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A close, almost symbiotic relationship between Wynton and Branford marked their childhood and continued into their young manhood. Wynton, extraordinarily disciplined and driven by an insatiable desire to excel, was a straight-A student who starred in Little League baseball, practiced his trumpet three hours a day and won every music competition he ever entered. Branford, older by 13 months, was an average student, a self-described "spaz" in sports and a naturally talented musician who hated to practice. Yet both brothers deny that there was any rivalry between them. "Our personalities were formed to each other," says Wynton.
When Wynton entered NOCCA at 15, his musical development shifted into high gear. Tom Tewes, the school's founding principal, recalls that he was a "brilliant student, always at the top." Says Arlene McCarthy, a New Orleans attorney and former NOCCA student: "Everybody knew he was destined to do so much in music." For all his current stress on roots, Wynton showed little interest in the New Orleans jazz tradition while growing up there. His main exposure to jazz came from listening to his father's modern quintet play at Lu and Charlie's, a restaurant on the edge of the French Quarter. He never heard any of the older musicians playing at Preservation Hall -- neither, in fact, did his father have any real contact with that world. The closest Wynton came to performing jazz in those years was working with Branford in a funk band called the Creators. Wynton used most of his pay -- $75 a gig -- to buy the small piccolo trumpets he needed to play baroque music.
It was on the classical stage that Wynton first made his mark. In addition to playing at NOCCA-sponsored concerts and recitals, he became a regular performer with the New Orleans Civic Symphony, the New Orleans Philharmonic and the Philharmonic's touring brass quintet. Composer and conductor Gunther Schuller vividly remembers the time Wynton showed up at New York City's Wellington Hotel in the summer of 1978 to audition for the Tanglewood Music Center, of which Schuller was artistic director. After impressing the judges with his virtuosity on the Haydn trumpet concerto, Wynton offered to play Bach's extremely difficult Second Brandenburg Concerto. "While he was warming up," says Schuller, "he concealed himself behind a pillar, so I leaned over to see what he was doing. He was pumping the valves and talking to his trumpet, saying, 'Now don't let me down.' He knocked off the first three phrases flawlessly. We were overwhelmed by his talent."
He entered New York City's elite Juilliard School the following year and immediately began sitting in with bands at local jazz clubs. Pianist James Williams, 38, recalls the time that Marsalis, sporting an Afro and long sideburns, showed up at McHale's and sat in with drummer Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. "Really, we were very excited," says Williams. "We all knew he was going to be great." Marsalis knew it too. "He wasn't arrogant; he was just so self-assured," says McCarthy, who was by then studying at Barnard College. "He knew that by meeting the right people he would make it." Sure enough, Blakey asked Marsalis a few months later to join his band.