Wynton Marsalis On Ed Bradley

Full Transcript Of Steve Kroft's Interview

(CBS) 

STEVE KROFT: How well did you get to know him?

WYNTON MARSALIS: He treated me like I was his son or his brother. He embraced me personally. He embraced my organization [Jazz at Lincoln Center]. He did unbelievable work. He expended a lot of his energy for us and for jazz. He wrote our radio shows. He put up money for the shows. We would talk, just about culture, about American culture. This was a man of deep culture, completely lacking in any type of guile, any type of prejudice. He was a man that embraced the world, humanity. So I knew him and I respected him and I loved him, you know? As a person who's in the spotlight or a person who's in the media, he brought a sense of the culture of the world to all of us with such power and such realism. And he was so down home at the same time. So, yeah, I knew him. I mean, I loved him. I respected him. Every word he told me meant a lot, and he had a lot of advice. He always had words. “Think about this.” Or, “What do you think about this?” Or, “What are y'all doing?”

STEVE KROFT: You said he'd helped you. That he'd been a big help to you.

WYNTON MARSALIS: Oh, unbelievable. He was an unbelievable help to me as a man, because you need guidance and leadership all through your life. You can be 75 years old and you need some type of leadership, somebody to say, “Did you think about this? Did you see this? This reminds me of this.” You need them to give you that information and need to know that they love you. He loved our culture. Our people. By our people, I mean Afro-American people. I mean American people. And I mean people. Because ultimately, they're one and the same. He understood that. He understood that thread that runs through humanity.

The things he did for us at Jazz at Lincoln Center: first, he made sure the radio show stayed alive. You know, he wanted to do that radio show. One time, we had trouble with the radio show, and we were going to have to cancel it because it was losing money, even though we were winning the Peabody Award and stuff like that, thanks to him. He sat up in a board meeting and he threw down some money for the radio show. He'd volunteer all of his time to do all of these shows, and it took a tremendous amount of time and effort and energy. That's what he did for our organization.

I believe personally as a man, he started helping me before I was a teenager. When I was just looking at him, I was like, okay, you can aspire to be this type of man. Not just as an Afro-American; as an American, as a person because, like I said, he is a man of culture, of American culture. He would start talking about the Constitution. He would go into something about Ralph Ellison; he would say something about William Faulkner; he could talk about Jerry Mulligan's music. Then, he started talking Dr John and the Neville Brothers. He embraced the totality of our way of life.

STEVE KROFT: How did people react to him?

WYNTON MARSALIS: Everybody loved him. You walk down the street with him, people loved him. You know, everybody loved him. They just give you a little sign. They give you some love. They look at you. They tap their heart. When you're getting out of a place, people come to you to shake your hand. They don't want to spend a lot of time. “Man, I love your work. I love you.” Everybody loved Ed. How could you not love him? You couldn't help it.

STEVE KROFT: How did you react at the news?

WYNTON MARSALIS: Man, it hit me hard. I always try to be kind of stoic, but it hit me hard. Because I didn't know he was that ill. I was up at like two o'clock, two thirty, three in the morning trying to find people to call. I started to call people on the West Coast. I said I got to call people to just talk about Ed. You know, the old people used to say, I'm gonna come sit with you. They just sit and let you talk. I got over eighty-something phone calls from people, [telling me] “We know that was your man.” It's a great loss for all of us. Man, it was hard. It's gonna be harder as it goes on. I mean, we lost a great champion of our way of life.

STEVE KROFT:
I've talked to a lot of people in the last couple of days about Ed as being black. How did that fit into his life? How important was that? How did it shape him?

WYNTON MARSALIS: Well, being an Afro-American, yeah, it shaped him, because that was his culture. He embraced himself. He didn't run from himself. He understood that the Afro-American culture is at the center of the American culture, and he was the type of person that embraced the totality of our culture, meaning Afro-American culture and American culture. They're inseparable, and he understood that. And he represented that.

He was himself. He didn't act any different when you saw him at your house than he acted on an interview you saw on national television. What you saw was what you got. So, it impacted him in that he understood what that experience was. The grandeur of that experience. He understood the richness that came from the legacy of slavery; it wasn't all just pathology. He was always aspiring for greatness for the Afro-American people, because he understood that that would lead to greatness for American people. This was a man of a keen penetrating intelligence, and also of courage and fire. He had so much fire and courage.