Best 709 quotes in «jazz quotes» category

I, of course, wanted to play real jazz. When we played pop tunes, and naturally we had to, I wanted those pops to kick! Not loud and fast, understand, but smoothly and with a definite punch.

I played in rhumba bands, mickey mouse bands; all kinds of bands.

I prefer no one to teach me. I prefer to swing on my own.

I prefer her [Nina Simone's] jazz period much more so than her folk period.

I put out a recording of me singing mostly jazz because I wanted people to know I'm coming from a jazz background.

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.

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

I resolved to play my trumpet like a sax.

Is jazz a rhythm, or is it a vibration?

I started in New Orleans music and played all through the history of jazz.

I started to play Jazz music in my early teens. A boyfriend brought records over, so I listened to everything

I started off with classical music, and I got into jazz when I was about 14 years old. And I've been playing jazz ever since.

I ... started out to become a jazz pianist; in the meantime I started singing and I sang the way I felt and that's just the way it came out.

I still got my Ferrari.

It ["Begin the Beguine"] became such a hit that it superseded anything that any band had ever had. It was the first time that a so-called swing band played something melodic and still gave it a beat.

I strive for honesty in playing what I feel.

I still insist that American performers are the best performers in the world.

I still play jazz, and I've always got that trumpet very handy, but I'm coming to feel the classical venues are where my main focus is, in the realm of symphonic pops.

It doesn't have to be happy music to be inspiring.

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

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

I think all of us begin as writers. I wanted to be a writer from the time I as eight, long before I heard of jazz. The question is, once you have that obsession, what is your subject going to be and you often don't know for some time. It might become fiction, it might be non-fiction, and if it's non-fiction it can go in any number of directions.

It is evidently known, beyond contradiction, that New Orleans is the cradle of Jazz and I, myself, happened to be the creator in the year 1902.

I think you have to have a jazz pedigree to be on jazz radio.

I think that band [Glenn Miller] was the beginning of the end. It was a mechanized version of what they called jazz music. I still can't stand to listen to it.

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

It's a shame that jazz is now being turned into dried fruit. It's becoming quantized, diced and defined. It's becoming an idiom. To me if it's anything, jazz is a verb ? it's more like a process than it is a thing.

It pulled me like a magnet, jazz did, because it was a way that I could express myself.

I tried practicing for a few weeks and ended up playing too fast.

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

It quickly becomes apparent that in the gray area between jazz, R&B and soul, Tony Adamo is one of the top voices.

It’s like a language. You learn the alphabet, which are the scales. You learn sentences, which are the chords. And then you talk extemporaneously with the horn. It’s a wonderful thing to speak extemporaneously, which is something I’ve never gotten the hang of. But musically I love to talk just off the top of my head. And that’s what jazz music is all about.

It's easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself.

It seems that jazz is more cerebral and more mathematical in a sense.

It's much easier for me to say that, the kind of music I didn't listen to was pretty much that. I mean everything, from jazz to classical to popular. And Tibetan horns were a great part of it in 1966, '67.

It's like an act of murder - you play with intent to commit something.

It's like a whole orchestra, the piano for me.

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

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

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

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.

I've been around jazz and jazz musicians most of my life.

It's true I've always been attracted to the jazz band in an orchestral way, rather than a band way.

It takes an intelligent ear to listen to Jazz.

It was when I found out I could make mistakes that I knew I was on to something.

I used to be a jazz snob, believe it or not. I sort of turned my nose up at anything more commercial.

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

I've been invited to do a trio with a fantastic jazz guitarist and a harmonica player

I've been YouTube surfing a lot lately so I'll Shazam a song that I find or some s - - and type that in on YouTube and just go through all the relateds for it. So it's been a lot of random jazz s - - lately. Like I found Lonnie Liston Smith, and Ahmad Jamal, s - - like that. So that's been very tight.

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