Best 709 quotes in «jazz quotes» category

People always ask, "Why jazz?" and I'm like "Why not?" It's kind of like asking Seurat, "Why so many dots?" I imagine if you asked Bjork, "Why the Tibetan bells?" She'd probably be like "That's just what I heard." It's the same thing. This is just the way I see music.

People sometimes forget that jazz was built not only in the minds of the great ones but on the backs of the ordinary ones — ordinary musicians.

Personally, I can't see how anyone can produce any beautiful music out of being angry.

Phil Robson is a disturbingly good jazz guitar player!

Player for player, there’s 
no better working band in jazz than The Cookers.

Records used to be documents, but now record companies want product.

Possibly, I should have been a jazz singer from the beginning.

Rock and roll mainly but I can play passable jazz also.

Rejoice at the death and cry at the birth: New Orleans sticks close to the Scriptures.

Rock and roll ain't nothing but jazz with a hard backbeat.

Romanticism implies nostalgia for damaged goods.

Scott Feiner is a soulful magnet for the fusion of Brazilian and jazz music.

Sarah Vaughan was the Charlie Parker of the vocalists during the 1950s.

Science Fiction is the jazz of literature.

Since about 1980 Kenny Werner has been one of jazz’s unsung heroes

She has been more famous, over a longer time span, than any other female singer.

Something was still there, that something that distinguishes an artist from a performer: the revealing of self. Here I be. Not forlong, but here I be. In sensing her mortality, we sensed our own.

Soho has got to be at its centre. It's got such a history for rock, pop, poetry, jazz, writers, all those things, and I think it should be valued as such, and protected as this centre for bohemia.

Somebody asked me once, 'Do you think that swing will ever come back?' And I said, 'Do you think the 1938 Ford will ever come back?'

Some people are born with a brain that has this weird, magical mathematical thing that makes them an amazing jazz musician.

So easy, when you know how.

So I went into jazz and performed in jazz clubs all over the country.

Some guys said 'Here's bop!' Wham! They said, 'Here's something we can make money on!' Wham! 'Here's a comedian!' Wham! Here's a guy who talks funny talk!'

Steve Marcus was one of the greatest saxophonists in all of music. He truly was able to unite jazz with the popular music of the time.

So much of Jazz doesn't have an audience other than music students or musicians.

So the whole basis for jazz music is based on the fact that the bass player could not play his instrument.

Starting in the middle of a musical sentence and moving in both directions at once.

Sometimes there are no gigs, but the main thing is the music. You can't take that away. The only person who can take that away from you is you.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your magnificent indifference.

Taxi drivers used to ask me what kind of music I did, and I'd say, 'Well, it's kind of jazz, soul, classical' - but that makes no sense to anyone.

Symphony musicians are not trained in improvising, certainly not in a jazz style.

Tastes are created by the business interests. How else can you explain the popularity of Al Hirt?

Ted Lewis could make the clarinet talk. What it said was put me back in the case!

That's kind of like how jazz is sometimes. You're out there predicting the future, and no one believes you.

That's what it is-it's jazz. It's just jazz. That's what the whole thing is about to me. It's about what's happening right now in this context. This conversation is jazz to a certain extent. It's improvisation. What appeals to me about music is the improvization. That's what I don't like about the media-they're not living it.

That's the exact concept behind the music: to take that kind of, I guess whatever you want to call it, jazz sensibility - but not have it be about solos.

That's the jazz that I like - the stuff that has a soothing effect.

The better it gets, the fewer of us know it.

The bandstand is a sacred place.

The jazz band's chief stimulus, of course, was the rise of the negro 'blues' and their exploitation by the negro song-writer, W. C. Handy.

The drummer; he inspired me to play like no one else I have ever met.

The human being receives the pleasure from music, not from the argument over what it is.

The iconoclastic mode, that specific mode of language, there is an element of it that it is punk - that is confrontational. That's just a part of the language of jazz - at a certain point.

The jazz and blues clubs are like the jazz and blues musicians - they're disappearing.

The jazz trombone is a magical experience particularly to hear and listen too.

The challenge to the improvisor is to get permanence into his spontaneity. The challenge to the composer is to get spontaneity into his permanence.

The day of the great Jazz improviser who doesn't know how to read music is over.

The jazz musician's function is to feel.

The more real you get, the more unreal everything else is.

The most common misconception about me is that I'm basically a jazz singer.