Word: wynton
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...close, almost symbiotic relationship between Wynton and Branford marked their childhood and continued into their young manhood. Wynton, extraordinarily disciplined and driven by an insatiable desire to excel, was a straight-A student who starred in Little League baseball, practiced his trumpet three hours a day and won every music competition he ever entered. Branford, older by 13 months, was an average student, a self-described "spaz" in sports and a naturally talented musician who hated to practice. Yet both brothers deny that there was any rivalry between them. "Our personalities were formed to each other," says Wynton...
...When Wynton entered NOCCA at 15, his musical development shifted into high gear. Tom Tewes, the school's founding principal, recalls that he was a "brilliant student, always at the top." Says Arlene McCarthy, a New Orleans attorney and former NOCCA student: "Everybody knew he was destined to do so much in music." For all his current stress on roots, Wynton showed little interest in the New Orleans jazz tradition while growing up there. His main exposure to jazz came from listening to his father's modern quintet play at Lu and Charlie's, a restaurant on the edge...
...classical stage that Wynton first made his mark. In addition to playing at NOCCA-sponsored concerts and recitals, he became a regular performer with the New Orleans Civic Symphony, the New Orleans Philharmonic and the Philharmonic's touring brass quintet. Composer and conductor Gunther Schuller vividly remembers the time Wynton showed up at New York City's Wellington Hotel in the summer of 1978 to audition for the Tanglewood Music Center, of which Schuller was artistic director. After impressing the judges with his virtuosity on the Haydn trumpet concerto, Wynton offered to play Bach's extremely difficult Second Brandenburg Concerto...
Butler also claims some credit for the clean-cut image that set the trumpeter apart from scruffy rockers and fusionists. Back in his Jazz Messengers days, Marsalis would go onstage in tennis shoes and overalls. "But once we started to talk about appearance," says Butler, "Wynton began to epitomize what jazz musicians ought to look like." Indeed, sartorial elegance has become de rigueur among the new generation of jazzmen...
Columbia made sure that its star stayed visible. The company assigned him to high-powered publicist Marilyn Laverty, who represented rock star Bruce Springsteen, and she soon generated reams of press clips. Wynton is the first to admit that Columbia's salesmanship had a lot to do with his popular success, but claims not to take it seriously. "It has nothing to do with artistic merit or substance," he says. Adds brother Delfeayo, who has produced more than a dozen albums for Columbia and other labels: "Sure, Wynton has the hype. He created the hype: he was cute and articulate...