Quotes About Jazz

I visited New York in '63, intending to move there, but I noticed that what I valued about jazz was being discarded. I ran into `out-to-lunch' free jazz, and the notion that groove was old-fashioned. All around the United States, I could see jazz becoming linear, a horn-player's world. It made me realize that we were not jazz musicians; we were territory musicians in love with all forms of African-American music. All of the musicians I loved were territory musicians, deeply into blues and gospel as well as jazz.

We're [with Robbie Robertson ] jazz musicians. The context may be rock 'n' roll but it's still jazz. It's jazz and that means improvization...you play a tune the way it feels and you play it differently every time. It can never be the same.

You can't teach it [jazz singing]. There's nobody who can teach you how to sing jazz. Either you know how to sing jazz, or you don't.

At this time the fashion is to bring something to jazz that I reject. They speak of freedom. But one has no right, under pretext of freeing yourself, to be illogical and incoherent by getting rid of structure and simply piling a lot of notes one on top of the other. There's no beat anymore. You can't keep time with your foot. I believe that what is happening to jazz with people like Ornette Coleman, for instance, is bad. There's a new idea that consists in destroying everything and find what's shocking and unexpected; whereas jazz must first of all tell a story that anyone can understand.

Jazz music is a style, not compositions; any kind of music may be played in Jazz if one has the knowledge.

If anybody was Mr. Jazz it was Louis Armstrong. He was the epitome of jazz and always will be. He is what I call an American standard, an American original. ... I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues. ... I don't need time, I need a deadline. ...There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind. ... Music is my mistress, and she plays second fiddle to no one.

I like musicians who look at the public. You have to bring the music to the largest number. Otherwise, we'll [the Jazz players] stay in the clubs. Jazz must be accessible to everyone.

There was a time, from 1935-1946, when teenagers and young adults danced to jazz-orientated bands. When jazz orchestras dominated pop charts and when influential clarinettists were household names. This was the swing era.

I put out a recording of me singing mostly jazz because I wanted people to know I'm coming from a jazz background.

I don't really think in terms of the future of literature. I think literature will be around "forever" - but in a relatively niche way, like jazz and poetry, although probably more widely consumed than jazz and poetry since it's fundamentally a narrative form. And I think that's important and places like Word Riot and 'The New York Tyrant' and 'n+1' will be responsible for keeping it alive.

It's really not a stretch. The checks and balances are the same. The drums are the executive branch. The jazz orchestra is the legislative branch. Logic and reason are like jazz solos. The bass player is the judicial branch. One our greatest ever is Milt Hinton, and his nickname is "The Judge."

Jazz is the big brother of the blues. If a guy's playing blues like we play, he's in high school. When he starts playing jazz it's like going on to college, to a school of higher learning.

Jazz isn't like pop, where you sell millions of records with a hit. Your spirit and soul aren't important in pop music. But jazz is like classical music. If people like you, they'll remember you and you'll last forever.

The history of jazz for the last 45 years has come through the Monterey Jazz Festival stages. I think there's developed a legacy and an aura around the festival.

Shook is the musical universe I created. I come from a classical and jazz background and my father is a jazz pianist, so my world bears largely the marks of this influence. As a sort of gateway, I started composing my own music on the computer at the age of 13. Before Shook, I had not yet discovered the kind of music I wanted to dedicate myself to, so I did a little of everything.

Justin Di Cioccio led a jazz program at Music and Art, but there was no jazz in Performing Arts. After they joined, it became Laguardia School of Arts.

I listen to jazz about three hours a day. I love Louis Armstrong.

I've sort of realized there's a definite pattern to my output at this point: there's an album that everybody sort of loves, that's a real balance between the old and new, like The Dreamer or No Beginning No End, like a blend of jazz and hip-hop, or r&b and soul and hip-hop.

It (jazz) isn't like it used to be. The guys aren't together. They're all separated. Individuals now. Bird was a symbol. It was a clique, a clique of people. Who all believed in one thing: gettin' high. And playin'.

Do you think Duke Ellington didn't listen to Debussy? Louis Armstrong loved opera, did you know that? Name me a jazz pianist who wasn't influenced by European music!

The people know more about [Jazz] in other countries than in America. America is the last country to know about anything, because we're too fat, we have too much of everything, you understand? And we do not listen.

You know, somebody mentioned that I was sort of a jazz-pop singer. And I'm thrilled that somebody would find that, at last, in my presentation, because it's such a part of where I live.

I like rock music. I like jazz better, though.

Everybody has the blues. Everybody longs for meaning. Everybody needs to love and be loved. Everybody needs to clap hands and be happy. Everybody longs for faith. In music, especially this broad category called jazz, there is a stepping-stone to all of these.

I was interested in Armstrong to begin with because he is the most important figure in Jazz in the 20th Century. There's simply no question about it. I mean, if you're going to compare him to somebody, it's Shakespeare in terms of centrality of the tradition, in being at the beginning of it.

Yes, there's a relaying of internal states that only a novel can achieve. In my view, the novel is one of Europe's greatest gifts to the world. America and Africa collaborated to give the world jazz. We'll call it even.

When Jazz broke through in England, I remember sneaking to listen on the radio much to my parent's disapproval.

A lot of EDM is not bad at all when it's simple, but a lot of it is not really musical. That's just what I really like to do: taking what I had at the beginning, which is classical and jazz influences, and putting it into electro.

So from Jazz, Blues, R&B, Soul, Classical and Country music, Hip Hop has introduced us to a little bit of everything.

Jazz speaks for life. The Blues tell the story of life's difficulties.

I would also like to mention pianists like Michel Petrucciani or Chick Сorea for whom I have great admiration in the jazz field.

Jazz isn't dead. It just smells funny.

I always say that you should just listen to it and see what you think it sounds like it is. I don't think it should be labeled. Most musicians feel like that. No one wants to put their music in a category. But, I don't think it's all over the place. I don't go from metal to jazz, or anything crazy.

I'm a bluesman moving through a blues-soaked America, a blues-soaked world, a planet where catastrophe and celebration... "Joy and Pain" - sit side by side. The blues started off in some field, in some plantation, in some mind, in some imagination, in some heart. The blues blew over to the next plantation, and then the next state. The blues went south to north, got electrified and even sanctified. The blues got mixed up with jazz and gospel and rock and roll.

Many of the jazz musicians whom are no longer here. You don't realize that it's history when it is happening and then time passes and you look at a picture and you say "Wow, there is history attached to that."

D.C. is a great place. The music, jazz, has always been great here, the restaurants have always been fantastic here. And there's been a lot of changes in this city over the last 30 years, and all for the better.

Jazz is neither specific repertoire, nor academic exercise... but a way of life.

I'm always looking for ways to develop as a Jazz artist, to find different ways of using my voice.

As for music, my tastes are eclectic. Elvis Costello is my all-time favorite. I listen to a lot of jazz, primarily the great female vocalists, and I am very fond of the late cabaret singer Nancy Lamott.

I started playing jazz by slowing down Tal Farlow records and analyzing his runs

Science Fiction is the jazz of literature.

I guess my biggest influence was actually my Grandfather. He used to play old records on vinyl, and would play old jazz and soul music like Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and The Rat Pack and swing music.

Jazz is the continual pulsation of the now.

As long as there are people trying to play music in a sincere way, there will be Jazz.

My main influences have always been the classic jazz players who sang, like Louis Armstrong and Nat King Cole and Jack Teagarden.

One thing that sticks in my mind is that jazz means freedom and openness. It's a music that, although it developed out of the African American experience, speaks more about the human experience than the experience of a particular people.

I played Big Band jazz music. I wasn't into rock and roll. I was just there because it was a living. I surprised everyone. I'm still surprising people.

Well, I think writing is basically about time and rhythm. Like with jazz. You have your basic melody and then you just riff off of it. And the riffs are about timing.