Pianist and NOLa. Jazz family patriarch Ellis Marsalis Jr. dies

6th April 2020   ·   0 Comments

By Geraldine Wyckoff
Contributing Writer

Ellis Marsalis believed in music, education, family and reflective thinking. He applied those credos as an accomplished jazz pianist, bandleader and composer, a dedicated teacher and a hard working man raising his six sons with his wife of 58 years, Dolores. Marsalis’ influence spread throughout the globe through his highly successful sons, saxophonist Branford, trumpeter Wynton, trombonist Delfeayo and drummer/vibist Jason along with the many students with whom he shared his knowledge and wisdom. The piano great, whose sons also include poet/photographer Ellis Marsalis III and Mboya, was a humble and much respected man of great integrity. Ellis Marsalis died on Wednesday, April 1, 2020 at the age of 85.

“There’s no logic to how I got into music,” said Marsalis in a 2014 interview explaining that neither of his parents played an instrument. “There was only one radio station in the city of New Orleans and its call letters were WJBW and I listened to that whenever I could.”

Marsalis offered that maybe the Gert Town neighborhood where the family lived before moving to Jefferson Parish made a subliminal impression on him. “Later on, I realized our landlady’s brother, Narvin Kimball, played bass and banjo. Papa ‘Albert’ French lived in the middle of the block where we lived at 1300 Telemachus Street. I didn’t know any of these people at the time – I was only 10 years old. I’m just a survivor in this,” Marsalis said in a 1990 “JazzTimes” feature story. “I didn’t design any of this and most of it wasn’t supposed to happen anyway. I don’t really consider myself a success; my children are successful because what they did was by design.”

In 1944, his father, Ellis Marsalis Sr., purchased some property at River Road and Shrewsbury Road in Jefferson Parish and a guy suggested that he build a motel. He went for that idea and it grew from four or five rooms to 35.

“It became a place for people who knew about it because in those days Blacks couldn’t stay downtown,” Marsalis said. “Martin Luther King stayed there and Ray Charles’ band stayed there. My daddy was somebody who didn’t want to work for nobody,” Ellis noted. “I think that’s why I always wanted to have my own group like he always wanted to have his own business.”

Marsalis certainly accomplished that goal drawing crowds to his 30 years of gigs at Snug Harbor and recording multiple fine albums under his own name. As a pianist, Marsalis was highly influenced by beboppers and often brought smiles to those in the know when, in old-school style, he’d throw in quotes from familiar jazz classics. Marsalis was a modernist who captured audiences – minus flash – through the sheer purity and beauty of his playing, especially on his original tunes like “Syndrome,” that has become a part of the New Orleans modern jazz songbook. The pianist would also often return to his longtime affiliate, drum master and composer James Black’s “Magnolia Triangle,” keeping it vital and bringing it to new audiences.

At the 2019 Satchmo Summer-Fest, Marsalis – wearing his red vest for the occasion – gained the admiration and turned the ears of many folks whose first love was for traditional jazz. There were cheers all around for Ellis Marsalis, an artist who obviously believed in music.

A young Ellis became infatuated with clarinetist Artie Shaw after hearing him on the radio. He began playing the instrument at age 11. Marsalis’ formal education started when his mother enrolled him and his sister at the Xavier University Junior School of Music, a preparatory institution. There he met many people who would play an important part in his musical life. “Edward Frank (known later as an exquisite jazz pianist) was playing violin in the orchestra and Germaine Bazzle (now a renowned vocalist) was playing the string bass,” he recalled.

By the time Marsalis went to high school, he realized that the saxophone was “in” and soon played his first paying job on sax performing rhythm and blues at a YWCA. “The first tenor solo I learned was on Roy Brown’s ‘Good Rockin’ Tonight,’” Marsalis said. “The first bebop band I heard was Dizzy Gillespie’s big band in 1949. After I heard that, I knew that’s what I wanted to do.”

Marsalis gradually moved from saxophone to piano – an instrument he’d been “foolin’ around with” in the family’s home. He was impressed with its possibilities after hearing Ed Frank practicing at the Xavier School. “I said, ‘Hey man, what is that?’ and he showed me how to play the chords.” A major breakthrough on piano came when he began studying privately with Jean Constance Maloney. “One day she said, ‘I want you to play some jazz,’” Marsalis recalled. “Well, in those days, when a piano teacher said that, you had to wonder if he or she was trying to trick you, but Jean was a different kind of piano teacher.”

Marsalis went on to attend Dillard University and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in music education, an important element in his “no design” career as a musician and educator. After service in the U.S. Marine Corps, he and his growing family, moved to Breaux Bridge in 1964 where Marsalis became band director at Carver High School. From 1966 through 1974, Marsalis played at what now – considering his esteemed position in modern jazz – seem like unlikely spots at Bourbon Street’s Playboy Club and trumpeter Al Hirt’s club. Lu & Charlie’s, a modern jazz mecca on North Rampart Street, was also a regular spot to find Ellis at the piano and a place he could let his modern jazz chops shine. Son Wynton still fondly recalled going there as a child to hear him play.

“When I was growing up, I was always at the gigs with him,” Wynton remembered in a 2014 interview. “It was just continuous seriousness year after year no matter who was there. His seriousness was self generated. He didn’t depend on crowd excitement or the number of people to make him be serious. From watching him it made me be like that.”

The year 1974 was a landmark time for Marsalis, who received his Masters degree from Loyola University. He also joined the faculty at the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts (NOCCA) to head the jazz department where he would spend the next 12 years. It was there that Marsalis’ reputation as a jazz educator grew, particularly after his now-famous sons and students like pianist and vocalist Harry Connick Jr., trumpeter Nicholas Payton and more began hitting the national jazz scene.

“NOCCA was a workshop for me. It helped me put together a concept of understanding of what people do when they are in the process of dealing with improvised material,” Marsalis said. He applied his philosophy of reflective thinking in the classroom where he often spoke of world view philosophies in relationship to music and life.

Marsalis once defined reflective thinking as “when you come to a point in your life where you are able to see a picture and come to some conclusions – even spontaneous conclusions – like scientists do with theories.” An interview with Ellis was similar in that, if asked a question, he would go around the world, an always interesting and informative journey, in reply.

It was a shock to most people in the New Orleans music community when Marsalis left his hometown in 1986 to take a position at the Virginia Commonwealth University. Simply, he was frustrated with the school system and was offered more money by the Richmond institution. On the announcement of his departure, no inducements to stay were forthcoming.

“No, I didn’t feel under-appreciated; I knew it,” Marsalis said with a laugh.

Two years after Marsalis took the position in Richmond, Gregory O’Brien, the then chancellor of the University of New Orleans, made the trip up to Virginia to ask Marsalis to return to New Orleans and become the director of the Coca Cola Endowed Chair of the Jazz Studies at the university. “I didn’t expect any of that,” Marsalis says. “Dolores kept me from selling this house (which they purchased in 1975) – I tried to,” he admitted. Ellis continued to live in the modest uptown home with his son Mboya until just before his passing.

One of Marsalis’ first moves on taking the position at UNO was to call in his old friend, saxophonist, producer, arranger and educator Harold Battiste for assistance in developing the program. Though Battiste had long enjoyed a successful career in California, he stepped right up to take the job. Battiste’s AFO (All For One) label produced Marsalis’ first recording session, playing piano with the American Jazz Quartet on drum master Ed Blackwell’s killer album “Boogie Live… 1958.” Though it was recorded in 1958, it wasn’t released until 1992. In 1963, the Ellis Marsalis Quartet recorded “Monkey Puzzle” on AFO featuring young drummer James Black, who would become a fixture in Marsalis’ bands.

It would be over a decade before Marsalis recorded as leader again, releasing a solo album, “Reflections,” on his own ELM Records label. Recording-wise, things certainly picked up with Marsalis releasing a string of albums under his own name, with his sons – individually and collectively – and with masters like the saxophonist Eddie Harris, trumpeter Nat Adderley and more. The pianist was also heard on trumpeter Kermit Ruffins’ first release, 1992’s “World on a String” and vocalist Irma Thomas’ 2008 album “Simply Grand.”

With Marsalis at the helm and aided by his ace faculty, the University of New Orleans gained a reputation as the go-to place to study jazz. Marsalis retired from his position at UNO in October 2001.

On January 11, 2011, the musical Marsalis family – Ellis, Branford, Wynton, Delfeayo and Jason – received the prestigious National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters Award that acknowledges recipients’ significant contribution to the genre. It marks the first time a family was so honored. Just seven months later, on August 25, 2011, the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music, a performance, education and community venue, opened in the heart of the Musicians Village neighborhood in New Orleans’ Upper Ninth Ward.

It was very appropriate that the title of the only recording Ellis released that included his four talented sons was 2010’s “The Marsalis Family – Music Redeems.” It represents the spirit of Ellis Marsalis as a father and the belief in the art form that was his life.

This article originally published in the April 6, 2020 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.