An Interview with Wynton Marsalis, Winter 1991
By Bill Hangley, Jr.
Conducted at Vassar College, Poughkeepsie NY: February 7, 1991
Transcribed & published, Philadelphia Pa.: March 20, 2024
BACKGROUND: This is an unpublished interview I conducted with Wynton Marsalis on February 7, 1991, when he appeared at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY, to lecture and perform with his band.
The conversation took place after his talk and before the show, in a small room in the student center. A few other Vassar students joined us while Marsalis and a bespectacled companion (listed in my notes only as “specs”) enjoyed a fish dinner, prepared by a student chef.
At the time, Marsalis was 29, and just entering the prime of his career. Four months before, in October 1990, he’d been on the cover of Time Magazine above the headline, “The New Jazz Age.” In our interview, I remember him as genial and thoughtful, enjoying his role as educator, with a palpable zest for ideas and exchange. At the time, I was working on a thesis exploring the connections between jazz and literature, and many of my own questions concerned the role of critics and writers, and the relationship between music and current events. Others chimed in with questions about Miles Davis and Parliament-Funkadelic, while Marsalis happily veered off on riffs about food, women and the fine arts of life and friendship.
His closing thoughts: “Too serve is to be served.” The band played well in the college chapel that night, as I recall — bright and precise, well-suited to the venue. My thesis was ambitious and partially successful; this interview didn’t appear in it, but it gave me confidence that I was on the right track. As a journalist, I’ve done thousands of interviews since this one. It remains a favorite.
The complete interview, with just a few small cuts, can be found below. A few high points:
On the music of New Orleans: “You have the negotiation between responsibility to the group, and individual rights, but a situation where the greatest individual development occurs through responsibility to the group! Not one that stifles your individuality.”
On his father’s best advice: “He said, ‘Son, if you want to make it in the world, always be willing to accept less.’ How they gonna mess with me? I’ll let my records sit in the can for four or five years. I’ll pay for my own records. To get my soundtrack record out, I had to pay $25,000 of my own money. I’ll do it.”
On the then-common comparisons to Miles Davis: “He just talks about how great he is. I don’t do that … I know he sold out, and is no longer a force. That’s known by everybody. Even you know it.”
On critics who say he talks too much: “What I say is not what they think I should be saying. I don’t mind if they don’ t like it. I don’t take it personally. I can hang out with them, see them, but fuck what they’re saying … they want that control, and that power, and they don’t have that. That power and control was given to the musician. That’s how it is.”
On the student CHEF: “This is a good time for me. This man will take his time out, and cook this food for me. How that make me feel, as a man? I’ve been on the road eating the nastiest food imaginable, and now I come here, and this man has this feast.”
On chicken or fish: “Whatever. Both.”
I was joined by a classmate, Howard Fishman, who asks a few pointed questions; Fishman went on to a successful career as a performer and critic. We were also joined by another Vassar student whose name I listed only as “Jake,” and in the end, by the chef who cooked Marsalis’s meal. The chef, my notes say, was a student at the nearby Culinary Institute of America; as I recall, a Black man of about 30 in full chef’s regalia, who looked like he’d been working in kitchens for a long time. CIA is a prestigious institution and I don’t doubt that the meal was as excellent as Marsalis claims; he went out of his way to thank the chef and include him in our conversation.
I tape-recorded the interview and transcribed it by hand onto a legal pad, which I’ve kept all these years. I didn’t end up using it for my thesis, and only today, in March 2024, did I finally transpose my handwritten notes into this document. I’m pleased to finally bring it to light. The one thing I remember clearly that’s not in my notes was the very end. I thanked Wynton for his time and he replied: “We’ll see each other again.”
Maybe we will. Meanwhile: enjoy!
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BILL HANGLEY JR: You get media coverage all over the place. I read about you in Time, they tell me you’re the spokesman of jazz, you’re the king of the young lions … Does this make any sense to you, what you read about yourself? Where do you hear the good stuff?
WYNTON MARSALIS: From the people who come to the concerts. Come backstage. I get letters. I get three or four hundred letters a month, man.
BH: That’s a lot of mail.
WM: That’s right. I been trying to answer that mail for year.
BH: You’ve got a lot of people listening to you.
[A student enters to ask Marsalis to speak for a moment with one of the concert organizers. He steps away briefly]
WM [after returning]: I figured he was into jazz some kinda way … should become a jazz writer. Cuz he thinks he knows way more than he does.
BH: What’s the responsibility of a jazz writer?
WM: To educate the public.
BH: You’re into education.
WM: Mmmm hmmm. Educate the public.
BH: You talked [in his lecture] about the function of jazz. You want to elaborate on that a little bit? Where do you think its function lies?
WM: The first would be to illuminate the mythology of America, and American culture. The second would be to function in a communal context, in the community. We’ve lost a lot of that. The third is as dance music.
BH: Not a lot of people dance to jazz.
WM: Nah, we lost that too. The fourth would be, to do jazz versions of European music. Hey, you hungry, father?
BH: [mouth full of roll] no, no, I got a piece.
WM: You tore that shit up, man.
BH: I’m nervous, man.
WM: Man, don’t be nervous! I mean, there’s a lot of functions. Like Mr. Jelly Roll Morton lays on ’em, Mr. Jelly Law. The creation of virtuosity, technical virtuosity, to maintain a certain cultural balance in the community. To be behind television shows, films and movies.
BH: Bringing it to the community.
WM: In context with kids …. It’s never been used that way, as an education tool, in terms of teaching people how to be American. Especially in New Orleans music, in which you have the negotiation between responsibility to the group, and individual rights, but a situation where the greatest individual development occurs through responsibility to the group! Not one that stifles your individuality, by you playing with the group.
BH: Have you ever read Ralph Ellison?
WM: That’s my man. Albert Murray, “Stompin’ the Blues.” Read that if you get a chance.
BH: Ellison talks in a lot of the same language, how jazz is the triumph of human values, beauty out of the chaos. Right now there’s bad shit. We’re heading into war, serious recession, and there’s serious ignorance about what’s going on in this country. Do you see a specific responsibility to respond to the crises right now? Is there any way you can use jazz to address specific political issues?
WM: Oh no. I don’t think you can do that with music. I think you can do it with your mouth, though.
BH: So you talk a lot. And one of the criticisms I’ve hear about you, and I’m sure that you’ve heard it too, is that you talk too much.
WM: I talk too much. It’s not that I talk to much, because if you notice, those who do the most talking, they’re in the forum every month, talking. What I say is not what they think I should be saying. Plus, I have an attitude of, ‘fuck them if they don’t like it.’ It’s a democratic attitude, cuz I don’t mind if they don’ t like it. I don’t take it personally. I can hang out with them, see them, but fuck what they’re saying. Like no way in the world I’m going to go with their point of view. You know, what I mean, I hate that, because they want that control, and that power, and they don’t have that. That power and control was given to the musician. That’s how it is.
BH: So, the critic, he’s gotta …
WM: He has to respect the musician. And they don’t respect musicians, because they’ve usurped that power for themselves. I’m taking it back and they hate that.
BH: Empowerment.
WM: Yeah. It’s a battle that goes on. And I don’t mind it, it’s fun. Because you know, I understand what it is, it’s very clear. And they understand it. So the fact that they don’t like me, just so long as they realize it’s not personal. Cuz if we weren’t in these roles I’d probably get along with most of them.
BH: It’s the same thing you were talking about [in his lecture] with the race issue, with the Blacks and the rednecks. If it wasn’t for those roles …
WM: … they could get along. But for me to get along with them, they’d have to relinquish a lot of the power that they won’t relinquish.
BH: So you feel pretty comfortable in your role as a speaker?
WM: Yes.
BH: You like it? You enjoy it?
WM: Yes. Because I study, and I read, try to be prepared. Cuz I feel that whatever I have to say can counterbalance what’s being written. But also, you look at the students I’ve produced, even at this stage, guys who come up under the philosophy that we’ve been espousing for a long time, and I think it’ll be very clear.
BH: Who do you see as your best students?
WM: I mean, it’s a lot of different ones. I don’t really call them students but just pick someone like Marcus Roberts. Not really a student of mine, but he plays in the band.
BH: Piano player, right? Playing with you tonight?
WM: Yeah … it’s really a philosophical thing.
BH: You’ve got a lot of stuff running around in your head about the connections between jazz and America. How do you extend the principles of beauty and resistance into the political and social forum?
WM: Well, I think that art deals with politics at a higher level. Human politics, spiritual politics, you know, it’s not as if you want to deal with the immediate politics of your area … you can vote and protest and all that. You don’t want your art to get bogged down in that stuff. You know what I mean — time passes, and those things are not issues.
BH: It ceases to have any meaning.
WM: Yeah … it’s the human issues you deal with in art. If you want to protest something in your time, you can always do that as a citizen.
BH: I’m with the idea of getting bogged down. Seems that commercial interests have bogged down a lot of good music.
WM: You know, it’s bogged down a lot of good people.
SERVER: Can I interrupt you and ask if you like chicken or fish?
WM: Whatever. Both.
BH: You mind if my friend asks a question?
WM: No, go ahead.
HOWARD FISHMAN: I see a lot of similarities between your convictions and attitudes towards jazz and people with those of Miles Davis. But you guys don’t really get along.
WM: He and I have totally different attitudes, and we really are not that similar.
HF: Well, probably from your perspective. But maybe for someone who looks at you both, there seem to be a lot of similarities.
WM: It’s not, though. Cuz I go into schools and I work with kids, and I work with the music ….
HF: And he just doesn’t, doesn’t care.
WM: He just talks about how great he is. I don’t do that.
HF: You think he sold out?
WM: I know he sold out, and is no longer a force. That’s known by everybody. Even you know it.
HF: Well, yeah.
WM: You might not say it publicly, but even you know it. Everybody knows it. And if you play you really know it.
HF: So why would he still be playing? He’s got the money already.
WM: You don’t know what he has! Man, it costs people a lot of money to go out on the road. Just cuz you assume somebody making money, that doesn’t mean they’re making it. You don’t know how much they’re spending. You know what life is like.
HF: I know, I juts think of, you know, ‘superstar Miles Davis.’
WM: That’s just a word. Don’t mean money.
BH: But you are characterized in the same light in the media, often, because you share a similar status — in the media.
WM: That’s unfair to him. Because he’s been out here. He came to New York in 1946, fifteen years before I was born. It’s not fair. He’s been out here a long time, and he should be viewed as whoever he is.
HF: You still respect him as an artist?
WM: No. But who he was, yes. He was very great. Very great.
HF: You know they talk about people without a lot of technical skills, and he’s often lumped …
WM: That’s incorrect. That’s wrong. When he became great he developed technical skills. When he didn’t have technical skills he wasn’t great, but he was still good. He could always swing … he became a great trumpet player through hard work. And I have tremendous respect for his playing when he was serious about it. Probably one of the greatest trumpet players ever.
HF: We’ll probably never see a Wynton/Miles duet though?
BH: You trying to start a fire, man?
HF: No, not at all.
WM: You wouldn’t even want to see that.
BH: Does that get to you, to have these media feuds, all that shit?
WM: No, man, no. That kind of stuff is funny to me. It’s like a joke. You want to see how I react to it? I laugh at that shit. I think it’s funny. I have a good time in my life, man. A great time.
BH: I bet.
WM: I can just sit here and admire the beauty of this lovely woman [i.e. student serving dinner]. I just thank the Lord for being able to do that. You think I care about some feud in the media with Miles Davis? I don’t care about that. Lord have mercy.
BH: How about the issue of being a leader? In a given jazz movement?
WM: That’s not important to me. That’s for the media. It’s got nothing to do with music. That’s something for them to write about.
HF: It could give you a certain responsibility, though, if you wanted it.
WM: You take on the responsibility that you take on. It’s not based on somebody else recognizing it. I’ve been going to schools for nine years, man. Just because they wrote in Time Magazine, ‘he finds young musicians,’ I been doing that! When they were saying I was arrogant and all that shit, I would stay after every gig and sign everybody’s autograph. I would give people trumpet lessons. I’ve been doing it since I started playing. That’s what’s important. I don’t care what they write about.
And the people who come, you know, they know … you can’t hope to have influence over billions of people. You don’t wanna do that. Just the people you know. That’s enough. As long as you don’t get greedy, you’ll always been cool. This man here [points to his friend] I went to his house, and he had nothing but books and records. I was like, damn. I see him at all the gigs, see him afterwards and we talk about music, play a little basketball, talk some stuff. I see his house, nothing but records, little bitty house, and I said, damn boy! But I mean, it was hip!
See, I’m from the South, man. I don’t look at stuff in terms of nothing material. But I got in this man’s house and it had a vibe in it. He’s dealing with all this music, all these books. I said, ”I didn’t know a man like you existed in the United States of America. How’d you get to this level of seriousness for no reason?” I mean, he wasn’t working in literature or in music.
BH: You’ve got respect for work.
WM: Damn right I got respect for it. Shit! Shucks! Hell yeah, I respect it. That’s all that counts. I mean, not overwork, where you can’t have no fun … we have a good time out here. If you hung out with the cats in the band you’d find out that we enjoy being out here. We’re not out here saying, “Oh you saw what they wrote about us.” Man, we don’t care what they write!
BH: So you hear a lot of shit. What are the valid criticisms you hear?
WM: Of me?
BH: Of you. From anyplace.
WM: Oh man. One was that I wouldn’t talk to the audience. Before I would never say anything. Now I try to talk a little more … there’s a few flaws I have to address.
BH: Want to address some of those right now?
WM: No. Because then they might hear about it. But now it’s so much different than when I started.
BH: You’ve been playing professionally for what, fifteen years?
WM: Professionally? Sixteen, seventeen years.
BH: And you’re what, 29, pushing 30? So you started at 13?
WM: Twelve years old.
BH: Were you looking at the ladies back then?
WM: Man, I always loved women. I always had a girlfriend.
BH: Always?
WM: Always. I love women. And him [his friend] there’s a master right there.
BH: Scam artist?
WM: This man is a poet.
FRIEND: She was a German. I dig her. She was cool, she was fifty-five [laughter].
WM: He don’t care.
BH: I guess that’s an education.
WM: He loves women.
FRIEND: Especially young, beautiful women.
WM: Who would you rather talk to, a woman or a man?
BH: I don’t know. It depends on what they’ve got to say.
WM: That almost never even makes a difference to me. Women almost always have more to say than men.
BH: But you gotta think about substance, you know.
WM: Most women think about things in much greater detail than men.
BH: That brings up a question for me — there’s some women in jazz, but not that many.
WM: Jazz just doesn’t invite women in like it should.
BH: You see any responsibility in that direction?
WM: I mean, you never see women associated with any of the musicians. If you’re a jazz musician you have to pretend like you’ve never even seen a woman. The romantic element of the music is not being highlighted. It’s like it’s some intellectual thing for some critics to discuss. And then the level of intellect they focus on is so poor, man, that’s the thing that makes me mad. Why should you create music for some intellectuals to discuss, who don’t know anything a bout the music?
BH: SO you think that bringing in the majesty, the romance that you’re always talking about, is gonna bring men and women together?
WM: That’s what I’m going to try to do. It’s a long journey, but believe me, that’s on my mind.
FRIEND: This fish is almost as good as this young lady is beautiful.
WM: Man, that’s an impossibility.
FRIEND: She is impossibly beautiful.
WM: That’s what I’m saying.
FRIEND: Blush, baby.
BH: Now you’ve got forty, forty-five years of playing left in you. Where do you think you want to go?
WM: Everywhere. Anywhere. I go, I like to be there.
BH: I’m talking musically.
WM: Oh man, plenty of places. Oh, have mercy. [goes to thank the chef. Returns.] That’s what I enjoy in life, man. Cat fixes us some food like this, man? It’s somebody writing about you, if they can’t participate in the beauty of what goes on, I don’t care. I’m going to argue whether somebody’s music is better? I don’t care about that, man.
BH: People argue about jazz all the time — you saw it right back there [in the lecture]. Everybody’s got their thing they want to bring up.
WM: All those arguments would stop if we stood on the bandstand with some instruments.
BH: Nobody’s gonna stand out there in the audience and blow something back at you.
WM: That’s what they used to do! Louis Armstrong did it …..
BH: Every city in the world’s got a radio station were people call up and talk about sports.
WM: And that’s all fun, but one thing that they [athletes] know that people don’t know is, it has no effect on the game. The people who talk about music under the illusion that their opinion is what the deal is. Like how many times have I had these writers tell me that “we determine whether someone can play or not.” I mean, you don’t determine nothing, man! You haven’t shed all these hours … you haven’t sat up and transposed all these Monk tunes, and thought about these problems.
You need to be a lot more humble, and realize that you don’t determine anything, you just pass on information. Your whole influence over music ended when you stopped playing … they think that achievement is fraudulent, because they themselves are fraudulent. Not all of them, but a lot of them.
BH: So where do you see the best, most valid criticisms of jazz coming from? Are they coming from other art forms?
WM: Gunther Shuller writes relatively good books on early jazz. Martin Williams, “The Jazz Tradition,” that’s a good book. Stanley Crouch … Albert Murray, “Stompin’ the Blues,” that’s the greatest thing written on American music.
BH: So you don’t think professional jazz criticism has a function, except to pass on information.
WM: What do you think its function is? I ask you, what do YOU think?
BH: I’ll give you an answer to that, which is that all the good criticism I’ve read isn’t exactly criticism, it’s more like linkage, where guys take what they see in music, and they connect it to the politics and the real situations that can’t necessarily be discussed in music.
WM: Right. You know that book “Black Nationalism and the Revolution in Music” by [Frank] Kofsky? Has a picture of John Coltrane on the cover? He interviews Coltrane, and Coltrane says, “My music is not about none of that.” Then he proceeds to draw parallels between Trane’s music and what he’s trying to say.
JAKE THE STUDENT: I have a question. I was wondering what you think of Parliament, and that whole group of people, which was not at all jazz, but very much improvisational.
WM: “Tear the Roof off the Sucka” and all that? “Sir Nose D Voidoffunk?” It was cool, but, you know the thing about the jams they was dealing with, first, they stayed in the same key all the time. It comes kinda outta church music. I think it’s interesting, but it’s a different function, it’s like, for excitement. You know, I saw Parliament play every time they came to New Orleans. Mothership Connection … this was in the mid-seventies, and we used to play their songs at all our gigs. [Sings:] “tear the roof off the sucka, tear the roof off” … it was fun, it’s like a teenage thing. A cross between church music and funk music. I mean, it’s good, but it’s like an adolescent thing. You can’t imagine people with children wanting to sit around and [imitates p-funk beat].
BH: So you see your music as more adult music?
WM: Definitely. But children can check it out! It’s for men and women. It’s for a girl who wants to be a woman, and a boy who wants to be a man. When I talk to kids, I tell ’em, I’m not trying to sell any records to you. I just hope you can make it to manhood.
They say, “What about how we feel about stuff?” I say, man, come on, has the media exploited y’all so much that you think that how you feel about something is that important? You don’t make none of them videos you look at. But you think that’s your music. It’s men, fifty and sixty years old, who sit up there and say, “No, take some more of her clothes off.” And then those same people will sit up there and in their next breath say, ‘The direction our youth is going in…” It’s all a big two-face farce.
BH: Do those people mess with your music?
WM: No. I mean, they want to … I do like my daddy told me, a long time ago. He said, “Son, if you want to make it in the world, always be willing to accept less.” How they gonna mess with me? I’ll accept less. I’ll let my records sit in the can for four or five years. I’ll pay for my own records. To get my soundtrack record out, I had to pay $25,000 of my own money. I’ll do it. They won’t make it easy for me, but I don’t care, cuz I’ll always be willing to accept less. I’ll take my own money and subsidize my own band. If I don’t have a gig, I’ll just go home and work local gigs. If I don’t have a record contract I won’t record.
BH: Independence.
WM: And just to make a conscious decision not to be enslaved by stuff that will reduce your potential. Always be willing to accept less — make less money, get less publicity, play less gigs, get less prestige. Never get hung up in all these. I can always remember when I didn’t have shit. I can remember that, and I felt good then. Be in New York, looking at all the buildings, you know, “Damn, look at all these people.” Didn’t have no money, but you know, so what?
My partners that I grew up with, didn’t none of them have money. Be playing street football, have a great time. Go back with my little brothers, my mama would say, “I want you to look in the Sears catalog, get y’all clothes for the year,” we get two pairs of pants and two shirts. In comparison to my partners, we was rich. Man, we had a good time. I didn’t feel bad at all. I was having a great time. You know what I’m saying?
CHEF [now in the room after cooking the meal]: I know what you’re saying.
WM: Yeah, he know! Look at this good cuisine. This is a good time for me, you know what I’m saying? This man will take his time out, and cook this food for me. How that make me feel, as a man? Just that thing that he given me, today. I’ve been on the road eating the nastiest food imaginable, and now I come here, and this man has this feast prepared for me and the cats in the band to eat.
BH: You’re a lucky dude.
WM: That’s what I’m saying. But everyone can be like that. This man here can be like that, but you have to realize that you have to be that same way to people. Too serve is to be served …. Its not about me, or this man.
CHEF: I hear you, I understand what you’re saying. You have to serve to be served. You have to give, to get, You don’t give, you won’t get.
WM: And that’s on the smallest level. It don’t have nothing to with the media, just your own life.
CHEF: Being friends.
WM: That’s right. It’s like to know what friendship is about.
CHEF: It’s like with my friends at school. If they don’t got no money, but I got money, they got money.
WM: That’s what I’m saying.
CHEF: When I don’t have no money, some of ’em, it don’t work that way. I don’t have some money sometimes, and I say, ‘Yo, what’s up?” “Ah, man, ah, man …” I say, “Never mind.” I’m not even gonna ask, you know? But if I have something, I say, “I have fifteen dollars, who’s hungry?” and we’re all gonna eat.
WM: That’s what I’m saying. That’s the beauty of it, man. Last night we were going to play some basketball after the gig. It’s like 11:30, we’ve got to get on the bus at 2AM, and this guy’s driving us and I say, “They’re going to open the gym for us, let’s go play,” and immediately I saw his vibe change. Like, “ah, man, I don’t wanna stay up all night driving these guys around.”
BH: Did you get him in the game?
WM: His shoulder had been dislocated. We got to the hotel and I said, ‘You gonna wait for us?’ He said, “Ah, I can’t be driving you around all night, I got stuff to do.” I said, “Okay, but just realize this, man. If it was me and I had a car, I would wait for you.” So he split, and thought about it, and he came back and waited for us to finish playing. And when we was finished he said, “man, you was right, man.””
CHEF: That’s right.
WM: You know what I’m saying?
BH: Yeah.
WM: Because that’s the idea.
Source: Medium.com