captioning funded by cbs and ford >> kroft: what's the headline here? >> "stock market's rigged." the united states stock market, the most iconic market in... in global capitalism is rigged. >> kroft: by whom? >> by a combination of these stock exchanges, the big wall street banks, and high frequency traders. >> kroft: who are the victims? >> everybody who has an investment in the stock market. >> kroft: so who figured all this out and what's being done to correct it? best-selling author michael lewis talks about it for the first time tonight on "60 minutes." >> pelley: it's a technological marvel that scorches the pavement-- zero to 60 in four seconds. the tesla model "s" is another revolutionary idea from the mind of elon musk. he's changing the car the way steve jobs changed the phone.

like jobs, he's a perfectionist in the art of engineering. it's a desire to discover that is behind musk's other line of vehicles. >> liftoff of the "falcon 9..." ♪ ♪ >> marcus roberts! >> please help me welcome to the stage, marcus roberts. >> marsalis: the good lord giveth, he taketh away. marcus roberts lost his sight, but gained a rare insight into the soul of american music. he's a virtuoso who remembers, as a kid, picking out songs he heard on the radio. >> like, for example, stevie wonder's tune "i wish." ♪ ♪ >> marsalis: well, let me hear the right hand with the left hand. ♪ ♪ ( laughter ) >> i'm steve kroft. >> i'm lesley stahl. >> i'm morley safer.

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>> kroft: this month marks the fifth anniversary of the current bull market on wall street, making it one of the longest and strongest in history. yet u.s. stock ownership is at a record low, and less than half of americans trust banks and financial services. in the last two weeks, the new york attorney general and the commodities futures trading commission in washington have both launched investigations into high frequency computerized stock trading that now controls more than half the market. the probes were announced just ahead of a much anticipated book on the subject by best-selling author michael lewis called "flash boys." in it, lewis argues that the stock market is now rigged to benefit a group of insiders that have made tens of billions of dollars exploiting computerized trading. the story is told through an unlikely cast of characters who figured out what was going on and devised a plan to correct it. it could have a huge impact on wall street.

tonight, michael lewis talks about it for the first time. what's the headline here? >> michael lewis: "stock market's rigged." the united states stock market, the most iconic market in... in global capitalism is rigged. >> kroft: by whom? >> lewis: by a combination of these stock exchanges, the big wall street banks, and high frequency traders. >> kroft: who are the victims? >> lewis: everybody who has an investment in the stock market. >> kroft: michael lewis is not talking about the stock market that you see on television every day. that ceased to be the center of u.s. financial activity years ago, and exists today mostly as a photo op. this is the stock market that lewis is talking about, the one where most of the trades take place now, inside hundreds of thousands of these black boxes located at more than 60 public and private exchanges, where billions of dollars in stock change hands every day with little or no public documentation.

the trades are being made by thousands of robot computers, programmed to buy and sell every stock on the market at speeds 100 times faster than you can blink an eye-- a system so complex, it's all but invisible. >> lewis: if it wasn't complicated, it wouldn't be allowed to happen. the complexity disguises what is happening. if it's so complicated, you can't understand it, then you can't question it. >> kroft: and this is all being done by computers. >> lewis: all being done by computers. it's too fast to be done by humans. humans have been completely removed from the marketplace. >> kroft: "fast" is the operative word. machines with secret programs are now trading stocks in tiny fractions of a second, way too fast to be seen or recorded on a stock ticker or computer screen, faster than the market itself. high frequency traders, big wall street firms, and stock exchanges have spent billions to gain an advantage of a millisecond for themselves and their customers, just to get a peek at stock market prices and

orders a flash before everyone else, along with the opportunity to act on it. >> lewis: the insiders are able to move faster than you. they're able to see your order and... and play it against other orders in ways that you don't understand. they're able to front run your order. >> kroft: what do you mean "front run"? >> lewis: means they're able to identify your desire to buy shares in microsoft and buy them in front of you and sell them back to you at a higher price. it all happens in infinitesimally small periods of time. there's speed advantage that the faster traders have is milliseconds, some of it is fractions of milliseconds. but it's enough for them to identify what you're going to do and do it before you do it, at your expense. >> kroft: so it drives the price up. >> lewis: so it drives the price up, and in turn, you pay a higher price. >> kroft: michael lewis is not the first person to allege the stock market is rigged, or that high frequency traders are front running the market. but he was the first to find brad katsuyama, who is the first

to figure out how it was being done. >> lewis: a very unlikely character, a trader at the royal bank of canada, a young canadian man named brad katsuyama realized that the market that he thought he knew had changed. the market seemed to be willing to sell a stock. but the minute he went to buy it, someone else bought it, the stock went up. it was as if someone knew what he was doing before he did it. >> kroft: back in 2008, katsuyama was 30 years old and running the royal bank of canada's stock desk in new york with 25 traders working for him. every time one of them tried to buy a large block of stock for a client, their order would only be partially filled and the price of the stock would go up. it kept happening over and over again. >> brad katsuyama: the best analogy i think is that your family wants to go to a concert. you go onto stubhub, there's four tickets all next to each other for 20 bucks each. you put in an order to buy four tickets, 20 bucks each, and it says, "you've bought two tickets at 20 bucks each." and you go back and those same

two seats that are sitting there have now gone up to $25. >> kroft: what'd you think the problem was? >> katsuyama: i had no idea. i couldn't get answers. >> kroft: at first, katsuyama thought it must be that the technology at r.b.c. was slow, until he went to stamford, connecticut, and paid a visit to one of the largest hedge funds in the world. >> katsuyama: the same things that i was experiencing as a trader, one of the most sophisticated hedge funds in the world was also having the same problem. then the light bulb goes off. you say, "holy cow, this is, this is a huge problem." >> kroft: you were determined to get to the bottom of it. >> katsuyama: yeah. >> kroft: why? >> katsuyama: ( laughs ) because it just didn't feel right. it didn't feel right that people who are investing on behalf of pension funds and retirement funds are getting bait-and- switched every single day in the market. >> kroft: katsuyama suspected that the problem had something to do with plumbing, the way the trades were routed through fiber optic cables from his trading desk in lower manhattan to the 13 public exchanges in northern new jersey. but no one would tell him

exactly what happened to his orders once he hit the "buy" or "sell" button. so he put together a team of technical experts, traders and, most importantly, an irish telecom guy named ronan ryan, who was an expert on high speed fiber optic networks. >> ronan ryan: i knew nothing about trading until my first day at r.b.c., when i sat in that three-hour meeting on algorithms. i called my wife afterwards, and i'm like, "holy crap, i have no idea what they just said." >> kroft: ryan had done work for the high frequency traders. he knew what they were building, and he knew about the colossal amounts of money they were prepared to spend. he told brad about a company called spread networks that had laid a high-speed fiber optic cable from the futures market in chicago to the exchanges in new jersey. they spent $300 million just to shave three milliseconds off the fastest route, and were leasing access to high frequency traders at $10 million a pop. >> lewis: from brad katsuyama's point of view, when he heard

they were willing to spend that kind of money for milliseconds, it told him the sums involved were vast. that was one of the first questions he said he had. he says, "all right, i'm getting ripped off, everybody's getting ripped off. but what does it add up to?" and i think when he heard the story of spread networks, he realized this is tens of billions of dollars we're talking about. >> kroft: ronan ryan also knew where all the cable was buried, and had detailed maps of the fastest routes from the financial district in lower manhattan to the various stock exchanges in new jersey, all calculated down to the millisecond. >> ryan: so i would sit there, roll out maps, and roll out this data center as a box and a line going through it. and they had no idea what i was on about. and then i'd be like, "hey, are you guys aware of where these data centers are located? of course you're arriving there at different time intervals." >> kroft: for brad, the maps turned what had been an abstract idea into something he could actually see. the first place his orders were landing was the bats exchange across the river in weehawken, new jersey, and high frequency traders were lying there in wait. >> lewis: brad realizes, "oh, my

god, that's how i'm being front- runned. i'm being front-runned because my signal gets to the bats exchange first, and they can beat me to all the other exchanges." >> kroft: it only took a tiny fraction of a second for brad's trade to reach the next exchanges on the network, but the high speed traders were able to jump in front of him, buy the same stock, and drive the price up before his order arrived, producing a small profit of just one or two pennies. but it was happening to everyone's trades millions of times a day. >> ryan: that adds up. >> kroft: you make it sound like a skim. >> ryan: what else would you call it? >> lewis: one hedge fund manager said, "i was running a hedge fund that was $9 billion, and that we figured that the, just our inability to make the trades the market said we should be able to make was costing us $300 million a year." that was $300 million a year in someone else's pocket. >> kroft: is this illegal? >> lewis: no. that's the thing that's so shocking about all this. it should... >> kroft: well, you used the word "front running." front running's illegal. >> lewis: this form of front running is legal. it's legalized front running. it's crazy that it's legal for some people to get advance news on prices and what investors are

doing. it's just nuts. shouldn't happen. >> kroft: ronan knew the only way to beat the high frequency traders was to take away their milliseconds advantage that allowed them to sniff out slower trades and beat them to the exchange. he had an idea how to do it. >> katsuyama: and he said, "you're probably better off trying to go slower," which means send the order to the exchange located the farthest away first and send the order to the one that's located closest to you last. so stagger when you send them out with the goal of arriving at all places as close to the same time as possible. >> kroft: katsuyama and his team developed software that did just that, allowing the orders of royal bank of canada's customers to reach all of the exchanges at the same time, cutting the high frequency traders out of the equation. >> katsuyama: and essentially, our fill rates went to 100%. we couldn't believe it when... when we actually figured it out. >> kroft: so you beat speed by slowing it down. >> katsuyama: yeah, as crazy as that sounds. ( laughs )

>> kroft: katsuyama and his team went out and began selling and explaining what they had discovered to the big mutual funds, pension funds, and institutional investors, people who had suspicions that they were being front run but didn't know how. and nobody had really bothered or tried to figure this out until brad katsuyama came along. >> lewis: it was in nobody's interest to, correct. i spoke to dozens of investors, big investors, famous investors who... who said that, "when brad katsuyama came into my office and laid out to me how the market was rigged, my jaw hit the floor." i mean, "i knew something was wrong, i just didn't know what it was and no one had told us." >> katsuyama: part of those meetings led us to believe, "holy cow, this is... this is really something." because some of the most sophisticated, largest asset managers in the world, this is the first time they were hearing this story. >> kroft: and some of the most famous names in the american stock market heard the pitch... >> lewis: the capital group, t. rowe price, fidelity, vanguard, i mean, it, one after another. he was in their offices. they said, "this man walked in.

why is he going to know how the stock market operates?" and... and at the end of the hour, they said, "oh, my god, he understands." >> kroft: hedge fund titan david einhorn of greenlight capital is one of the believers. was he able to show you how your orders were being front run? >> david einhorn: oh, yeah. they had... they got the marker and the white board and started drawing maps and boxes, and wires and locations. and yeah, we went through it in some detail. >> kroft: did you find it interesting? >> einhorn: it was. it was. >> kroft: clients like einhorn encouraged brad and his team to do something bigger. that's when katsuyama, a conformist even by canadian standards, decided to do something radical. in 2012, he quit his high-paying job as head trader at r.b.c. and went off with some of his team to start their own exchange. you were making good money at royal bank of canada? >> katsuyama: yeah, right. >> kroft: millions of dollars? >> katsuyama: right. ( laughs ) i guess... i guess everybody knows that now? right, yeah.

>> kroft: why did you want to go off and walk away from that job and start a stock exchange? >> katsuyama: yeah, wasn't an easy conversation to have with my... my wife, that's for sure. it almost felt like a sense of obligation to say, "we found a problem. it's affecting millions and millions of people. people are blindly losing money they didn't even know they're entitled to. it's a hole in the bottom of the bucket. >> kroft: they set out to build an exchange funded exclusively by large traditional investors. they called it i.e.x., the investor's exchange, and quietly launched it in october with the support of some of the biggest players on wall street. and it comes with built-in speed bumps to eliminate the advantage of high speed predators. >> lewis: and the way they did it was they coiled 60 kilometers of fiber optic cable between themselves and the high frequency traders' computers. they call it "the magic shoe box," and it looks like it's got fishing line in it. but essentially, a high

frequency trader, if he tries to react on the i.e.x. exchange, his trade goes for 60 kilometers until... so he's... he's in east jesus. >> kroft: so it gets there the same time as everybody else. >> lewis: it gets there same time as everybody else's. >> kroft: do you think they can game you? >> ryan: i think that they'll try to game us. i think the fact, though, that we've gone and met with the majority of the biggest high frequency firms to explain what the magic shoebox is doing, and that people haven't said, "oh, that's rubbish, that won't work." we've had many ask us for a backdoor, to be honest. so that says something that it'll work. >> kroft: the exchange is off to a strong start, although it is still very small with lots of powerful enemies that like the status quo and are trying to starve i.e.x. by discouraging customers from using them. greenlight capital's david einhorn is one of the investors. do you think i.e.x. will survive? >> einhorn: i think it's going to succeed. i think it's going to succeed in a very big way. >> kroft: just last week, i.e.x. received a strong endorsement from goldman sachs, whose top executives cited it as a model

for a more stable and less complicated stock market. >> katsuyama: we're selling trust. we're selling transparency. and... and to think that trust is actually a differentiator in a service business, it's kind of a crazy thought, right? >> lewis: why is this kid, why is he able to all of a sudden sit at the center of the american stock market? and the answer is, when someone walks in the door who is actually trustworthy, he has enormous power. and this is the story-- story of trying to restore trust to the financial markets. >> cbs money watch update sponsored by:. >> good evening, tomorrow's the enrollment deadline for most americans under obamacare. apple and samsung go to trial tomorrow in their latest patent infringement fight. and tuesday congressional hearings on those gm recalls

begin. c.e.o. mary barra will testify. i'm jeff glor, cbs news.

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>> pelley: comparing the tesla model "s" to other cars is like comparing an iphone to a desk phone. it is a technological marvel that scorches the pavement-- zero to 60 in four seconds. tesla is another revolutionary idea from the mind of elon musk, a 42-year-old silicon valley entrepreneur who built an industrial empire from the stuff of little boy dreams-- fast cars and rocket ships. musk is an idealist who told us he had to start his companies so that man could colonize mars and save the earth.

his sister says it's like her brother traveled into the future and came back to tell us all about it. so, what is the future like? apparently, it's fast and smoke- free. the tesla model "s" is powered by 7,000 battery cells linked to an electric motor-- no engine, no transmission, no tailpipe. as this company video shows, the dash is dominated by a computer that's constantly connected to the internet. it has a fanatical following. there's a waiting list that elon musk is trying to shorten, building 600 model s's a week in this high-tech plant in northern california. i have heard a lot of people describe you. >> elon musk: okay, good, i mean, hopefully... on balance, hopefully, mostly good. >> pelley: how do you describe yourself? >> musk: i usually describe myself as an engineer. that's basically what i've been doing since i was a kid. i'm interested in things that

change the world or that affect the future, and wondrous, new technology, where you see it and you're like, "wow, how did that even happen? how is that possible?" >> pelley: how is it possible that elon musk could launch two impossible businesses-- space-x, a builder of rocket ships, and tesla, which could be the first successful car company start-up in america in 90 years. how did you figure you were going to start a car company and be successful at it? >> musk: well, i didn't really think tesla would be successful. i thought we would most likely fail. but i thought that we at least could address the false perception that people have that an electric car had to be ugly and slow and boring, like a golf cart. >> pelley: but you say you didn't expect the company to be successful? then, why try? >> musk: if something's important enough, you should try, even if you... the probable outcome is failure. >> pelley: what's important to musk is reducing greenhouse gases, which he believes threaten the world. the tesla will go about 250

miles on a charge, and musk is building a network of charging stations where the driver pays nothing for a fill-up. he hopes to make the stations largely solar powered one day. >> musk: you can drive for free, forever, on pure sunlight. that's the... you know, message we're trying to convey. so even if, like, there's a zombie apocalypse and the grid breaks down, you'll still be able to charge your car. >> pelley: so there's a zombie apocalypse warranty? >> musk: yes, exactly. >> pelley: and if you're running from zombies, it's good to know the model "s" won the highest quality rating in the history of "consumer reports" and has the government's highest safety rating. musk may be changing the car the way steve jobs changed the phone. like jobs, he's a perfectionist in the art of engineering. his goal wasn't to show a profit, but to reveal the possibilities. it is a desire to discover that's also behind musk's other line of vehicles.

>> liftoff of the "falcon 9." >> pelley: only four entities have launched a space capsule into orbit and successfully brought it back-- the united states, russia, china, and elon musk. this "buck rogers" dream started years ago when he had a nutty idea to fly an experimental greenhouse to mars. but he couldn't-- he discovered that the price of rockets was astronomical. so now, he builds his own. >> musk: i had so many people try to talk me out of starting a rocket company, it was crazy. >> pelley: what did they tell you? >> musk: one good friend of mine collected a whole series of videos of rockets blowing up and made me watch those. ( laughs ) he just didn't want me to lose all my money. >> pelley: he never did launch that greenhouse, but now musk is lofting commercial satellites and flying cargo to the space station for nasa at a fraction of the former cost. musk's fascination with technology dates to his childhood in south africa.

>> maye musk: he just found everything interesting. he wanted to explore everything. he knocked his teeth out because he was just falling off stuff. kimbal, too, actually, yeah. >> pelley: we spoke with his mother maye, sister tosca, and brother kimbal. >> kimbal musk: he's a guy with unlimited ambition. >> pelley: ambition to do what? >> kimbal musk: not a typical type of ambition. it's more he just needs to be constantly... his mind just needs to be constantly fulfilled. and the problems that he takes on, therefore, need to become more and more complex over time in order to keep him interested. >> pelley: he was interested in computers early. at the age of 12, he wrote the software for a video game and sold it. against his parent's wishes, he set his sights on the software capitol of the world. >> elon musk: it seemed like the vast majority of such things came from the united states. i also, like, read a lot of comic books, and they all seemed to be set in the united states. ( laughs ) so it's like, "well, this is a good place... this is where-- i got to go to this place." >> pelley: he earned degrees in

business and physics at the university of pennsylvania, and asked his brother to join him in california. >> kimbal musk: when we moved to silicon valley, we had nothing, so we actually lived in the office. and we would sleep on the floor in the evening and go shower at the ymca the next morning. and then, we would be ready to go before some of our employees would arrive, so they wouldn't think we were actually sleeping in the office. >> pelley: in that office, musk invented a program that gave step-by-step directions between addresses. that's common today in cars and phones, but in 1995, it was magic. in four years, he made $22 million. only in america. >> elon musk: right, only in america. i agree, absolutely. >> pelley: next, he started an online banking firm that he grew into paypal, a system for making purchases on the internet. and you sold paypal to ebay for what? >> elon musk: it was about $1.5 billion. so that... it was a good outcome.

>> pelley: a good outcome? >> elon musk: yes. >> pelley: his share was $180 million, and he bet it all on tesla and space-x. but at the age of 37, he hit rock bottom. his first rockets failed to reach orbit, and an early model tesla roadster had quality problems. in 2008, the rocket company is not going well, you've had three failures. >> elon musk: right. >> pelley: the car company is hemorrhaging money... >> elon musk: yeah. >> pelley: and the american economy has tanked in the worst recession since the great depression. >> elon musk: right. >> pelley: what was that year like for you? >> elon musk: and i'm getting divorced, by the way, add to that. that was definitely the worst year of my life. >> pelley: that terrible year was captured in a documentary called "revenge of the electric car." his plant was filled with flawed cars that couldn't be delivered. >> musk: holy mackerel. jesus!

we have, like, an army of cars here. like, jesus! this is frightening. it's really pedal to the metal here. i mean, each month that passes is literally... costs us tens of millions of dollars. we need to appreciate that. >> pelley: to save tesla, musk needed millions more from investors. his fortune was gone. >> elon musk: when we'd call people and say, "hey, would you like to invest?" they'd be angry that we just called. ( laughs ) that it's like... it's not like "no" and... and you know, various expletives. >> pelley: he was essentially broke. >> kimbal musk: oh, yeah. in debt. more than broke. >> pelley: more than broke. >> kimbal musk: yeah. >> elon musk: i remember waking up the sunday before christmas in 2008, and thinking to myself, "man, i never thought i was someone who could ever be capable of a nervous breakdown." but i felt, "this is the closest i've ever come," because it...

it seemed pretty... pretty dark. >> pelley: toward the end of 2008, space-x prepared its fourth attempt. >> elon musk: we were running on fumes at that point. we had virtually no money. >> pelley: so a fourth failure...? >> elon musk: a fourth failure would have been absolutely game- over. >> pelley: done. >> elon musk: done. >> pelley: space-x bankrupt. >> elon musk: yeah. it's bad enough to have three strikes; having four strikes is really kaput. >> pelley: but flight four was flawless-- in musk's world, it lit the darkness. ( cheers and applause ) then, as often, the week of christmas became a time when little-boy dreams are answered. >> elon musk: nasa called and told us that we'd won a $1.5 billion contract. and i couldn't even hold the phone. i just blurted out, "i love you guys."

>> pelley: they saved you. >> elon musk: yeah, they did. >> pelley: financially and maybe even emotionally. >> elon musk: well, i'll tell you, that was... that was definitely helpful, yeah. >> pelley: two days later, on christmas eve, tesla's investors decided to pour in more money. so you were saved in the period of three days by two completely unexpected events. >> elon musk: yeah. >> pelley: merry christmas. >> elon musk: yeah, absolutely. that's for sure. >> pelley: the rockets haven't failed since. his cargo capsule has docked three times with the space station. and in the california plant, they're fitting seats for what they hope will be eventual manned missions. space-x is also testing a rocket that can be reused, softly landing on a column of flame, another step on a longer journey. >> elon musk: i'd love to have space-x be the company that brings humanity to mars, and i

hope i see it while i'm still alive. >> pelley: he's at space-x three days a week, two days at tesla, and weekends are at home with his five sons from his first marriage, and his second wife, talulah, whom he met in london. >> talulah musk: it all happened very fast. we were... we were engaged after, i think, sort of two... two weeks of knowing each other. and i was 22 and it was... there were all these boys, and it was... which was the best part. and it was... it was fast, and then we were in it. >> pelley: you knew each other two weeks before you got engaged? >> talulah musk: something like that. >> pelley: what was so attractive? >> talulah musk: well, he was very charming, and definitely the most interesting and eccentric person i have ever met. >> elon musk! ( cheers and applause ) >> pelley: tesla stock has rocketed up nearly 500%, but that's not based on the cars he's selling today. that price is counting on the hope that tesla will create an electric car at one-third the

cost of the model "s," which runs about $100,000. this is what stands in the way. this slab covered in plastic is the battery. so, this is essentially the bottom of the car. the front wheels would be there, the rear wheels would be right here. it fills up the entire bottom of the car. >> elon musk: that's right. >> pelley: this is how it fits into the bottom of the chassis. trouble is, the battery's so expensive, musk can't build a $35,000 car with acceptable range. to make tesla successful, he must reinvent battery manufacturing. musk has just announced a $5 billion factory to be built in the u.s. which, he says, will make more lithium ion batteries than all the other plants on earth combined. gambles like that have led a lot of people on wall street to bet against him, taking investment positions that count on tesla stock to fail. but so far, those pessimistic

investors have lost a lot of money. what is it about you that seems to invite skepticism? >> elon musk: well, i think it's because we're doing these things that seem unlikely to succeed. and we've been fortunate, and at least thus far, they have succeeded. just take a closer look. it works how you want to work. with a fidelity investment professional... or managing your investments on your own. helping you find new ways to plan for retirement. and save on taxes where you can. so you can invest in the life that you want today. tap into the full power of your fidelity greenline. call or come in today for a free one-on-one review. crestor got more high-risk patients' bad cholesterol

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>> pelley: now, wynton marsalis, jazz great and cbs news cultural correspondent on assignment for "60 minutes." >> marsalis: who's the greatest american musician most people have never heard of? to me, it's marcus roberts. i'm biased, because marcus worked in my band when he was just starting out. but anybody who's heard him at the piano usually agrees-- he's

a fearsome and fearless player, and a homegrown example of overcoming adversity with excellence. marcus went blind when he was five years old, and soon began trying to make sense of life in the darkness. he was unusually curious, and even tore his toys apart just to find out how they worked. marcus roberts developed a powerful analytical intelligence, capable of producing music that will move your mind as well as your body. the story of his genius begins with a precious gift from his parents, a piano. >> marcus roberts: i remember coming home from school one day. i walked in the house. i had no idea they had the piano, and i actually ran into it. ( laughter ) i said, "what is this?" and then, i figured it was a piano. i swear, that's, like, one of the most, like, gratifying, exciting days of my life. ♪ ♪ >> please help me welcome to the stage, marcus roberts! ♪ ♪ >> marsalis: the good lord giveth, he taketh away. marcus roberts lost his sight, but gained a rare insight into

the soul of american music. he's a virtuoso, a monster musician. ♪ ♪ he's an icon to a whole generation of jazz players-- not just a thrilling performer, but a composer, too, of innovative modern music who remembers, as a kid, picking out songs he heard on the radio. >> roberts: like, for example, stevie wonder's tune "i wish." ♪ ♪ >> marsalis: well, let me hear the right hand with the left hand. ♪ ♪ so, did you ever feel some type of kinship or relationship to stevie because he also was blind? >> roberts: i think so.

>> marsalis: in childhood, he taught himself the basics, playing with four fingers on each hand because no one told him you could use the thumb. some dedicated music teachers straightened him out along the way. and after years of practice and sheer determination, marcus today is a walking encyclopedia of america's jazz heritage, with the d.n.a. of pianists long gone in his fingertips. ♪ ♪ we gave him a musical test-- play a familiar tune in different styles. >> roberts: let's take "america the beautiful," for example. ♪ ♪ >> marsalis: first, as it might have been played by erroll garner, a legend from half a century ago. ♪ ♪ what about james p. johnson? ♪ ♪

in the early 20th century, johnson took ragtime and made it swing. ♪ ♪ what about thelonious monk? monk was the modernist, the picasso of the piano. ♪ ♪ what about duke? >> roberts: duke would be kind of... ♪ ♪ >> marsalis: he heard duke ellington, one of the pillars of american music, on the radio in 1975, and it changed his life. >> roberts: they were playing "catch the 'a' train." ♪ ♪ >> marsalis: "catch the 'a' train"? >> roberts: yeah. i mean, that's what i used to call it. >> marsalis: "take the 'a' train"-- you called it "catch the 'a' train"? >> roberts: that's what i called

it back then, yeah. "take the 'a' train." ♪ ♪ >> marsalis: hearing ellington's band, louis armstrong and other jazz greats, 12-year-old marcus roberts was hooked, compelled to figure out the sounds he heard, taking them apart as he'd done with his toys. >> roberts: it was just swinging. there was a quality to it that made me feel good. like, figuring it out, something about that made me feel better about myself. ♪ ♪ >> marsalis: nearly 40 years later, he's at the top of his game, improvising here on the music of jazz legend chick corea. the way marcus gets around the keyboard even amazes other pianists, including corea himself. >> chick corea: marcus embodies a perfect kind of art, in my mind. you can see that marcus absorbed a lot of the history of music, but then comes with a rendition that is completely marcus

roberts. ( plays "rhapsody in blue" ) ( cheers and applause ) >> marsalis: for instance, this performance a few years back that marcus calls one of the greatest experiences of his life, playing his take on george gershwin's "rhapsody in blue" with the berlin philharmonic and conductor seiji ozawa before 18,000 people. ♪ ♪ ♪ a lot of it's improvised, spur of the moment. gershwin, not a bad pianist himself, would have been knocked out. ♪ ♪ ( cheers and applause )

marcus grew up in jacksonville, florida, across the tracks from downtown and deep in the 'hood, where his mother still lives. as a little kid, wherever there was a piano, he'd try to unlock the mystery of the keys. so his mother and his father, a longshoreman down on the jacksonville docks, scrimped and saved for that piano marcus could call his own. >> coretta roberts: he went right to it, and went to playing "mary had a little lamb." ( laughs ) >> marsalis: his mother coretta is sightless, too, blinded by glaucoma. she remembers the pain of having to leave school in the seventh grade because she couldn't see the blackboard. >> coretta roberts: it was just like i had lost a loved one or something. >> marsalis: and by the time he was five, severe cataracts blinded marcus as well. how did your parents explain your blindness to you? >> roberts: they really didn't explain it. they just taught you how to do stuff for yourself.

that was the main thing. >> marsalis: marcus told me that you were never about self-pity or feeling bad about yourself. >> coretta roberts: oh, no, no. ( laughs ) i got adjusted to it and accepted it as it was god's will. >> roberts: she showed you by example. i mean, she could do a lot of stuff that to this day i can't really do. like, she can iron clothes, she can cook, she knows how to, like, run a household. >> marsalis: he taught himself enough to get his first gig at the silas missionary baptist church, on this very piano. it's out of tune but still quite soulful. ♪ ♪ >> sister murray: i remember him. >> marsalis: sister murray used to lift marcus up on the piano bench. his mama said, when he first started playing, he didn't sound good. >> murray: ooh. he got better. he could really play and he could sing. >> marsalis: oh, he could sing at the same time? >> murray: oh, yeah. >> marsalis: and then, where you hold chords out is real important in gospel music. so they'll be playing... ♪ ♪

he learned the gospel style-- music for praise, for consolation, and for teasing a few more coins into the collection plate. when you really wanted the church to get more intensity, give me an example of something you would do to have some intensity to it. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> roberts: maybe something like that. ( laughs ) >> marsalis: when marcus was ten, his parents sent him to the florida school for the deaf and blind, down the road in st. augustine, where a music teacher, also blind, changed his life. hubert foster introduced marcus

to bach and beethoven. that's marcus on the sax. foster taught him more about jazz, and how to read musical scores in braille. >> roberts: he was an amazing man. his biggest point was that, he just said, "look, you don't want to be ignorant, because if you add ignorance with not being able to see, you're going to have a rough life." ( laughs ) he said, "that's not going to work out for you." >> marsalis: so you embraced education? >> roberts: yeah, absolutely. i didn't want to be participating in this "noble savage" notion of being an artist who doesn't really know what he's doing. >> marsalis: we took marcus back to the school for a homecoming with some of the people who knew him as a kid, like vicky palmer. >> vicky palmer: he was just a good, genuine young man. every time i hear his name, i say, "oh, that was one of my students." ( plays "sweet georgia brown" )

>> marsalis: for the current crop of blind music students, we put in a good word for jazz. marcus remembers being inspired here by a visiting musician long ago. we figured we might just do the same. >> i was wondering... >> marsalis: one young man wanted some pointers, and played us a tune he liked. ♪ ♪ he soon found himself in a duet with the master. ♪ ♪ >> roberts: the same way that this young man came up and had the courage to come down and play, that's the same courage that you all have to have when you go out into the world. you got to go out into the world with confidence, but you want as much information as you can get your hands on. >> marsalis: information-- learning-- is at the heart of marcus's world. he travels with various devices that let him email, surf the web, even write music in braille.

and he has a devoted band of young musicians who record and perform with him. ricardo pascal decided to give up computer science and study instead with marcus. >> ricardo pascal: he's one of the patriarchs right now of this music. ( play "happy birthday" ) >> marsalis: back in jacksonville, we celebrated his 50th birthday, making him an official elder statesman of jazz. the mother who told him to find success in adversity was there. and so was the spirit of the father who did without, so marcus could have that piano. and for the man who can play just about anything, we had one more challenge. one final test for you. >> roberts: ( laughs ) >> marsalis: art tatum. >> roberts: oh, no. good lord. okay. >> marsalis: what you got? ( plays "someone to watch over me" ) art tatum was probably the greatest jazz piano virtuoso ever. in the tatum style, marcus plays

the gershwin tune "someone to watch over me," remembering the parents, teachers, and fellow musicians who watched over him and set him on his way. can anyone top tatum? "never," says marcus. >> roberts: but you know what? it's about the search for it. ♪ ♪ the search for that higher level of virtuosity, that higher level of intimacy with music. if you are one of the lucky ones to be able to do what you actually want to do, then you are blessed. ♪ ♪ ( cheers and applause )

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>> kroft: i'm steve kroft. we'll be back next week with another edition of "60 minutes." ♪ see what's new at projectluna.com you really love, what would you do?" ♪ [ woman ] i'd be a writer. [ man ] i'd be a baker. [ woman ] i wanna be a pie maker. [ man ] i wanna be a pilot. [ woman ] i'd be an architect. what if i told you someone could pay you and what if that person were you? ♪ when you think about it, isn't that what retirement should be, paying ourselves to do what we love? ♪

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