Bley Quotes & Sayings

I played upright bass. I wanted to write great tunes, play the bass, be a band leader, and smoke a big funny pipe like Charlie Mingus. So I went out and bought the pipe when I was around 18 or 19 years old. You know even women smoke a pipe in Glasgow. I worked with Carla Bley and she smoked a pipe, which I find fascinating. — Jack Bruce

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. — Carla Bley

I think we've all had enough of Coltrane saxophonists. There's a case of someone ruining a generation of saxophonists, as Louis Armstrong may have ruined a generation of trumpeters. — Paul Bley

I just got to hear every note. After I left Birdland, I started working at the Jazz Gallery. In the end, I still couldn't play, but I knew how to listen. I was probably the world's best listener. — Carla Bley

Listening is more important than anything else because that's what music is. Somebody is playing something and you're receiving it. It is sending and receiving. — Carla Bley

When you have 13 horns, and one is soloing, you have 12 people to play the richest, fullest chord you could ever imagine behind that solo. — Carla Bley

I don't enjoy traveling in America. I don't like the food, the cars. It is not exotic enough. It all tastes a bit like airline food. — Carla Bley

One performer whose band played my music better than I could myself was Art Farmer. He recorded 'Sing Me Softly of the Blues' and 'Ad Infinitum'. — Carla Bley

There's a kind of radar that you get, after years of being talked about and made fun of by other people. You can almost smell it when it's about to happen, can recognize instantly the sound of a hushed voice, lowered just enough to make whatever is said okay. I had only been in Colby for a few weeks. But I had not forgotten. — Sarah Dessen

Adam Berenson knows how to compose, organize an ensemble, do musical research, play solo and trio piano, write for musical journals, and enlist others to his cause. A very fine musician. — Paul Bley

When you are studying jazz, the best thing to do is listen to records or listen to live music. It isn't as though you go to a teacher. You just listen as much as you can and absorb everything. — Carla Bley

When Ronald Reagan was elected I was on a bus traveling with a band in France. I wrote a little arrangement of The Star Spangled Banner in a minor key. — Carla Bley

It would be really hard to get serious about anything political today unless it was a joke. — Carla Bley

Nobody taught me my slider. I mean, if you look at my grip, I don't think anyone has the same grip as I do. It's a separate grip. I hold it kind of weird and everything. When I started throwing it, I just wanted to start throwing something different and came up with that. I turned it a little bit. — Scott Kazmir

Always wanted a girl with a heart-shaped ass. Most of my exes have ass-shaped hearts. — Quentin R. Bufogle

I anticipated all the changes in jazz because they were all problematical things, that I was dealing with myself. In New York in the late '50s, there were a lot of experiments being made on how to avoid playing popular standards and how to get improvising out of those constricting formats. — Paul Bley

I don't think you can ever regain your ignorance. — Carla Bley

There are times when what's happening in rock is the best music in the world, and there are times when there is nothing worthwhile at all. — Carla Bley

Ornette Coleman wasn't sure whether he was going to continue with Charlie Haden-Charlie had some personal problems. I said "You've got to be kidding! There's no one on the globe who will be able to accompany you" and no one ever did. [Scott LaFaro] was playing atonally and certainly Ornette was not an atonal player. Jimmy Garrison was a tonal player. He wasn't even polytonal or atonal. — Paul Bley

Living composers writing for big band are very few and far between. There are not a lot of them, and I have a talent for doing it. I am zeroing in on what I do best. — Carla Bley

When I arrived in New York I was definitely the worst player in town! It was just a measure of how far I had to go. It took years, while I was at Juilliard I worked different weekends with different people. — Paul Bley

Now as jazz musicians we're saying for this society, you can free up your imagination. You can proceed in an area without much information and you can function in an area without much information. — Paul Bley

Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker seemed so sophisticated and bad. I wanted to be like that. — Carla Bley

I think all record companies should be run by a musician. Just as you wouldn't trust your health to an electrician. — Paul Bley

What's interesting about a person without problems? — Carla Bley

I like chords that are very lush with all the lush parts taken out. — Carla Bley

Myth is neither a lie nor a confession: it is an inflexion. — Roland Barthes

I don't need much coaxing. — Carla Bley

Politics, poverty, riches, etc - these are but backdrops for the grand cinema, the opera: the glory of your life. Sure, change the backdrops, make them better, but it is this inside-ness that matters most. Nothing else, at the last breath, matters, but your very own poetry. The glory of living. — Alex Ebert

I got started when I was 3 years old because my father was a music teacher and my lessons were free. Instead of learning to walk, you learn to play the piano. — Carla Bley

The Beatles came and everybody forgot about everything else. That was a friendly, together, hip interpersonal music, introducing electric sustain, and it captured the imagination of everybody. So improvising, even though it was in a very rich period in terms of impact on the public, the '6Os were very hard times on players financially. — Paul Bley

I write very slowly. — Carla Bley

The church doesn't have a social strategy, the church is a social strategy. — Stanley Hauerwas