Jazztodon artist of the week: Ellis Marsalis!

"I remember asking him once when he, like, was down to his last gig and he was contemplating driving a cab or getting some type of day job whether he regretted playing jazz because nobody really liked to hear that kind of music. And he said, no, and he was very emphatic about how much he loved the music and it had defined a lot of his adulthood and put things in focus for him. And, you know, then I was like 13 or 14, so the philosophical implications of what he was saying, I didn't really care too much about that. I just wanted to know if it was yes or no.

And he was fortunate in that my mother always supported him as a musician. And she would complain about the fact that we didn't have money, but she always wanted him to play music. She didn't - she was never pushing him to get a day job or say, well, you know, you shouldn't have played this music. She was always behind him as a musician.”
-Wynton Marsalis

#jazz #ellismarsalis