Bebop Quotations

Most of what I listen to now is mainstream jazz from 1935 right up to and including early bebop and cool jazz.

We may play in a contemporary rock vein, use standard bebop themes, and many other things besides.

Bebop and hip-hop, in so many ways, they're connected. A lot of rappers remind me so much of bebop guys in terms of improvisation, beats and rhymes. My dream is to see hip-hop incorporated in education. You've got the youth of the world in the palm of your hand.

Bebop is the music of the future (as soon as they learn how to play it).

I still prefer the bebop of the '40s. The very stuff I started out with is still the best to me. I have come full circle.

Oh yeah, that was the thing to do at that time. This was before the new wave of bebop started.

Musically, swing pretty much dominated in the '30s. And into the late '30s, swing is beginning to change over to bebop in the early '40s, which is exactly when this new science of theoretical physics, particularly theoretical atomic physics, was really coming to the fore.

The 1988 biopic of bebop immortal Charlie Parker, 'Bird,' was the film that opened my eyes to Clint Eastwood's potential as a filmmaker.

People used to call us a funk band. But it was a little more complicated than that. We were a fusion group made commercial. We had a lot of progressive chord changes and bebop horn lines and then hooks that a child could sing.

There was never a lighting crew, sound crew, makeup crew, anything, ... The list of cameramen is a list of great bebop musicians and writers in L.A., buddies of ours who just happened to be around.

Gary is awesome, he's amazing, ... The music in the movie alludes to jazz, bebop and pop but has an improvisational feel and he did an amazing job with just a few minutes.

Basically my influences have been American influences. It's been blues, gospel, swing era music, bebop music, Broadway show music, classical music. It's like making a stew. You put all these various ingredients in it. You season it with this. You put that in it. You put the other in it. You mix it all up and it comes out something neat, something that you created.

What makes bebop legitimate is the fact that when it was done, it was illegitimate.

[Bebop is] Chinese music.

I can't imagine my life without the extraordinary bebop jazz revolution in New York in late '40s and '50s.

Musically, the bebop route was magnificent, but businesswise, it was the dumbest thing I ever did.