////It really doesn't surprise me that much that "kids", which I assume means people under 18, don't know much about a person who was a member of their great-grandfather's (or even great-great-grandfather's) generation. Hell, I'm a grandfather, and Charlie Parker died when I was 9!////

But what Marsalis is saying is that enough time has passed that Parker's musical legacy has been firmly established but what good is it if kids today don't know what that legacy is or even who Charlie Parker was?

I think by about 5th grade, every American student should know what blues is,how it is structured, how it evolved, who the major players were and have some experience actually playing it. They should know if it's 12-bar, 8-bar or 16-bar. They should know what key it's in. They should know what I-IV-V means. They should know what AAB refers to. They should know the differences and similarities between blues and jazz.

And why should they know this? Because blues is the basis of our musical traditions. I mean, there were other influences but blues is a huge part of it, the biggest part by far. How can we have this cultural identity and yet be so abysmally ignorant about it? We can't. What you don't use, you lose.

In Japan, they teach children to develop perfect pitch. I read that the highest rate of perfect pitch in a population is in Japan. We should be teaching that here. Do you think Mozart or Beethoven or Bach could have achieved what they did with our present educational system? I don't. So how many Mozarts or Bachs or we likely to turn out? I would say none.

I remember watching an old black man on TV once playing and singing blues for these black kids. He actually clawhammered a banjo and sang some old, old stuff. When he was finished, he asked, "How many of you would like to learn the banjo--the black man's heritage?" These kids just stood there and looked at him like he was a complete idiot. You could see the sneer in their eyes. Of course, I would have been like Arnold Horshack with my hand up going, "OOOO OOOO OOOO OOOO OOOO OOOOO OOOO!!!!" But I wasn't there.