Sneak Peek: Terence Blanchard Podcast

Jo Reed: You worked with Art Blakey early in your career, and I'm curious about the influence of Art Blakey on you, on your approach to music because you quote him a lot.

Terence Blanchard: I quote him all the time because there's so many things that he gave us that ring true in my life. He always used to tell us, “Never speak above your audience. Never speak beneath then. Just speak straight to them.” That's one thing he always used to say. He always used to say, “Never try to be too hip,” he said, “because two hips make a butt,” you know what I mean? So there were a lot of little things like that, and when he would talk to us about playing certain tunes-- if you're going to play a ballad, he would say, “ Play the ballad. You’ll get a chance to do something else on another tune. Don't try to play everything on every tune. Let each piece of music be what it's supposed to be.” And those things are things that I live my life and I create my music by. So I've been blessed, man, with being around great musicians who have helped me a great deal and helped kind of set my musical ideology.