Quotes & Sayings About Swing Music

I have to admit that more and more lately, the whole idea of jazz as an idiom is one that I've completely rejected. I just don't see it as an idiomatic thing any more ... To me, if jazz is anything, it's a process, and maybe a verb, but it's not a thing. It's a form that demands that you bring to it things athat are valuable to you, that are personal to you. That, for me, is a pretty serious distinction that doesn't have anything to do with blues, or swing, or any of these other things that tend to be listed as essentials in order for music to be jazz with a capital J. — Pat Metheny

The way to begin healing the wounds of the world is to treasure the Infant Christ in us; to be not the castle but the cradle of Christ; and, in rocking that cradle to the rhythm of love, to swing the whole world back into the beat of the Music of Eternal Life. — Caryll Houselander

I think the word soul has gotta come into it. Music that's created just for consuming lacks that soul, that swing, that feeling. — Michelle Shocked

I discovered in college that country music could be fun adding some swing to it. — George Strait

I see The Gap ads as being a great example of how branding has changed. Those Gap campaigns are pop culture. They've been incredibly powerful. They have had the kind of effect on culture that a hit band has. Just look at The Gap's Khaki swing ads, which were music videos. They had this tremendous impact on the industry - suddenly everything started looking like Gap ads and it became difficult to know who was co-opting whom and who was creating culture. — Naomi Klein

I think of rock 'n' roll as a combination of country blues and swing band music, not Chicago blues, and modern pop. — Bob Dylan

The life of Lincoln should never be passed by in silence by young or old. He touched the log cabin and it became the palace in which greatness was nurtured. He touched the forest and it became to him a church in which the purest and noblest worship of God was observed. His occupation has become associated in our minds with the integrity of the life he lived. In Lincoln there was always some quality that fastened him to the people and taught their to keep time to the music of his heart. — David Swing

Come on get higher,
Loosen my lips ...
Faith and desire and the swing of your hips
Just pull me down hard,
and drown me in love .. — Matt Nathanson

I guess my biggest influence was actually my Grandfather. He used to play old records on vinyl, and would play old jazz and soul music like Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and The Rat Pack and swing music. — Ella Henderson

But here there was only hot swing music and liquor, dance halls, ban, and movies, and sex that hung in the gloom like a chandelier and flooded the world with brief, deceptive rainbows. — Tennessee Williams

I don't care if a dude is purple with green breath as long as he can swing. — Miles Davis

And I like Strauss and Mozart and all that, but the priceless gift that African Americans gave the world when they were still in slavery was a gift so great that it is now almost the only reason many foreigners still like us at least a little bit. That specific remedy for the worldwide epidemic of depression is a gift called the blues. All pop music today-jazz, swing, be-bop, Elvis Presley, the Beatles, the Stones, rock and roll, hip hop and on and on- is derived from the blues. — Kurt Vonnegut

Like the New Orleans tradition that preceded it, and the Swing Era offerings that followed it, Chicago jazz was not just the music of a time and place, but also a timeless style of performance - and for its exponents, very much a way of life - one that continues to reverberate to this day in the works of countless Dixieland and traditional jazz bands around the world. For many listeners, the Chicago style remains nothing less than the quintessential sound of jazz. — Ted Gioia

After tiny has tried ballerina pose, swing-batter-batter pose, pump-up-the-jam pose, and top-of-the-mountain-sound-of-music pose in the reflection of the bean, he walks us to a bench overlooking lake shore drive. — David Levithan

Jazz is a music that really allows a person to express his deepest self, his most personal self - Africa being the primary source of jazz. Naturally, improvisation and swing are a part of jazz, improvisation being the key. — Harold Land

It is really refreshing to hear a big band that has the ability to execute ensemble passages with swing and precision while retaining a "small group" feel during the solo sections. This kind of "tight, loose" approach is seldom heard in big bands, whether they are professional or not. Now, all the band needs is to hit the road and take the music around the world! — John Patitucci

They said Bird played bebop, but Bird could still swing. I've heard a lot of guys play bebop, but they wasn't swinging. — Jay McShann

I always like to play very contemporary concepts of swing right next to New Orleans music because it highlights continuum. — Wynton Marsalis

Certain music, jazz in particular, has the ability to make you a better citizen of the world. It helps you expand your world view and gives you more confidence in your cultural achievements. Improvisational jazz teaches you about yourself while the swing in jazz teaches you how to work with others — Wynton Marsalis

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. — Ella Henderson

I love most melodic music - classical, reggae, big band, jazz, blues, country, pop, swing, folk. — John Lescroart

I, myself, came to enjoy the players who didn't only just swing but who invented new rhythmic patterns, along with new melodic concepts. And those people are: Art Tatum, Bud Powell, Max Roach, Sonny Rollins, Lester Young, Dizzy Gillespie and Charles Parker, who is the greatest genius of all to me because he changed the whole era around. — Charles Mingus

My grandfather was a massive influence in my music. Growing up, he would play a lot of old-school records to me. A lot of jazz and swing music, actually, growing up. — Ella Henderson

The main three components are the blues, improvisation - which is some kind of element that people are trying to make it up - and swing, which means even though they're making up music, they're trying to make it up together. It feels great, like you're having a great conversation with somebody. — Wynton Marsalis

Laughing at "Rapper's Delight"'s no revenge, and anyway it wasn't your idea, and anyway it's funny. Dean Street's another story, a realm of knowledge unapplicable here.
You've just about finished leaving Dean Street, and Aeroman, behind.
If this means avoiding the one who protected your ass all through junior high, the one you once ached to emulate, the one whose orbit you were happy just to swing in - if it means leaving the million-dollar kid's regular phone messages in Abraham's precise handwriting unreturned - that's a small price to pay for growing up, isn't it?
This ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no foolin' around.
It's the end, the end of the seventies. — Jonathan Lethem

They key to a great party is the music," Sam says, scrolling through his iPod as we tramp through the sand. Eddie - the guy having the party - put Sam in charge of the playlist. "If it's too intense, no one will be able to hang out and talk. But if it's too mellow, it will turn into a snoozefest. You also have to consider timing. There's a particular kind of music appropriate for each stage of the party - intro, warm-up, full swing, wind-down, and outro. — Sarah Ockler

I loved Western Swing and Hank Williams' music, and I now know that it's a 6th tuning that gives you all of those classic licks. — John Fogerty

I made a good living for a teenager. And I had to learn all different kinds of music - jazz, swing, Motown, pop - and that inspired what kind of music I started to write. — Idina Menzel

For me, jazz, R&B, jump swing, Chicago blues, country blues, early hillbilly music, and honky tonk all stem from the same source — Duke Robillard

The Metropole Orchestra is like Count Basie or Duke Ellington with strings ... it's strings that swing. Strings that swing like Dizzy Gillespie ... keep swinging, baby. And when you have all of that special excellence of the Metropole Orchestra, then your music just flies - it soars in a way that's really magical. — Al Jarreau

The white youth of today have begun to react to the fact that the American Way of Life is a fossil of history. What do they care if their old baldheaded and crew-cut elders don't dig their caveman mops? They couldn't care less about the old, stiff-assed honkies who don't like their new dances: Frog, Monkey, Jerk, Swim, Watusi. All they know is that it feels good to swing to way-out body-rhythms instead of dragging across the dance floor like zombies to the dead beat of mind-smothered Mickey Mouse music. — Eldridge Cleaver

There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing, result from marijuana usage. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others. — Harry J. Anslinger

One of the most obvious aspects of the music to people who know jazz is: How does it feel in the swing? These are things that are very subtle and that jazz musician appreciate in a particular way. I appreciate the way Tommy Flanagan swings, the way that Barry Harris swings, the great pulse that Hank Jones and Bill Evans have - end every one of them is different. — Chuck Israels

I really like Caravan Palace's electro swing stuff. They incorporate the electronic, but when you see them live, they're all on stage playing live music. They're all playing their instruments. They drop these beats with the DJs that are so incredible. — Drake Bell

Right now, all white people are either wearing or coveting a pair of Ray-Ban Wayfarer sunglasses. These sunglasses are so popular now that you cannot swing a canvas bag at a farmer's market without hitting a pair. In fact, at outdoor gatherings you should count the number of Wayfarers so you can determine exactly how white the event is. If you see no Wayfarers you are either at a country music concert or you are indoors. — Christian Lander

The golf swing is very, very rhythmic. There's a certain tempo to it, just like in music. — Justin Timberlake

Indeed, there is a moment on the first CD - the electrifying opening to "I Got Loaded," which sounds like an R&B standard but isn't - when you might find yourself asking whether anyone who has ever been smitten by pop music can fail to have his heart stopped by the chords, the swing, and, once again, Steve Berlin's wonderfully greasy sax. — Nick Hornby

'Swing' is an adjective or a verb, not a noun. All jazz musicians should swing. There is no such thing as a 'swing band' in music. — Artie Shaw

The swing of his nature took him from extreme languor to devouring energy; and as I knew well, he was never so truly formidable as when, for days on end, he had been lounging in his armchair amid his improvisations and his black-letter editions. Then it was that the lust of the chase would suddenly come upon him, and that his brilliant reasoning power would rise to the level of intuition, until those who were unacquainted with his methods would look askance at him as on a man whose knowledge was not that of other mortals. When I saw him that afternoon so enwrapped in the music of St. James's Hall I felt that an evil time might be coming upon those whom he had set himself to hunt down. — Arthur Conan Doyle

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. — Horace Silver

It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing. — Duke Ellington

What I love about Sonny's playing is that he is so inventive within the mainstream Jazz vernacular. Because he knows so many ways to deal with musical material, he is never repetitive and hasn't had to invent a new language. Also, he never asked me to do anything but swing! — Pete La Roca

I worry more about the marketing that's taken hold since the 70s. The Jazz era, the Swing era, those were huge. Entire decades were named for music. In the 1940s - after World War II - changes in taxation, ballrooms closing, people moving to the suburbs, and the onset of target marketing and the confusion of commerce with art caused some things to happen as a result that have taken us away from jazz and what jazz offers us. — Wynton Marsalis

I think The Doors are one of the classic groups, and I think we're all tempted to feel like the time in which we grew up was somehow special, but I really do believe that there were two golden eras in music: The Forties and Fifties of big band, jazz and swing, and the Sixties and Seventies of rock. To me, they're really unparalleled. — Edgar Winter

Swing is my favorite kind of music. — George Strait

I don't care who likes it or buys it. Because if you use that criterion, Mozart would have never written Don Giovanni, Charlie Parker never would have played anything but swing music. There comes a point at which you have to stand up and say, this is what I have to do. — Branford Marsalis

Of what use is the universe? What is the practical application of a million galaxies? Yet just because it has no use, it has a use- which may sound like a paradox, but is not. What, for instance, is the use of playing music? If you play to make money, to outdo some other artist, to be a person of culture, or to improve your mind, you are not really playing- for your mind is not on the music. You don't swing. When you come to think of it, playing or listening to music is a pure luxury, an addiction, a waste of valuable time and money for nothing more than making elaborate patterns of sound. — Alan Watts

Of course I danced a lot when I was making 'Swingers.' The swing music scene was big in Hollywood, and I went to places like The Derby. And, after I wrote it and was trying to get it made, I would go every week so I'd be good at dancing. — Jon Favreau

The flowers, the candles, the easy swing of the music, his daughter's perfectly made-up face, her artfully arranged hair, the swell of her pregnancy - it all cried out for love, for pride, for fatherly tenderness, even if Daphne would not look at him, even if she had walled herself up with her happiness and left him outside. He did not know how to make her forgive him. He would have to wait. — Maggie Shipstead

We might as well swing boys, because Stravinsky cuts us all. — Woody Herman

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. — Harvey Pekar

There's not much music I'll listen to if it doesn't have pretty heavy swing. Rhythm is so important. Punk rock would have more power and feeling if it had swing. — Greg Ginn

Swing is so much more than a dance, it's a way of life. The music gets stuck in your mind and the dance is in your heart and the whole scene is engraved on your soul. You can fly. — Nicholas Hope

My wife is from Laurel, Mississippi, and she has a lot of relatives down in Louisiana, Baton Rouge, and Shreveport, Louisiana. We go down there a lot. We got married in New Orleans. She has a cousin who introduced me to swamp pop, which is sort of zydeco/Cajun music with a little uptempo pop swing. Now I'm a big zydeco fan, I'm a big swamp-music fan. — Charlie Day