Branford Marsalis

It's hard to get into Newsweek because, as more of our former intellectual magazines take on a pop focus, if there's no buzz, there's no interest. ”

The biggest problem with American music right now, is that kids don't listen. They come by it honestly, Americans don't listen anyway. When people go to concerts, they say I'm going to see... not, I'm going to hear. ”

One of the things that I loved about listening to Miles Davis is that Miles always had an instinct for which musicians were great for what situations. He could always pick a band, and that was the thing that separated him from everybody else. ”

When you're dealing with music without words, titles are more a means of identification than anything else. What's the point of getting lofty? ”

My dad was a musician, it was just what he did, like another guy's dad drives a meat truck. Our house was normal. We weren't taken with the fact our dad was a musician. ”

Jazz fans love Miles and I love him for a myriad of reasons, but the overviews are always too simplistic. ”

If you listen to a lot of the songs that are popular now, there's very little melody in there. People love the beat. But to musicians, it's melody, because we understand how elusive it is and how hard it is to hold. ”

Humans are imperfect. That's one of the reasons that classical and jazz are in trouble. We're on the quest for the perfect performance and every note has to be right. Man, every note is not right in life. ”

I gave up my base in popular culture when I left the Tonight Show. ”

I suspect that we might actually start selling some records with these artists in about 10 years. Some the people who invested, they're a little tight-because it's a lot of money to start up a company. ”