Wynton Marsalis on Satchmo!

 Louis Armstrong. Last minute of concentration in the wings before appearing in public. Philadelphia, PA, USA. 1958. Photo © Dennis Stock / Magnum Photos

“I grew up knowing who he was,” Wynton Marsalis says. “I didn’t necessarily like his music, because I grew up in the Civil Rights era and the post-Civil Rights era and we felt like he was an Uncle Tom, always smiling with a handkerchief. His image was not something that was popular at that time. So I didn’t discover his real genius until I was 18.”

Marsalis was part of a storied New Orleans family led by teacher and pianist Ellis Marsalis and at age 14 played traditional jazz with the New Orleans Philharmonic, becoming at age 17, the youngest musician admitted to Tanglewood’s Berkshire Music Center.

Still, he wasn’t a fan of Armstrong until his father sent him a tape. “He had been telling me for years, ‘Man, you need to learn about Pops.’” Marsalis says.

So he listened.

“‘Jubilee’ was the name of the song. I tried to learn that song one night when I was 18 and I couldn’t make it through the song,” he says.

“We thought back then that if you played fast and did a lot of fancy things like Freddie Hubbard played, that you were a good trumpet player. Louis Armstrong played more straight notes. It wasn’t considered difficult.”

“But when I tried to learn one of his solos, just the endurance it took, let alone the type of soul and feeling he was playing with, it was revelatory for me. And then I began to study his music.”

The previously resistant Marsalis spent the rest of his teens listening to the early records. “Before that time, being from New Orleans, we didn’t follow New Orleans jazz. We grew up with it around us, but we were largely ignorant with what it meant culturally,” Marsalis says. “Even with a father that was fairly well informed, I managed to remain ignorant.”
That all changed when he heard and studied the music. “I love him,” Marsalis says of Armstrong. “And being a trumpet player, it was not hard to study the greatest trumpet player ever.
Source: Smithsonian Magazine

I love what Wynton says here . . . . . . repositioning a master!

Somehow like ignoring Feud and only liking Jung! (psychotherapy joke!)