Interview recorded when Branford was in an all star band with Sting , pianist Kenny Kirkland, drummer Omar Hakim and bassist Darryl Jones. He talks about growing up in New Orleans where jazz was not his favorite music but he says being exposed to it was the most important thing.
youtube site https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtsIZ_bMcIgEpWwNil1gYd5_UghWYxHmS
Interview recorded when Branford was in an all star band with Sting , pianist Kenny Kirkland, drummer Omar Hakim and bassist Darryl Jones. He talks about growing up in New Orleans where jazz was not his favorite music but he says being exposed to it was the most important thing.
youtube site https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtsIZ_bMcIgEpWwNil1gYd5_UghWYxHmS
website https://caljazzphoto.com/
Maybe you could talk a little bit about the interaction between your father, how it affected you growing up and your music and some of your early musical experiences I guess included your father and maybe Alvin Baptiste. Well, Growing up in, growing up in New Orleans is unique certain types of music are indigenous to various parts of the entire state of Louisiana. Only place in America where there are things that you won't hear outside of New Orleans. It's like you hear, like, some meter songs, and they mean nothing to anybody around here. And you go to New Orleans and everybody's just dead. Gets up and starts dancing because the beat is indigenous to, the culture there. Growing up in a place like that exposes you to all different types of music. More so than if I'd been some place else. And contrary to popular belief when I was growing up, I didn't like jazz. But the thing that I could appreciate is the fact that I grew up in a jazz environment. Like the, I think the biggest mistake that a lot of people, even psychologists make is by saying that, well . Musical, guys who play music and are musically gifted and all that, they grew up loving music or they grew up listening to music. And that's, that's not the issue. The issue is being exposed. And I remember at the earliest age of, , two or three, hearing music, not being able to respond to it, but I knew I was there. And not liking classical music and not liking jazz, but I heard it whether I liked it or not. It was there. I know a lot of people say, well, man, I dig jazz. I started learning it two years ago. And they're, like, in their 20s, . And it's like, they say, well, what was your first experience in jazz? Hell, my first experience in jazz was when I was in the womb, listening to my father practice, . And then when Joe Zawinul came over to the house with Cannonball (Adderley), and I hated it. I was sitting on the sofa. And they were playing music and I was bored to death, right? But it's like, I was there. I was listening to this stuff, ? And I think that that plays a major role in my musical development. And just being in the city where that kind of stuff was around, where you got places like Tipitina's and places like Jed's, where most people never heard of, where all these bands would come in and play, and you could walk down the street and all of the little, clubs and the, the, the black Indians in New Orleans and the, the Mardi Gras tradition and the Professor Longhairs and Dr. John Mack Ravenak being, as far as I'm concerned, the foremost disciple right now. And the segment of New Orleans music,, talking about the uptown sound, Professor Longhair and all those guys, he's like the, the one, him and, and James Booker. The two foremost authorities on that piano sound. beIng around those guys, you can't really, and I wasn't really one of those guys who was like a club rat. I didn't hang out all the time, but the music's in the air. All the people know all the songs, they sing it, they dance a certain way, they move a certain way, they talk a certain way. And I think it plays a major role. Was your first, like, playing experience in, in R& B? Yeah. Well, no, my first, I mean, like, first playing experience was playing classical music recitals as a brat. My first professional experience was R& B. And the, the succession of, the thing about New Orleans players too, it seems like we have such an idea of classing people into one tight class, what I mean? A lot of the guys you hear, I mean, Alvin, Alan Toussaint, he was a great, he wrote great R& B songs for Irma Thomas. He had God, he could play classical piano and he could play jazz. Mm hmm. So I guess, in a way, you have gone through different things do you see yourself as just like a musician and maybe not just a jazz musician? I get bored. That's my problem. I get bored very easily and I can't, I can't just sit down and, and play the same thing all the time. I couldn't be in an orchestra. I'd go crazy. And I've been playing jazz for five years and I was going crazy because I just needed to do something different for a while. I'm always gonna be like that. I get restless. A lot of guys down there are like that. They don't like doing just the same thing all the time. Just another thing that I talked to Kevin Eubanks about was the fact that people have taken to really attaching to young dudes who are playing the music and saying Hey, they are the thing happening now. It's just, I don't know if it's a pressure for you and also whether, sort of how you feel about it. Because it, it seems like it takes people in any kind of occupation time to develop. It's no pressure, because this is what I want to do. I don't allow people to put pressure on me. The only person that can put pressure on me is myself., you have all these people who say, well, you should sound like this when you're this age. You say, no, because people are different., you should sound like whatever you sound like at the given time., and, and there's no such thing as like an absolute in terms of talent or development., you see guys and say, well, that guy'll never be a great musician. I mean, he could shock the hell out of everybody. And I'm never gonna be in the position of, what I mean, saying something stupid about another sax player, and then having the ghost come and haunt me five years down the road, and say, hey, man, what you said about me, man? Yeah, well, . That ain't gonna go on. That ain't gonna go down, . I I have high expectations. For myself, that's like, I want it to sound a certain way, and when it doesn't sound that way, I mean, I don't care what anybody else tells me, how great it was, if I'm not satisfied, then I'm not satisfied, , cause I'm not in this to have my ego stroked, I'm not in this for people to pat me on the back, I'm in this, I don't know why I'm in it, but I mean, now that I am in it, I'm going to do the best that I can possibly do, and I, I know when I'm the best that I can be and when I'm not. I grew up in the 60s, that's when jazz made a real big impression on me, with John Coltrane and others, and in the 70s seemed to sort of just get lost a little for me, maybe you could talk a little bit about that., I can see like the confusion because jazz was kind of popular in the 40s and 50s because that was pop music then. And then pop music came out and they said, what the hell with jazz? And a lot of jazz musicians were like, what? Nobody's paying attention to us anymore. So what do we have to do to get back in the good graces of those that were paying attention to us the movie actresses used to go check out all of the jazz gigs and stuff, the stars go to the jazz clubs, and then it's like now the stars go to the Beatles concerts and the Sting's concerts and stuff, so the musicians were like, well, what are we going to do to get, get those people back to us? So they got their high heel sneakers and their wigs and their glasses and they went for it, I do projects because they're musically interesting to me and I think that they have like the, the dignity that I would want anything that I would be a part of to have. But if you're a musician, I mean, if you're going to choose in 1980 to play jazz, if you sit down and say, I want to play jazz, All of the facts of the past 20 years are laid out in front of you. You should know. You should say, alright, this is what happened to Miles. This is what happened to Bird. This is what happened to Train. This is what happened to Monk. This is what happened to all the cats. And if you come into jazz expecting fame and fortune and dollars, then you a damn fool. Because history goes against that theory. It was like in the 50s and the 40s, all of that was there. So a lot of guys say, wow, man, it's glamorous, man, I wanna, I wanna play in Basie's band. And the women will be Lindy Hopping to the music, and , we'll be jamming and swinging. They get into the glamour part of it, well, ain't no more of that. I think that that's probably the best thing that ever happened to jazz. It kind of woke people up, and now they see., so the people that are there now are people that want to be there for the music, or they wouldn't be there at all. Speaking, going back to the 40s a little, you have very definite ideas, which I guess I agree with about the acoustic quality of jazz and maybe how it's to be recorded. Oh yeah, definitely. The 40s were the best records because they weren't Destroyed by what's so called modern technology. The thing about modern technology, modern technology was developed to enhance rock music. Nobody ever sat down and spent any amount of time saying, well, these are the things that happen in jazz music. This is what happens when you do this to a saxophone. So jazz musicians, we didn't know any better., , guys in my father's generation, that used to be my biggest fight with my dad. He's like, come on man, you can't record it. And he says, man, I'm just a musician. I'm not worried about all that. But it's your record. It sounds like crap. I mean, people are going to say, your record sounds like crap.? They're not going to say, oh wow, Ellis Marsalis is a great player, but the studio wasn't very great. Nah, they don't know all of that., and it made me want to be aware of all that., and the only music that has any amount of time spent on it, developing it, that's acoustic. It's symphonic music. So you talk to those guys. You don't talk to somebody, . I went to look at students from Iraq and this guy says, Man, we do a lot of jazz here. It's a great studio. The ceiling's about seven feet high. So I'm like, you do jazz here? He says, yeah, man, a lot of cats, , he's selling his studio. I don't blame him. He says, I can play a tape for you. I said, this I gotta hear. It was some Grover Washington kind of stuff, . But that's his image of jazz, . He says, check out this tape. He turns, ba doom ka, ba doom doom ka. Then the cat playing some generic shit on the piano., and I'm like, oh, thank you. See you later, . It's like, that's what the image of jazz has become. And I mean, you can't really fault any one thing for that, nor can you sit around and waste your time worrying about it. You just do what you have to do. So I asked some classical guys, Hey man, what about this? He say, man, what you need is a big room.'cause , they explained the whole thing in like five minutes. It's like blam. See man, what you need is a really, really big room because acoustic instruments have to resonate and , you can't get a res, a resonant tone if you're sitting in a 15,, a 10 foot ceiling or a 15 foot ceiling. Behind a glass enclosure, Like a lot of records sound like garbage because they got the drum in the booth, sax players in the booth. And they make the record and it sounds separate. Then they try to put artificial echo in it to make it sound full. And it sounds awful. It sounds terrible. And , the new technology is based towards electronic pulses, which is why more and more they're relying on electronic instruments more and more, and real instruments less and less. Because it's easier to record those things, overdub them, and get the pure tone, because it's just a signal. It doesn't deal with an actual instrument. So they just do that, , and it sounds great, and they say, wow, technology is really doing a great thing. Yeah, for non instruments, for, what I mean, for electronic instruments, technology is doing a great thing., and like, the thing you notice about,, see, acoustic music is harder to play. Electronic instruments, you can play the same thing over and over again and it sounds good., and it limits you. There's only a certain amount of things you can play., same thing on acoustic instruments, but acoustic instruments are harder to play. I mean, no matter what, they can argue till doomsday., I know guys that can pick up an acoustic instrument and then pick up an electric instrument. They won't sound like an electric player, but the facility will be more. There would be greater facility for an acoustic player playing an electric instrument than an electric instrument switching around.?It's like, when you study , when you talk to these guys and do all your research, you'll be able to see that, , there's a lot of things. A lot of jazz musicians like recording in booths so they can overdub their solos later., which is some stuff that I, that's ridiculous., it takes away all of the spontaneity. It's like, I don't like that anymore, and I do, , like in the old, like, Miles used to have this way of, my little brother Delfio, who's gonna produce my next record, he's an audio engineering major at Berkeley, and he's helped me figure a lot of this out. Like, Miles found out a way to overdub solos in an acoustic setting. What I mean? Like by taking this big plexiglass plate, and sticking it up right in front of the band. wHat I mean? And putting him behind it, so that the sound still resonates, cause it's bouncing around the room, it's not trapped in. But the plate keeps the leakage of the rest of the band out., and if you notice on all those records with Kindeboo and all those things, like Jimmy Cobb isn't really hitting the drums real hard. He's just going like, ting ting ting ting ting ting ting ting., gagum gum bang, , just little fills and stuff. Cause as long as he's playing like that, then the drums aren't gonna leak into the trumpet sound. What I mean? And when the drums don't link to the trumpet sound, you can just overdub and it sounds natural. I mean, it was genius.? I personally don't believe in overdubbing solos on a jazz record because jazz, the essence of jazz is spontaneity. And when you start doing that, I mean, the solos will become classic, but they lose the spontaneity. I mean, you can fool people, but you can't fool yourself, and I'm not into fooling myself, , nor am I into fooling other people. So I, like, after a couple of years of, , years of talking to my brother and talking to Steve Epstein and Tom Mowry, two great producers you learn things, and you learn about how jazz is, in essence, going backwards. Technology has brought the music backwards instead of bringing it forward, because the research isn't done for us, so what we have to do is create our own research, and do our own thing. It makes a lot of sense, , especially when I see it the horrible way, sometimes they might, , that big horn sound that, that Webster, Ben Webster used to get or something like that. Just, it's gone.
