Sep 14, 2026 · 31 min · 10 segments
In a personal conversation with Sweet Song Podcast host Kristi York Wooten just ahead of what would have been jazz saxophone icon John Coltrane's 100th birthday, Branford Marsalis opens up about his…
We talked about attack, and this is where I wanted to talk with you because I went back to listen to Big Nick and the...
And, and listening to that and kind of the difference in the readiness of the tones, and your version is very bright with attack, and that's very much the way the quartet has been in recent years.
I would, I would never know that this was a, you know, something that was recorded years and years ago.
And there's, there's two versions on the record, right? There's gonna be an extra version.
Uh, it was great that John wrote it for Big Nick, who was a great and, uh, garrulous fella.
And Big Nick was like, "Hey, young fella, when you meet me, whenever you see me, the greeting shall be I'm gonna look at you and say, 'Opalockum,' and you have to say, 'Deedlum.' You got it?" I said, "Yes, sir." And then he would say, "Hey, Marcellus, Opalockum." "Deedlum." I mean, [chuckles] so he, he was this really amazing personality, and he, he knew Trane really well.
And Trane wrote a song for him, and it's on the, the, the, the Duke Ellington record.
So again, rather than go for the obvious overcomplicated stuff, we just decided to, you know, let's, yeah, let's play Big Nick.
We did a version with piano, then we did a version without piano, and then we did another version with piano, and I said, "All right, we're good.
We talked about attack, and this is where I wanted to talk with you because I went back to listen to Big Nick and the...
And, and listening to that and kind of the difference in the readiness of the tones, and your version is very bright with attack, and that's very much the way the quartet has been in recent years.
I would, I would never know that this was a, you know, something that was recorded years and years ago.
And there's, there's two versions on the record, right? There's gonna be an extra version.
Uh, it was great that John wrote it for Big Nick, who was a great and, uh, garrulous fella.
And Big Nick was like, "Hey, young fella, when you meet me, whenever you see me, the greeting shall be I'm gonna look at you and say, 'Opalockum,' and you have to say, 'Deedlum.' You got it?" I said, "Yes, sir." And then he would say, "Hey, Marcellus, Opalockum." "Deedlum." I mean, [chuckles] so he, he was this really amazing personality, and he, he knew Trane really well.
And Trane wrote a song for him, and it's on the, the, the, the Duke Ellington record.
So again, rather than go for the obvious overcomplicated stuff, we just decided to, you know, let's, yeah, let's play Big Nick.
We did a version with piano, then we did a version without piano, and then we did another version with piano, and I said, "All right, we're good.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.