New York Second Line

Wynton Marsalis joined Art Blakey's band as a teenager without having heard a single Blakey record — just playing scales over the chords, not yet knowing that a solo is something you construct, as he admitted at twenty-two. That was the starting point of the man later cast as jazz's traditionalist-in-chief.

Terence Blanchard has picked up multiple Oscar nominations for film scoring, but his career started as a 20-year-old trumpeter. He was tapped to replace Wynton Marsalis in Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, appearing on the band's 1983 record New York Second Line.