Quotes & Sayings About Jazz

I'm always doubting because I've been told so much that, you're not the right look or you're not the right sound, and, you know, whether I do jazz or R&B there are always complaints. — Ledisi

Jazz shouldn't have any mandates. Jazz is not supposed to be something that's required to sound like jazz. For me, the word 'jazz' means, 'I dare you.' — Wayne Shorter

Shared leadership ... is less like a an orchestra, where the conductor is always in charge, and more like a jazz band, where leadership is passed around ... depending on what the music demands at the moment and who feels most moved by the spirit to express the music. — Phillip C. Schlechty

Jazz music will continue to thrive, possibly in unexpected ways. — Pat Metheny

Eclecticism is the word. Like a jazz musician who creates his own style out of the styles around him, I play by ear. — Ralph Ellison

Louis Armstrong was the primary contributor to jazz music in the 20th century. His improvisational skills served as the principal model for all who came after him, regardless of one's chosen instrument. — Ellis Marsalis Jr.

Writing is like jazz. It can be learned, but it can't be taught. — Paul Desmond

Somehow I suspect that if Shakespeare were alive today, he might be a jazz fan himself. — Duke Ellington

I started thinking more about music. I thought I'd accepted the fact that, as part of "Being Gretchen," I didn't really like music, but in fact, the truth was slightly different: I thought I didn't like music, but in fact, I didn't approve of my own taste
I wished I liked sophisticated music, like jazz or classical or esoteric rock. Instead, my taste ran mostly to what might play on a lite FM station. Oh, well. Be Gretchen. — Gretchen Rubin

In times of change and uncertainty, we need the spirit of jazz more than ever before, to bring people - especially young women and men - together, to nurture freedom and dialogue, to create new bridges of respect and understanding, for greater tolerance and cooperation, — Irina Bokova

"The Hallmark Sessions" is an extraordinary release. Breau plays beautiful chords (sounding a little like Johnny Smith in spots) and inventive single-note lines. It is remarkable that this music was not released until 2003, but a happy event that it was finally put out. This is a must for Breau fans and an important release for all jazz guitar lovers. — Scott Yanow

Jazz and vodka, the fuel of resistance. — Rawi Hage

Jazz radio is not very friendly to pop singers who decide to make a jazz record. But a lot of people have been. A lot of the people I've talked to like the record. — Rita Coolidge

I fear that I won't get better and that I won't have time to practice. To be called a "jazz musician" - it's a big responsibility. — Esperanza Spalding

I never liked blues and I really didn't like jazz. I liked Chuck Berry. — Johnny Ramone

Rather than say I play Jazz, I simply say I play music. — Kenny Garrett

Coltrane came to New Orleans one day and he was talking about the jazz scene. And Coltrane mentions that the problem with jazz was that there were too few groups. — Branford Marsalis

I can't believe you're still mad at me," Ed says.
"You grabbed my arse."
"You broke my nose."
"You broke his nose?" Jazz asks. "You grabbed her arse?"
"It was two years ago-"
"Two years, four months, and eight days," I tell him.
"-and I was fifteen, and I slipped and she broke my nose."
"Wait a minute. How do you slip onto someone's arse?"
Jazz asks.
"I meant slipped up. I slipped up and she broke my nose."
"You're lucky that's all I broke," I say.
"You're lucky I didn't call the police."
Leo, Dylan, and Daisy slid into the booth. "Did you guys know that Lucy broke Ed's nose? Jazz asks.
Ed closes his eyes silently and bangs his head on the wall. — Cath Crowley

And I used to listen to a lot of jazz. — Debra Wilson

I listen to instrumental jazz and bluegrass, but aside from my AM workout, I have no rituals. — David B. Coe

Once the jazz musician learns all the fundamentals they can keep track of a lot of choices in an instant. — Sheena Iyengar

Everything we did, we did live - and then Bobby took it home and chopped it up and edited it. Which is pretty much what they did with every jazz record you've ever heard. — Charlie Hunter

I was pretty much prepared because I was already playing in extremely good ways when I arrived from Europe because I played jazz four or five years before I arrived here. — Miroslav Vitous

I think that one of the problems that jazz has is that it's so incestuous that it's starting to kill itself. — Branford Marsalis

it ain't as hard as picking cotton — Wynton Marsalis

I think the Flecktones are a mixture of acoustic and electronic music with a lot of roots in folk and bluegrass as well as funk and jazz. — Bela Fleck

The lion's share of what I hear right now are people who, intentional or accidental, have avoided all jazz prior to 1960. And all the musicians who were successful in the '60s spent their entire lives, prior to 1960, listening to all the musicians these people avoid. — Branford Marsalis

I love more percussions more than anything. I always wanted to be a drummer. — Pharoah Sanders

I like to say, jazz music is kind of like my musical equivalent of comfort food. You know, it's always where I go back to when I just want to feel sort of grounded. — Molly Ringwald

Anything you are shows up in your music - jazz is whatever you are, playing yourself, being yourself, letting your thoughts come through. — Mary Lou Williams

Came Honker's trip to Slice City along about then: our sax-man got a neck all full of the sharpest kind of steel. So we were out one horn. And you could tell: we played a little bit too rough, and the head-arrangements Collins and His Crew grew up to, they needed Honker's grease in the worst way. But we'd been together for five years or more, and a new man just didn't play somehow. We were this one solid thing, like a unit, and somebody had cut off a piece of us and we couldn't grow the piece back so we just tried to get along anyway, bleeding every night, bleeding from that wound. ("Black Country") — Charles Beaumont

I'm sure there are people who say like, "I was wearing weird emo eyeliner," but there's something pretty embarrassing about the jazz phase. — Nick Kroll

It's all about respect; he's looking for respect from his buddies. In the last one he just wanted to hang out, to be part of the group, but this time he wants more from his friends. And without giving the story away, he finally gets something that he has been looking for when the mini sloths kidnap him and take him to their tribal area. He gets to be the Fire King and they worship him and there is an amazing scene with a "call and response" sequence in the style of Cab Callow [the legendary American jazz singer and band leader] between him and his audience — John Leguizamo

And Jazz snapped.
He didn't snap the way a normal person might snap. A normal person would fling his arms around and stomp his feet and rant at the top of his lungs, bellowing to the sky. There might be tears, from a normal person.
Jazz went quiet. He darted out one hand and grabbed the wrist of the paramedic who had been trying to cuff him and pulled the man close, holding his gaze.
In a moment, he channeled every last drop of (his father).
Who am I? I'll tell you. I'm the local psychopath, and if you don't save my best friend's life, I will hunt down everyone you've ever cared about in your life and make you watch while I do things to them that will have you begging me to kill them. That's who I am. — Barry Lyga

Reading was like an addiction; I read while I ate, on the train, in bed until late at night, in school, where I'd keep the book hidden so I could read during class. Before long I bought a small stereo and spent all my time in my room, listening to jazz records. But I had almost no desire to talk to anyone about the experience I gained through books and music. I felt happy just being me and no one else. In that sense I could be called a stack-up loner. — Haruki Murakami

The whole point is, give me a break with the standards. You go to the average jazz label and suggest a record and they want to know which standards you're going to play. I'm saying let's break the formula. — Branford Marsalis

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

If jazz has to be termed as a wave, then music is a sea, but if the reflectors in the water is the chord. — Pat Metheny

I don't like freedom jazz - I think it's void of roots and void of foundation. — George Shearing

Jazz is the favorite music [of America]. It is a type of music invented by [American] Blacks to please their primitive tendencies and desire for noise. — Sayyid Qutb

Jazz closed his eyes. — Barry Lyga

I have very eclectic taste in music. I like everything from Nirvana, which is featured in the film, to world music, to orchestral and jazz. For me, the nineties were about Oasis, because I was travelling around Britain when that band exploded onto the music scene. — Isla Fisher

Jazz is not something that can be defined through blunt instruments. It is much more poetic than that. — Pat Metheny

When I discovered Mose Allison I felt I had discovered the missing link between jazz and blues — Ray Davies

Actually John, Paul Rutherford, and Trevor Watts, and several other rather well known English jazz musicians had got their training by joining the Air Force, which was a pretty standard way for people to get some kind of musical education in those days. — Evan Parker

Jazz musicians are the coolest people on the planet. Can I have some cool? — Jon Stewart

I was in college, but I got kicked out. It was a very free school, but I created a "bad impression." Like I was a bit more fiery in those days. At the time I got kicked out, I knew exactly what I was going to do and didn't even bother to go back for a leaving certificate. Then I was singing in folk clubs around Birmingham and playing jazz in clubs on Sundays. — Steve Winwood

When I started recording, I thought I'd be able to do all kinds of records: jazz, country, dance - and I've always wanted to do a gospel album. — Tom Jones

I like everything, jazz and classical, and all over the spectrum. — Mark Pellegrino

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

I hired Bob at Terrytoons. He was my assistant animator, and then became an animator himself. He had just come from Boston with his family and was a brilliant draftsman as well as a great jazz guitarist. We had lots of fun nights in Greenwich Village together and then later hanging in LA. Bob worked on Fritz the Cat , Heavy Traffic , Coonskin , and on Wizards . I am terribly saddened by his passing and will miss him dearly. — Ralph Bakshi

Even though I left for a year, I grew here as a Jazz man. If I'm fortunate enough to go into the Hall of Fame, I will go as a Jazz man. — Karl Malone

I was also very interested in music. I used to hang out in jazz joints, you know, the Five Spot and so forth when I was, you know, a senior, really, when I was a little bit older. And I thought, well, maybe I could, you know, work with music. I can't play at all. — Robert Barry

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. — Al Jarreau

We were the first small American jazz group since Sidney Bechet in 1927 to play for the public in Moscow and Leningrad. — Paul Horn

Jazz is a good barometer of freedom. — Duke Ellington

Jazz is not just 'Well, man, this is what I feel like playing.' It's a very structured thing that comes down from a tradition and requires a lot of thought and study. — Wynton Marsalis

Jazz is one of the few things you can do in society and express yourself freely and creatively. — Mulgrew Miller

Jazz to me is a living music. It's a music that since its beginning has expressed the feelings, the dreams, hopes, of the people. — Dexter Gordon

Jazz is really 20th-century fusion music. You take West African harmony and rhythm, mix with European harmony, and boom! — Christian Scott

As much as I am hip-hop, I'm soul. As much as I am soul, I'm a turntablist. As much as I'm a DJ, I love jazz and rock. — DJ Jazzy Jeff

I think the challenges for me was to go into the studio with these incredible jazz players and come up to their level of excellence. That's always a challenge. — Rita Coolidge

I fell in love with jazz when I was 12 years old from listening to Duke Ellington and hearing a lot of jazz in New York on the radio. — Steve Lacy

Mogadishu the beautiful - your white-turbaned mosques, baskets of anchovies as bright as mercury, jazz and shuffling feet, bird-boned servant girls with slow smiles, the blind white of your homes against the sapphire blue of the ocean - you are missed, her dreams seem to say. — Nadifa Mohamed

Duke Ellington's career traces the entire history of jazz. The repertoire associated with him contains the most important elements in the music and provides concrete examples of some of the best ways to present the music in the widest variety of settings-radio, TV, recordings, movies, concert halls, festivals, solo, small ensemble, big band, symphony orchestra, opera, Broadway shows ... You name it, he did it! — Billy Taylor

I became a professional musician and played all kinds of music. I played bluegrass, I played classical music, and for many years, I played jazz. — Terry Teachout

I think the singer/songwriter genre is going to be like bluegrass and jazz. You can make a living at it, but it's not part of the musical mainstream anymore. — Steve Earle

He [Benny Carter] is all that every jazz musician the world over wants to be. He's performed 20,000 nights. How many shoes have been shined? How much mascara put on? Rouge? How many of those impossible bowties have been tied? How many love songs have been sung? How many dances have been danced? How many have passed to the sound of his music? It's been said that a man should not be forced to live up to his art. Benny Carter is one of the rare instances when we wonder whether the great art that a man has created can live up to him. — Wynton Marsalis

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. — Zedd

I've always loved black culture; I don't know any other way to put it. Since I was a kid I loved music and early jazz, Sly and the Family Stone. — Robert Greene

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. — Billy Collins

We feel fighting for dominance actually shows weakness. It's much harder to hold back the wolf than to let it have free rein. — Jazz Feylynn

Everything-everything-was communicated through the sound of the music. There were no other signals of any kind ever-no count-offs, head nods, spoken instructions ... nothing. — Chuck Israels

I knew all too well the damage of scarlet ink smeared across page-after-page ... — Jazz Feylynn

Jazz is so difficult. A lot of people think once they've learned these licks they can get up and play them for the rest of their life. But that's not being truthful to the music 'cause it's not developing. Cats you hear that don't make no mistakes? They ain't trying to do nothing. everything they hear is on the mark, but they've played it so many times ... I've built a whole career out of making mistakes! — Lester Bowie

This is why the classical of the jazz music station plays?
to give a ground of meaning to our pain? — Adrienne Rich

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. — Nigel Lythgoe

In a way, the history of jazz's development is a small mirror of classical music's development through the centuries. Now jazz is a living form of original music, while classical music has gotten to the end of its cycle in terms of exploring its form. — Mike Figgis

Armstrong was the key creator of the mature working language of jazz. Three decades after his death and more than three-quarters of a century since his influence first began to spread, not a single musician who has mastered that language fails to make daily use, knowingly or unknowingly, of something that was invented by Louis Armstrong. — Dan Morgenstern

Improvisation was the blood and bone of jazz, and in the classic, New Orleans jazz it was collective improvisation in which each performer, seemingly going his own melodic way, played in harmony, dissonance, or counterpoint with the improvisations of his colleagues. Quite unlike ragtime, which was written down in many cases by its composers and could be repeated note for note (if not expression for expression) by others, jazz was a performer's not a composer's art. — Russell Lynes

There are singers that I have enjoyed, from Nina Simone and Ray Charles onward. But the music that made music the number one thing for me as a youth was jazz. — Robert Wyatt

It has been difficult to hold onto many paintings but I have retained a few. Possibly the current favorite is titled 'Big Band' completed in 2005. It measures 13 feet x 9 feet. It has 18 nearly life size recognizable portraits of the biggest jazz stars that I knew and saw perform in the 1950s, '60s, '70s, '80s and includes Wynton Marsalis. — LeRoy Neiman

Life is a lot like jazz - it's best when you improvise. — George Gershwin

I'd actually been making my living as an organist with bands since I was probably 15 or 16 years old, and then as a senior in high school I put together a jazz quintet called The Bobby Mack Jazz Quintet. — Bobby McFerrin

Recording in Nashville was absolutely essential to get the sound, the musicians, the atmosphere, the warmth ... There are just cult places like that in the world, like Chicago for the blues or New York for jazz. Nothing sounds the same in Nashville as it does elsewhere. Nashville is the Mecca of country music and everyone knows it. — Roch Voisine

Man, if you have to ask what it [jazz] is, you'll never know. — Louis Armstrong

So our ears got used to listening to jazz in the place that it was that the bass player could not play. No one really realized it and really addressed it until the bass players who could play their instrument came along and started doing something with it. — Miroslav Vitous

America, the Idea of: We yearned for its beer and jazz, its smoke-filled nightclubs, its Edward Hopper bars, the melancholy of rainy Manhattan Gershwin nights ... the America we yearned for has gone. Did it ever exist? — Michael Bywater

I have a secret love of jazz. — Carly Rae Jepsen

In a society of increasingly mass-produced, assembly-line entertainment, where every individual is treated like an empty pitcher to be filled from above, jazz retains something of the spirit of the handicrafts of yesteryear. The print of the human spirit warms it. Deep down, jazz expresses the enforced & compassionate attitudes of a minority group and may well appeal to us because we all have blue moods and, in a fundamental sense, none of us is wholly free. — Marshall W. Stearns

I actually find a lot of parallels in jazz and cartooning. — Gary Larson

There's a richness to the old works if you look before the 1950s. The chord progressions and the language was more complicated, especially in the jazz and classical world. — Tori Amos

I also like Western classical music and jazz. — Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan

At a certain point, I became a kind of musician that has tunnel vision about jazz. I only listened to jazz and classical music. — Herbie Hancock

When comedy is good, it's jazz. The beats of it, the looseness, the improvisational part, the music-the way you hit the inflection, the high notes of a joke. It's all melody to me. — Billy Crystal

Don't make a career out of underestimating me." - Claire de Haven — James Ellroy

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

In Europe they look upon jazz as art. In America it's a diversion. Somebody opens a restaurant and installs another band off to the side. People don't listen. — Chet Baker

It's either hip or it ain't. — Lee Morgan

There were so many specific things from high school jazz band that I remembered: the conductor searching out people who were out of tune, or stopping and starting me for hours in front of the band as they watched. — Damien Chazelle