Jazz Quotations | Page 2

I was totally into jazz in my teens.

I love Ray Charles. He can still teach everybody a lot about how to make great music. Not necessarily how to make hits, but how to make great music. Of course, part of it is his incredible talent. Who are the greatest jazz singers in the world? Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday and Ray Charles.

Jazz has always been a melting pot of influences and I plan to incorporate them all.

Lately, Ive been listening to some jazz albums. I love the new Pat Metheny album. John Coltrane. I still like good metal, though!

I am a musician, but I'm another type of musician.

If it comes out sounding like Dixieland jazz or classical or punk or rock or even slightly metal, that's because that's where I'm going to find inspiration.

So many people report to be contemporary dancers, and they're not. They are sort of jazz dancers that feel like they're throwing a bit of classical in there. I mean, a true contemporary dancer has got ballet as their base and classical ballet, and that is their base. And then they choose to extemporize on that and go into a contemporary world.

I was a kid living in New Jersey, who - I'd wanted to make movies since I was a little kid, so that came before music for me. But I started playing drums just as a hobby, and I wasn't even really into jazz that much.

The summer before my third year of law school, I worked at a law firm in Washington, D.C. I turned 25 that July, and on my birthday, my father happened to be playing in a local jazz club called Pigfoot and invited me to join him. I hadn't spent a birthday with him since I was 3, but I agreed.

I kept on buying records and listening to them. Finally, I was able to hear the relationship between the jazz improvisers' solos and the underlying structure that it's based on, the chord progression. That was pretty easy to do in the swing era, y'know, when jazz was, like, pop music, you know. It had made the charts and everything like that.

For me writing is a question of finding a certain rhythm. I compare it to the rhythms of jazz.

If I'm not a jazz player all the time, I've at least been cued in to what I do by jazz.

I wanted to play some more grown-up music - jazz.

It's something that - jazz is one of the few things that you can go and listen to, I don't care where you're from, what you are, what background you come from - there's something there for you.

Lately I've been listening to some classical music again, some jazz.

Jazz should be recognized as music of the people, based in a lot of accents and melodies. What is jazz but music that people danced to? Jazz has the dynamic thing. I don't think you have to be playing only Charlie Parker licks on your horn or whatever the new version of that is.

The jazz rhythm won't be understood by the bulk of my audience. That's the problem. We can get away with maybe one tune a night. It depends on where we place it. A song like 'Beyond the Sea,' the fans love that. It's fresh.

I like a lot of electronica. I like older jazz rather than newer.

I think everybody has to kind of decide what the word 'jazz' means to them, and that's fine.

I think jazz is good, but I don't enjoy it. It's not for me.

I listen to classical music very much. There's a lot of jazz that I don't enjoy listening to.

Taxi drivers used to ask me what kind of music I did, and I'd say, 'Well, it's kind of jazz, soul, classical' - but that makes no sense to anyone.

I recorded my first jazz record in the '70s.

Jazz is there and gone. It happens. You have to be present for it. That simple.

I have met some very strange people and some very strange cats - and I'm not talking about jazz greats. I'm talking about animals that people claim have come from outer space, and boy, they're weird!

I'm from the beatnik generation, where everybody wanted to be a poet or writer or something. And at that time, I was a jazz critic, and I was always thinking, theorizing about what makes great art or what's important in art.

In 1994, I started touring again and I recorded two albums for Chesky Jazz.

The worst thing about the life of a jazz musician on the road is getting to the gig. Once you're there and playing, it's marvelous.

I like to listen to classical music... I like mainline jazz.

I wasn't a trained Mickey Mouse club performer. I played in jazz clubs and restaurants.

I don't think that jazz, as any kind of an art form, has any permanence attached to it, apart from the practitioners of it.

I enjoy playing clubs. I still enjoy the closeness of the nightclub venue. However, after a certain period of time and after playing around some of the clubs in New YorkI felt that jazz should be presented in a more prestigious atmosphere.

I am comfortable with anything I sing: jazz, gospel, classical. It doesn't matter. I can do it all.

Just figure out what you think jazz is, and then if it fits into that category, it's jazz, and if it doesn't, it isn't. It's no big deal.

My personal trainer is an ex-dancer so we do a lot of ballet and jazz.

I'm not going to play funk licks on a jazz album. That makes no sense.

I knew even if I'm a cowboy, I'm going to be involved in jazz in some way.

I've always wanted to record a jazz record. I did one in the '70s with Barbara Carroll. It's been a journey.

Jazz can be so serious, no sense of humor.

It's something that jazz has gotten away from, and it's unfortunate. Players aren't physical anymore.

Growing up, I listened and was influenced by a lot of those around me. I have a big family, and my dad listened to '80s music, my mom listened to Motown, my brother listened to reggae, and my granddad was the one that got me into jazz and swing music.

When I was a kid, I used to listen to my Emerson radio late at night under the covers. I started by listening to jazz in the late 1940s and then vocal harmony groups like the Four Freshmen, the Modernaires and the Hi-Lo's. I loved Stan Kenton's big band - with those dark chords and musicians who could swing cool with individual sounds.

To most jazz critics I was basically Kenny G.

I think Wes Montgomery is the greatest jazz guitarist that ever lived.

Jazz is a constant theme in my life. My father is a jazz pianist, and from an early age I have been surrounded by it.

I do ballet and pointe work. I also do tap, commercial jazz and technical jazz, freestyle street dancing.

The point of jazz is, you do something and then you go on.

That's the thing about jazz: it's free flowing, it comes from your soul.

I have a difficult relationship with jazz. My parents really love it, and I went to a school where jazz was considered the best thing ever, so I had to leave it be for a long time. But now I'm rediscovering it. I'm approaching jazz in a different way.

I was really learning my craft as a jazz singer and working with some great players and all, really growing and feeling my wings.

What are the symbols of American strength, wealth, power and modernity? Certainly not jazz and rock and roll, not chewing-gum or hamburgers, Broadway or Hollywood. It's their skyscrapers. Their Pentagon. Their science. Their technology.

I like to go hear jazz late-night up in Harlem.

A jazz beat is a dynamic changing rhythm.

Jazz changes and all. But I don't know the names of what it is I'm doing.

In blues, classical and jazz, you get more revered with age.

Jazz told people about the special music that came out of America and about America in general and this kind of liberty and freedom that we have.

I have been steadily exchanging a rock audience who were nervous about what they had just bought for a jazz audience who not only were happy with their purchase, but are increasingly coming again.

The spirit of jazz is the spirit of openness.

By its very nature, no one person can ever be the center of Jazz.

I never studied jazz technically; I just know and love the music.

Gospel music rhythms are not African in origin, although I know that's what the jazz experts say.

I think more than writers, the major influences on me have been European movies, jazz, and Abstract Expressionism.

As an artist, you have to express yourself. I make no excuses for my versatility. I grew up singing classical arias, but I love rock n' roll and jazz standards.

I missed jazz, kind of. And by the time I came to it in life, it was too intimidating to enjoy thoroughly.

Jazz is a very accurate, curiously accurate accompaniment to 20th century America.

I am famous because I am an African American jazz artist.

I understood jazz, I understood how it worked. That's what I apply to everything.

The blues and jazz will live forever... So will the Delta and the Big Easy.

The value of music is not dazzling yourself and others with technique.

One thing about playing the real jazz is that you can't count it.

I would say that jazz is my own language.

We're having a hard time understanding where jazz is going. What happened to jazz?

It's not exclusive, but inclusive, which is the whole spirit of jazz.

As a rule, my focus is on classical music, but I love jazz. I love everything, actually.

I can turn on some jazz guitarist, and he won't do a thing for me, if he's not playing electrically. But Jeff Beck's great to listen to.

I come to New Orleans so often that, one day soon, someone's going to declare me a native. I love the food. I love the music. I serve on the board of the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra.

I only hope that one day, America will recognize what the rest of the world already has known, that our indigenous music - gospel, blues, jazz and R&B - is the heart and soul of all popular music; and that we cannot afford to let this legacy slip into obscurity, I'm telling you.

One thing I like about jazz is that it emphasized doing things differently from what other people were doing.

I can show you that I have played with just about every jazz musician, every African musician, every blues musician. It's not like I'm cashing in on a false concept. This is what I do.

I was lucky enough to grow up in an era when radio was less formatted. It was really special. You could hear a jazz song then a pop song then a show tune then some jazz. Basically, whatever the DJ felt like playing, he would play. He was educating you and exposing you to things you would never hear otherwise.

It's not the style that motivates me, as much as an attitude of openness that I have when I go into a project.

I listen to and I play all kinds of music, and I'm interested in jazz and in bluegrass - I like it all - but Cuban music speaks to me in a certain way.

I wasn't very aware of pop music because I attended an arts school. For me, it was all about jazz.

Jazz has been such a force in music, that any musician, including classical composers, have been influenced, and obviously performers, also.

The world I live in is benefiting from things like satellite radio. Jazz and blues fests are everywhere now, and Americana is going strong on college radio. What I'm hearing is an appreciation of real music.

My own Brubeck Institute in California is turning out fantastic young jazz players, and I know great things will happen.

I read cover to cover every jazz publication that I could and in the New York Times, every single day reading their jazz reviews even though I didn't put them in the films. I wanted to know what is going on.

Where I grew up, Bob Wills and his western swing was very popular. And western swing is not that far from jazz and blues.

We went to see all the shows. American musical theater and jazz were very big.

I grew up listening to John Coltrane and jazz, so they were subtle influences. I sometimes think about doing some kind of weird jazz record, but I don't know... It's on my list of things to do. I don't want to have to then go promote it.

It is jazz music that called me to be a musician and I have always sang the songs that moved me the most.

It was actually my partner, Bernard Edwards, who helped me develop my sort of funky jazz style.

The strange thing about Africa is how past, present and future come together in a kind of rough jazz, if you like.

Well, Grover Washington was my main influence and when I went to college, I started listening to more of the jazz masters like Sonny Rollins, Cannonball Adderley, and John Coltrane.

I grew up around jazz. I love jazz.

My father is a jazz musician, so I grew up hearing jazz. My parents loved it, but I didn't like it. It went on for too long. Yes, I had certain teachers that really inspired me, like Danny Barker, and John Longo. And I had no idea that I would have any impact on jazz.

For most Americans, poetry plays no role in their everyday lives. But also for most Americans, contemporary painting or jazz or sculpture play no role either. I'm not saying poetry is singled out as a special thing to ignore.

I feel a lot more secure about the directions I take, than I might have, had I not practiced Buddhism.

If it has more than three chords, it's jazz.

Since the beginning of my recording career in 1975, I have had a little difficulty because the pop stations think I'm a jazzer who doesn't have a feeling for pop, so it's hard to get my records played. Similarly, black urban radio doesn't understand that with my R&B roots, I am more than a jazz singer. So I get pigeonholed.