Jazz Quotes

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

There are Two Secrets to Success: 1. Don't tell ANYONE Everything you know 2.If you have to ask what Jazz is, you'll never know.

Selflessness is like waiting in a hospital In a badly-fitting suit on a cold wet morning. Selfishness is like listening to good jazz With drinks for further orders and a huge fire.

As my career has progressed, I've had the pleasure of playing with the baddest jazz cats on the planet. But that doesn't change my desire to entertain folks. That's really who I am.

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

Monk encouraged me to emancipate the drums from their subservient role as timekeepers.

Smokin' at the Half Note is the absolute greatest jazz-guitar album ever made. It is also the record that taught me how to play.

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

Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom.

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

Jazz music is a language of the emotions.

Jazz is an idea that is more powerful than the details of its history.

Art is dangerous. It is one of the attractions: when it ceases to be dangerous, you don't want it.

Jazz is the folk music of the machine age.

It is Jazz's very nature to change, to develop & adapt to the circumstances of its environment.

There's so much around, you don't know what to listen to. All I've got at home is Bo Diddley, some Stones and Beatles stuff, and old jazz records.

The value of jazz still has to be clarified. People involve themselves with its superficialities without digging for its soul.

Life is not about finding our limitations, it's about finding our infinity.

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

Milton, of all people, gave the most perfect definition of the state of mind required to play jazz: ' with wanton heed and giddy cunning.' That's how you play jazz.

Jazz never ends... it just continues.

The symphonic orchestras have sponsors, people who give them endowments, and I think it should be the same way with jazz - because this is a national treasure.

Because it has such a ragged movement. It suggests something like that.

To most white people, jazz means black and jazz means dirt, and that's not what I play. I play black classical music.

Jazz demands that you bring to it things that are valuable to you, that are personal to you.

Well, I think writing is basically about time and rhythm. Like with jazz. You have your basic melody and then you just riff off of it. And the riffs are about timing.

If you plan on continuing a tradition, it might be a good idea to find out just what tradition it is that you intend to continue.

The whole thing of being in music is not to control it but to be swept away by it.

Your sound is you & what you really feel inside.

Astronomers, like burglars and jazz musicians, operate best at night.

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.

The reward for playing jazz is playing jazz.

I cannot say what I think is right about Music. I only know the rightness of it.

There is no art without intention.

Jazz is like a big secret club. The mainstream media doesn't pay any attention to it, it's like 1 percent of the music market - no one cares. Why? Because the majority of jazz is old.

If you really understand the meaning of be-bop, you understand the meaning of freedom.

Improvisation is the ability to talk to oneself.

If you feel like tapping your feet, tap your feet.

What's interesting about a person without problems?

I feel that Jazz improvisation is the ultimate. You have to create on the spot, the essence of this music.

How do I know why Miles walks off the stage? Why don't you ask him? And besides, maybe we'd all like to be like Miles, and just haven't got the guts.

Imitate, assimilate & innovate.

I cringed when I heard myself described as a Jazz singer. I've always thought of myself as a Jazz vocalist.

It's great to know that our old stuff still sounds good to our fans, just as it's wonderful to think that we've turned a few people on to jazz over the years.

Whatever else has been said about me personally is unimportant. When I sing, I believe. I'm honest.

Bop is at the end of the road. Now everybody wants dance music.

If there was no black man there would be no Rock'n'Roll. The beat, the rhythms of Africa are what created Rock'n'Roll and Jazz.

This is jazz, this is funk, this is soul, this is gospel This is sanctified sick, this is player Pentecostal. This is church front pew, Amen, pulpit, What my people need and the opposite of bullshit.

That.s what Jazz music is all about.We started the Messengers because somebody had to mind the store for jazz.No America--no Jazz. It is the only culture that America has brought forth.

When I got pretty good I went on the road with a group. We starved.