I was always envious of those who were fortunate enough to witness the revolution on 52nd St.. Just the thought of spending a night at Minton's a couple of feet away from Miles, Monk, Parker et al...If the test of time bears me out, Branford Marsalis and his cohorts Robert Hurst and Jeff "Tain" Watts may be sowing the seeds of a new revolution. Branford has synthesized and transformed the complexities of Ornette Coleman's form and used it as a platform to launch his own hybrid. Though it is a music that requires some concentration by all involved, the connection to roots music and Branford’s exquisite sense of melody are always present. A sure sign that he is on the right track are the acerbic reviews he received on premiering his new format by Leonard Feather of The L.A. Times and John Pareles of the New York Times and the confusion it’s created among his audiences. "There's been a great deal of head scratching. A lot of people have come to hear me because of some article they read or because they expect to hear me play movie themes(Russia House or Mo Better Blues). People think the songs we play don’t have changes, but they do and we’re playing them. We don’t intentionally disguise them, that’s dumb! We have just arrived at an organically different way of playing these songs. The intention of the music is to keep dealing with the harmonically more difficult elements of the music. I’m using some of the same logic that Ornette used but with a different sound and choice of notes."

It is a musical discipline that has tested every last fiber of ability and imagination of these three superb musicians. The new format exposes sides to Robert Hursts that heretofore have gone unnoticed. With the absence of a piano his technical facility, fine melodic sense and his mastery of the lower register are more in evidence. His expanded role has helped counteract the effects of a natural reticence which has kept him from the public notice his talent has warranted. "Unfortunately people look before they listen. Offstage he’s funny and whitty. But alot of people look at bassists who are up front dancing around with their axes and say, ‘He’s getting down now!’ Bob can play rings around them all. He has that beautiful deep rich sound that you can’t capture with the pickups those other bassists use. He’s a very strong melodic player so he doesn’t have to sit around and play roots all day. In addition to which he can always find the things to compliment a piece be it traditional or modern."

As far as drummer Jeff "Tain" Watts is concerned some people have classed him as a power drummer passing by his gifts for playing ballads and melody. His name was the first to roll off Max Roach's tongue when I asked him to list some of the most promising "youngsters" of today.

"Tain is the most complete drummer of my generation. He can play Bebop and modern. It's organic to him he has a strong sense of melody. Most drummers have a strong sense of drumming. Everything they play sounds like drum licks. There have always been drummers who have mastered melodic interpretation like Connie Kay, Danny Richmond, Elveen and Philly Joe Jones. Kenny Washington is another very melodic drummer."

The advanced abilities of the rhythm section are necessary because of the way the melody occaisonally leads the rhythm around by the nose. Certain tunes off his latest album like the title cut, All The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born as well as Gilligan’s Isle are examples of this complex form.

"I was listening to a Keith Jarrett tune called Blossom and what intrigued me at first was that it seemed that it was not in time. But after listened to it further I found that it was the melody which dictated the tempo. Bob or Tain can dictate the changes because you don't change the chord until you play that part of the melody. So melody and instrumental phrasings aren't slaved to a strict rhythm."

Branford‘s mention of Keith Jarrett is very much in keeping with a philosophy of exploration that while knowing no bounds denies no influences.

"In the middle of writing All the Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born I had the distinct impression that I’d heard this tune before. So I start asking everyone I know, ‘Is this your tune, because I don’t want to get sued if it is.’ They all said, ‘No man, sounds good write it.’ Finally Kenny(Kirkland) listened to it and said, ‘That’s Brahms! Yeah that's The Third Symphony, not verbatim just the first two bars.’

Besides his compositional influences Branford’s instrumental influences are drawn from many sources.

"Artists like Shirley Horn moderate all aspects of the form such as dynamics, time and harmony. Hearing and playing with her has greatly influenced the way I approach this or any other ballad. Jeff and Bob like to play ballads in single time and from time to time although I’ve aquiesced, I prefer ballads which have space and float."

Since writers have to have a label to hang their hat on the comparisons between Branford's group and stellar groupings of the past abound. The perceptual problem Branford speculates is one that lies in the way most people approach music in general.

Branford: " When people, writers especially, listen to our band they look for a reference. What band does this remind my readers and myself of? Very few of those guys can tell you why John Coltrane's group was great. What they will tell you is that it was intense and exciting. Our music is very intense and sometimes exciting, if it's played right. They hear that and think John Coltrane. Most musicians much less the listening public can't get into the minute details of melody. It's what seperates the good from the average. What people do best is memorize. I've learned that from watching my son. If you remove crucial elements of a song, even one most people are familiar with they won't recognize it. We played elements of a rock song that was a favorite of a writer who was in attendance. When I refered to them later he was unaware of the passages we had played. We aren't doing it to be tricky or confuse anyone, but inserting snatches of any melody verbatim is artificial. One great lesson I learned about playing Be-Bop was that if hear a melody in your head before you play it, don't."

Talent runs through the Marsalis family like some runaway virus. Though the family boasts four major recording talents (Ellis, Branford, Wynton, Delfeayo (watch out for drummer Jason who appeared on Ellis’ (Heart Of Gold), Branford's ear and melodic acumen, like his brother Wynton's, was not passed on solely through familial musicial genes or the instruction of professor Ellis Marsalis. Rather it was the exposure to jazz that Branford received in New Orleans and as a member of the Marsalis household which made the crucial difference.

"Contrary to popular belief I did not like jazz as a child. (And for that matter neither did his brother Wynton) Branford said."All I wanted to do was play in my funk band and get girls phone numbers. At the New Orleans Jazz Festival Dizzy was playing. I wasn't listening I was talking and being loud, but I was there!" What I did appreciate was growing up in a jazz enviroment. I remember Joe Zawinul and Cannonball Adderley coming over to the house to to play. I'd be sitting on the sofa bored to death, I hated it. But I was exposed. I asked some guys when they first started to like jazz and they told me they heard it in music appreciation in junior high. I remember hearing my father practice when I was two or three, not being able to respond but I could feel the music."

The ability to achieve success in his wide ranging creative endeavors, movies,hip-hop, T.V. and Rock and Roll may very well have worked against him. He was criticized for his excursions into the other arts as well as other forms of music. It was during one of those excursions(Sting's Band) that I made Branford's aquaintence. He was at the time hungry to talk to anyone about jazz instead of answering question's about what Sting was really like. Part of his musical wanderlust may very well have generated from his nascence in the musical melting pot of New Orleans.

"Growing up in New Orleans was a unique experience. It's one of the only places where you can hear so many types of music that are indigenous to the area: Country, Blues, R&B, Cajun, Jazz, even meter songs that wouldn't mean anything to someone outside New Orleans, but everyone starts dancing when they hear that beat. And the clubs like Tipitina's, all the small clubs where you'd hear players like Professor Longhair and Dr. John, who along with James Booker if the foremost exponent of the "uptown sound". I was'nt a club rat but you couldn't miss it. It's part of the life there not just the avocation of a select few. I used to get bored very easily, that was my problem. I couldn't play in an orchestra playing set pieces. That’s why I had to leave Wynton's band. Playing jazz for five years was enough to drive me crazy. I do projects because they are musically interesting and have a dignity that I want to be a part of. I know when I’m doing good. I don't have the need to or desire to be liked anymore. Except by Sonny (Rollins), Jackie Mac(Lean), or the other great sax players."

I sometimes think that all the attention Wynton gets actually plays into Branfords hands. Not being a high profile personality early in his career may have freed Branford up to experiment, change and choose without having every step false or otherwise hung out on the line for the world to see. He never had any illusions about what playing jazz would bring him. ."

"So many people are in music for reasons other than the music itself. The biggest gripes I hear are all about respect and neglect. What does that have to do with the price of tea in Afghanistan! If you choose to play jazz in the nineties the facts are laid out in front of you. You know what happened to Parker, Dizzy and Miles. I think it’s the best thing that ever happened because the people who are there , are there for the music. Or they wouldn’t be there at all. While others like a curly-headed midget who advertises himself as the saviour of jazz, I have a profound lack of respect for. It’s not a question of money or talent but attitude. John Halleywell, who is a sax player for a group called Super Tramp though not as serious a player as he might be, is a dedicated student of the music and I throughly enjoy seeing him whenever we meet."

Branford has given up more than most. Despite his recent appointment as musical director of the Tonight Show. ("I have a couple of mouths to feed. They let me write a new theme and the band is going to be dynamite!") I know of very few musicians who would walk away from the kind of opportunities Branford gave up, so he could concentrate on forming a band and a sound he could be proud of. A turning point came when Spike Lee who had worked with Branford on School Daze and Do The Right Thing made Branford an offer most of us couldn't refuse.

"Spike calls me up and says I want you to do this movie about a jazz musician called Love Supreme (The working title for Mo Better Blues). My mouth starts watering. It was the a great role. Instead of a happy go lucky person. I would get to play a complex, intelligent, conviving sax player.(A musician playing his own sax in a movie shades of Round Midnight). I had to say no. I got this killer band together and for us to deal with the complexity of the music we were playing I had to call a moratorium on those kind of "distractions". I had my fill of solo projects where you call in the musicians for a night and they sight read the charts. It always ends up sounding like a blowing session not a group. So before we recorded Random Abstract we went on the road for 10 months. I call it my slept on record. Because everybody loved Renaissance and slept on Random Abstract."

It was on Random Abstract and later Trio Jeepy that Branford's love affair with Ornette's music became evident. The lack of interpretors of Coleman's music is more in line with fear of the complex form that most people have not taken the time to understand. (Ellis Marsalis pointed out this is only a natural response from a instant coffee, need it now, Pepsi culture.) It was for Branford the first small steps he took on the way to the limb he currently finds himself on.

"Most people, writers included, don’t know what made Ornette Coleman one of the greatest progenitors of this music . He was the first of the post Charley Parker musicians (Sonny and Coltrane included) to take the concept of Be Bop and re-interpret it without playing 4 and 8 bar phrases. His melodic lines in his solos could be 3,5 or 6 bars. When he stops at the 6th bar he doesn't wait two bars to make it eight and come back in like a lot of players do. He could stop at the sixth bar and wait three beats or three bars and come back in with a fresh new idea on the wrong beat and know exactly where he is. It's an incredible concept that flies in the face those people who dismiss him as happenstance or noble savage, because they simply haven't or won't spend the time it takes to grasp what he's doing. Ornettes byline has always been, 'yeah man, he's "out"'. But four months after I started listening to him I found it's as in as anything I ever listened to. The majority of his tunes were either blues or rhythm changes but because of his interpretation people called him "out". When I played Peace by Ornette on Trio Jeepy I hadn't learned the tune well enough to play it as it had been written so I had to fall back on what I knew and play it traditionally(in four and eight bar phrases). The dumbest review was by a critic in Baltimore who wrote we had accomplished what Ornette has been trying to avoid for thirty-five years. That was to play the changes. That's such a demeaning thing to say about Ornette. I thought people are going to read and believe this ignorant sloth. Of course he was playing the changes he just plays unlike anybody before or since. One day maybe I'll be lucky and get there.

Branford's described his earlier recordings as "jazz school". They served to chart his progress as he developed in front of our eyes. "I played like Sonny, Wayne, Coltrane, Ben Webster etc.. It's been fun taking the heat for the choices I made." But when you get to present a legend like Milt Hinton, who has changed the way the bass is played and whose unique instrumental technique may very well pass when he does, the choices become obvious.

"Milt was the father of the walking bass line. And there is nobody alive who slaps like he did on Three Little Words. Milt has such a majestic sound! Delbert Felix(who has a big sound) couldn't believe the difference between his sound and what Milt got with the same miking. He said it was because Milt had a better bass. So Milt said here play my axe. So Delbert plays and gets this sound boom, boom, boom...And then Milt plays and it's BOOM, BOOM, BOOM."

Brandford is not given the credit for the contribution he has made to the historical documentation of jazz. As further evidence of that fact his newest album is going to be devoted to the blues. Do for a June 1992 release it will feature artists such as B.B. King, John Lee Hooker, Ruth Brown and others performing everything from jazz to chain gang songs with Branford's Quartet withKenny Kirkland.

"Blues is the basis of American Music. Which i believe demonstrates that it's one of our most sophisticated conceptions. Our highbrow listening public always points to the simplicity of the form. Though the form is simple it's very complex when you do it right. Especially when your dealing with artists like John Lee Hooker who don't adhere to the twelve bar form. Bob(Hurst) and listened over and over to John Lee Hooker with all the other instruments out of the mix, until we discovered he was singing and playing 10 bar phrases. He sometimes played 9 sometimes ten. Like all masters he has his own instantly recognizable unique way of playing. Howlin Wolf expressed it best when he said, "Sometimes I play it longer and sometimes I play it shorter."

One of Branford Marsalis' gifts is his joie d’ vivre. Something most of us lost or never had. We endow it's possessors with a sort of ageless golden boy quality that's damnably tough to shake. One night looking at him jam with Betty Carter, I realized he was no longer a wonder kin but a seasoned performer about to make a lasting contribution. He carried himself with an authority which I must admit came as a shock to me. It's like having one of your friends grow up and grow away from as they start heading down their own road in earnest.

"I'm 31 now! I'm married, I have a kid, plus I'm just a better musician than I was at twenty-four. I was just happy to be playing when I was younger. There was a youthful exuberance to the music . And I think that's what everybody liked about Wynton's Band. We were fiery, cocky and young. But there was no sense of immediacy. Now there is a sense of immediacy. And there's a control over our instruments that we're absolutely sure of. I stopped viewing every elder statesman with such awe. With the work I've done to improve my playing, I can't help but believing that I belong here."