Last week I had the good fortune to have interviewed Delfeayo Marsalis (See April 12^th issue of Worcester Magazine). In our chat we talked about a variety of subjects that didn’t show up in the article. At the time, he was holed in a hotel in Wilmington, N.C., where he was working on a new bio pic on the life and times of trumpeter Buddy Bolden. Delfeayo was hired as the music producer. His older brother, Wynton, was hired to write the score and supply the trumpet parts.

"It’s based on the book by Donald Marquis, In Search of Buddy Bolden," he says. "There’s another book, <I>Coming Through Slaughter<P>, which is highly fictional. I’m working with actors to make them look like musicians. They need someone on set who is more like a producer.

Actor Anthony Mackie stars as Bolden. "He is working with Wynton to get it right, but you know it is difficult to in a matter of months to assume a posture, as though you have been playing a number of years," Marsalis says. "But he is very diligent."

Marsalis talked about watching videos on the set of the old masters performing to give the actors some pointers. "There was a trumpeter that came by yesterday and he was watching Tyree Glenn, one of the greatest trombonists of all time. He never missed note. I had never seen the video, but I said, ‘Watch he will never miss a note.’ He was playing high and didn’t crack a single note. But the way Tyree Glenn holds the slide is different from the way the classical players hold the slide.

"[The trumpeter] says, ‘Well, I don’t know what kind of technique these guys had. These guys didn’t read but they had a lot of heart.’ It made me realize how little he knows and how little people know about the history of jazz.

"The guy said, ‘It would be considered bad technique in the orchestra.’ I said, ‘It might be considered and an unorthodox technique but I guarantee you if someone came into the symphony with that technique playing Wagner the way that Tyree Glenn just played jazz, he’d have a job."

So that condescension still exists between some classical and jazz players?

"There are guys like that, that say, so and so is a great legit player," Marsalis says. "We sat and watched a video. There was a band of – Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster and Gerry Mulligan, Vic Dickenson – heavyweights. It was 1957, Sound of Jazz. Whenever somebody would play something really technical, I’d say, ‘Not bad for an ill-legit cat.’ It’s to the point where the guys don’t even think about it. Then don’t even mean it. I pointed out to them this was not a working band. So you had to figure these guys read the music down on the spot."

Marsalis lives in New Orleans. Katrina is still an impact. I asked how he and the city were holding up?

"I’m good. The city isn’t, but that’s how it is," he says. "I think that the country in most places other than the South are better prepared. The South is ill prepared for major tragedy of this nature. It’s completely different because the heart of the city was where musicians lived, who had families and extended families, generations. There’s a big push to bring back the musicians without the considerations of their extended families. It’s interesting. I get a number of calls. ‘Well, we got to bring these musicians back.’ They don’t necessarily want to return."

Marsalis is currently on tour in support of his brilliant new disc, Minions Dominion, featuring the last recording of the late drummer Elvin Jones. I asked him about a particular quote attributed to Jones about John Coltrane.

"Yeah, that was a quote he told me," Marsalis says. "When I was on the road with him, one of the guys came in the band and we were talking to Elvin and he said, ‘What was it like playing with Coltrane?’ We were expecting, you know, ‘That was great.’ Elvin said, ‘You got to be ready to die for a mutherf**ker to play like that. We kind of chuckled. Then there was a certain look he had in his eye. We weren’t prepared for that. We were like, ‘Oh, that’s what it takes. Okay Elvin. Thanks. We’ll see you later.’"

For additional information on Delfeayo go to: www.delfeayomarsalis.com