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I got my first trumpet when I was six years old, from Al Hirt. My father was playing in Al Hirt's band at that time.

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
Years
Trumpets
Time
Als
Six
Band
Playing
Father
Firsts
First
Trumpet

More quotes by Wynton Marsalis

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The history of jazz lets us know that this period in our history is not the only period we've come through together. If we truly understood the history of our national arts, we'd know that we have mutual aspirations, a shared history, in good times and bad.
Wynton Marsalis
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Having heard Clifford Brown play all those fast runs, I used to really practice Clarke trumpet exercises all day long so that I could play fast. That's all I wanted to do. I was like a child with a toy.
Wynton Marsalis
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Don't bullshit' just play.
Wynton Marsalis
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If you didn't have the amalgam of Blacks and African-type sensibility and European sensibility, you wouldn't have jazz. Even in the negative and in the positive ways - if there was no slavery and the abolition of slavery, there would be no jazz.
Wynton Marsalis
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Our culture is what we did together. What did Walt Whitman represent for all of us? What was his message to us? That is an inheritance, and when we squander that inheritance we act outside. We don't know who we are we don't know where we are.
Wynton Marsalis
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My thing is, once you start to put a backbeat on your music or something that has a machine in it, you have popularity, but you lose the flexibility. And you lose a richness.
Wynton Marsalis
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If you are serious about American culture and you are serious about Afro-American culture, you are in a lot of pain. You are not - you are not smiling about it.
Wynton Marsalis
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Jazz is not the kind of music you are going to learn to play in three or four years or that you can just get because you have some talent for music.
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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Thank the good Lord for a job.
Wynton Marsalis
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If you're not making mistakes, you're not trying.
Wynton Marsalis
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Music is the art of all the invisible things that are real. Art, emotion, spiritual essence, consciousness - these things are hard to prove. Music helps you to focus on your sound. We understand that for very young kids.
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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There's always the cliche of the choir shouting and clapping. OK, you have to do that, but there's also introspective parts, parts where you just follow someone that's preaching. There's lots of different emotions and moods that a service requires.
Wynton Marsalis
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We no longer want to be a melting pot, because we don't understand what is already melted.
Wynton Marsalis
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Those who play for applause....Tha t’s all they get.
Wynton Marsalis
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Many of our greatest musicians abandoned all of their aesthetic objectives to try to become pertinent. And, at the end of the day, they never became pop stars. I counter stated that very strongly, and I continue to do that.
Wynton Marsalis
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Everything comes out in blues music: joy , pain , struggle . Blues is affirmation with absolute elegance.
Wynton Marsalis
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I try to find the core values that are so fundamental that they transcend ethnic identity. That doesn't mean I run from it. I embrace African-American culture and I love it and embrace it, but it is a part of a human identity. So I'm always trying to make a larger human statement.
Wynton Marsalis
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I'll write down and catalogue all the different devices that are Americana to me, and I try to have a historic depth and breadth and also the things that we do in our time, the type of vamps and chants, things that are available to us.
Wynton Marsalis