Quotes & Sayings About Jazz Louis Armstrong

Jazz is what I play for a living. — Louis Armstrong

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.

Louis Armstrong is the master of the jazz solo. He became the beacon, the light in the tower, that helped the rest of us navigate the tricky waters of jazz improvisation. — Ellis Marsalis Jr.

Louis Armstrong is jazz. He represents what the music is all about. — Wynton Marsalis

The thing in jazz that will get Bix Beiderbecke out of his bed at two o'clock in the morning, pick that cornet up and practice into the pillow for another two or three hours, or that would make Louis Armstrong travel around the world for fifty plus years non stop, just get up out of his sick bed, crawl up on the bandstand and play, the thing that would make Duke Ellington, the thing that would make Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Mary Lou Williams, the thing that would make all of these people give their lives for this, and they did give their lives, is that it gives us a glimpse into what America is going to be when it becomes itself. And this music tells you that it will become itself. And when you get a taste of that, there's just nothing else you're going to taste that's as sweet. — Wynton Marsalis

Each man has his own music bubbling up inside him. — Louis Armstrong

Louis Armstrong is quite simply the most important person in American music. He is to 20th century music (I did not say jazz) what Einstein is to physics. — Ken Burns

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

Jazz is played from the heart. You can even live by it. Always love it. — Louis Armstrong

There's no appreciation for the giants [of jazz]; there's never been a major film on Duke Ellington , never a major film on Louis Armstrong. What they accomplished, we could never accomplish today ... What's happening now is lightweight compared to what happened before. If Louis Armstrong was alive today, he'd be a superstar. If Art Tatum was alive today, my god, all the piano players would get on their knees. So that's what's missing today; we've been cut off from our heritage. — Randy Weston

Intimate singing had a wonderful style in the '30s and '40s. It came out of Broadway and the jazz of Louis Armstrong and Billie Holliday. But Sinatra created the best romantic era that we've ever had. — Tony Bennett

If you have to ask what jazz is you will never know. Louis Armstrong — Louis Armstrong

If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know. — Louis Armstrong

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! — Dave Brubeck

My school music teacher, Al Bennest, introduced me to jazz by playing Louis Armstrong's record of "West End Blues" for me. I found more jazz on the radio, and began looking for records. My paper route money, and later, money I earned working after school in a print shop and a butcher shop went toward buying jazz records. I taught myself the alto saxophone and the drums in order to play in my high school dance band. — Bill Crow

If it hadn't been for Jazz, there wouldn't be no rock and roll. — Louis Armstrong

All them weird chords which don't mean a thing ... you got no melody to remember, and no beat to dance to — Louis Armstrong

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

I'm a spade, you're an ofay. Let's play. — Louis Armstrong

I lay my body down in another city, another hotel room. Once Louis Armstrong and his band stayed here. Later the hotel fell to trash. New money resurrected it. Under the red moon of justice, I dream with the king of jazz. — Joy Harjo

The extent of his influence across jazz, across American music, and around the world has such continuing stature that he is one of the few who can easily be mentioned with Stravinsky, Picasso and Joyce. His life was the embodiment of one who moves from rags to riches, from anonymity to internationally imitated innovator. Louis Daniel Armstrong supplied revolutionary language that took on such pervasiveness that it became commonplace, like the light bulb, the airplane, the telephone. — Stanley Crouch

The memory of things gone is important to a jazz musician. Things like old folks singing in the moonlight in the back yard on a hot night or something said long ago. — Louis Armstrong

Once there was Louis Armstrong blowing his beautiful top in the muds of New Orleans; before him the mad musicians who had paraded on official days and broke up their Sousa marches into ragtime. Then there was swing, and Roy Eldridge, vigorous and virile, blasting the horn for everything it had in waves of power and logic and subtlety - leaning into it with glittering eyes and a lovely smile and sending it out broadcast to rock the jazz world. — Jack Kerouac

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

To jazz, or not to jazz, there is no question! — Louis Armstrong

There's only two ways to sum up music; either it's good or it's bad. If it's good you don't mess about it, you just enjoy it. — Louis Armstrong

If you don't like Louis Armstrong, you don't know how to love. — Mahalia Jackson

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. — Ahmet Ertegun

You ask: What is it that philosophers have called qualitative states? I answer, only half in jest: As Louis Armstrong said when asked what jazz is, 'If you got to ask, you ain't never gonna get to know.' — Ned Block

I actually wanted to be a jazz musician first. My grandparents introduced me to Louis Armstrong. I loved Louis Armstrong so I took up the trumpet and just did that every day and practiced that. — Douglas Booth

You will never know what the meaning of Jazz is if ask what it means. — Louis Armstrong

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. — Duke Ellington

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