Another day, another blog post about a trumpet player. So it goes...
Today is Wynton Marsalis's birthday. He is the greatest living trumpet player in the world. He belongs on the Mount Rushmore of Jazz (my very subjective list: Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie and Marsalis).
The first time I heard of Marsalis is when my Grandmother gave me one of his early cassettes back in 1984 when I started playing the trumpet. She had seen him on PBS and he had just become the first person to win a Grammy in both Jazz and Classical music. That cassette tape was Hot House Flowers and it blew my fifth-grade mind.
I've seen Wynton Marsalis live only twice. Once in 1993 in the small auditorium at Bethany College in Lindsborg, Kansas. I was in college playing trumpet in the jazz program at Southern Nazarene University and had driven up from Oklahoma to visit my parents in nearby McPherson, Kansas. They had gotten me tickets for my 20th birthday. The morning after the concert Marsalis taught a Masters Class in Jazz in the same auditorium. I got there an hour early so I could get a front row seat. I sat on the front row in the center and even got to ask Marsalis a question. He asked if I was a trumpet player. I answered back and then he answered my question. I will consider that a conversation! I had asked him his advice in increasing range.
The second time I saw Wynton Marsalis live was ten years later at the Lied Center at the University of Kansas in 2003. My wife had surprised me with tickets for my 30th birthday and we drove all the way up from to Texas to Lawrence, Kansas. We had seats on the front row. His Septet focused most of their evening on songs from their Majesty of the Blues album. And I remember thinking I had never seen a musician command the stage like Wynton Marsalis. It was fantastic. An unforgettable experience.
So Happy Birthday WM! Keep swingin'!
