Transcript of conversation with Christian McBride

Christian McBride: When I met Wynton Marsalis he came to Philadelphia to give a workshop.  I must have been 14, 14 or 15, and I had all of his albums up to that point, and I learned as much music off of those albums as I could because I wanted to be prepared.    I had fallen so deeply in love with jazz I was just soaking up as much music as I could every second of the day.  I had a very strong repertoire for a 15-year-old, I think, because I was really spending all of my time just studying music, transcribing solos, learning tunes.  So if one day Winton Marsalis would ask me to sit in with him I'd be prepared.  And that's exactly what happened.  Wynton came to do this workshop.  I met him, we played together, he seem to like what he heard, and a few weeks later he was doing a performance at The Academy of Music in Philly and he asked to come sit in.  And we didn't talk about it.  I had no idea he was going to do that.  He gets on the microphone and he says, "Ladies and gentleman, a few days ago I met this young kid.  He's a good bass player, and I think you're going to be hearing a lot about him," and I'm backstage like, "Oh my god.  What's he going to do?"  And he calls me out to play.  And from that moment on word started to spread around, "There's this kid in Philly.  He might be able to do something."