursue whatever you are hearing... but if everybody really hates your music maybe you could try some different approaches.
Wynton Marsalis
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We don't have the leadership or the understanding of the value of this, and when your political systems and your economic systems start to fail, it's only a cultural understanding that allows you to reconstruct them and to get back to who you are. For some reason, it hasn't dawned on us yet.
Wynton Marsalis