Jazz Quotes

Science teachers and the mentally ill, that's all Jazz is for.

When I was doing jazz concerts in America, I would use the biggest names I could find.

The history of all big jazz bands shows was, first they played for dancing, and then they played for singing.

I think jazz is actually quite unforgiving in its disdain for nostalgia. It demands creativity and change at its highest level.

Music is what you notice when it's no longer in your presence.

All music now, I think, is fair game for jazz musicians to interpret, and they have been. I would consider those songs standards now. "Norwegian Wood" is a standard; "Call Me" is a standard.

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

I always called him the Dizzy Dean of music, he was so belligerent and braggadocio... But one thing I always noticed about Jelly, he would back everything he said by what he could do.

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.

I didn't plan on rock-n-roll. I wanted to learn jazz; I got to know some people doing rock-n-roll with jazz, and I thought I could make some money playing music.

Jazz has endured because it doesn't have a beginning or an ending. It's a moment.

Hip-hop has a feeling element, it's not just about knowing music. It's not like classical music or jazz where you can go on raw energy.

I resolved to play my trumpet like a sax.

What kills me is that everybody thinks I like Jazz.

Unlike anything heard before. This is jazz for the 21st century.

[Billy Strayhorn] understood the violin as well as he understood Jazz, and he wrote for the violin as a violin.

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.

The philosophy of jazz represents tolerance, teamwork and inclusion. That's what America is about. The music reflects that.

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

The Angel Gabriel disappeared once for sixty years and they found him on earth hiding in the body of a man named Miles Davis.

Trust me, the only real way to understand 'Chic' is in highfalutin terms. Our chord progressions were based on European modal melodies. I made those early 'Chic' records to impress my jazz friends.

New York seems conducted by jazz, animated by it. It is essentially a city of rhythm.

jazz is the expression of America's romantic self, its sensual potency, its lyrical force.

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

Fitzgerald coined the phrase the 'Jazz Age,' and now we're living in the Hip-Hop Age.

The French - they like jazz, theyve been on jazz a long time.

You're not going to hear me do a rap song, you're not going to hear me do a jazz song. We have to be true to our roots, do what we do, and try to do it a little better each time.

I've been a jazz artist playing pop and R&B my entire career.

Most of the international acceptance of jazz education can be traced to the University of North Texas, Denton, Texas, and the wonderful program they inaugurated.

I knew even if I'm a cowboy, I'm going to be involved in jazz in some way.

North Texas is by far the most serious minded jazz program I have encountered.

Jazz was my first love.

Always pack your uniform on top.

If you mess around with jazz, you better have a good drummer and a good bass player.

The true artform is being a human being.

One of the greatest attributes of jazz, I think, is that it is that open.

Bruges is a beautiful medieval city almost untouched by time. If you like jazz, you will be well catered for. If you like chocolate and beer, you will be in heaven.

I never liked blues music, and I really didn't like jazz. I liked Chuck Berry.

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

I grew up with classical music blasting in my parents' living room and my older brother's practicing saxophone in his room listening to jazz... a beautiful chaos.

The only reason is that I hadn't seen The Modern Jazz Quartet perform live and a live performance is often where the real experience of jazz takes place. I'm not familiar with the Boswell Sisters.

What has been America's most nurturing contribution to the culture of this planet so far? Many would say jazz. I, who love jazz, will say this instead: Alcoholics Anonymous.

I started playing jazz by slowing down Tal Farlow records and analyzing his runs

I love dancing, actually. My mother taught children's dance, ballet, tap, jazz...I'm very flexible.

I'm the first one out on the dance floor. In college I had to take jazz, ballet and tap dancing, but, before that, it was just social.

Bach was a top harmonist geezer, which is why the jazz cats love him.

I had heard blues and jazz all my life but I was never aware that it was associated with nightclubs and drinking.

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

On the radio I listen to the easy-listening stations, the jazz stations.

I like seeing someone that can sing jazz and then flip over and sing a pop song and then sing a rock song.