Bebop Quotes

• What makes bebop legitimate is the fact that when it was done, it was illegitimate.

  Matthew Shipp

  Music, Done, Facts

  90 Copy quote

• Most of what I listen to now is mainstream jazz from 1935 right up to and including early bebop and cool jazz.

  Dave Van Ronk

  Heart, Cool Jazz, Mainstream

  86 Copy quote

• I went through the whole number, you know. The swing era, the boogie woogie era, the bebop era. Thelonious Monk is still one of my favorites. So a lot of these people had their effect on me.

  Mose Allison

  Swings, Numbers, People

  92 Copy quote

• I still prefer the bebop of the '40s. The very stuff I started out with is still the best to me. I have come full circle.

  Carla Bley

  Circles, Full Circle, Stuff

  84 Copy quote

• Bebop is the music of the future (as soon as they learn how to play it).

  Dexter Gordon

  Play

  14 Copy quote

• Musically, the bebop route was magnificent, but businesswise, it was the dumbest thing I ever did.

  Woody Herman

  Money, Magnificent, Routes

  Woody Herman, Stuart Troup (1990). “The Woodchopper's Ball: The Autobiography of Woody Herman”, New York : E.P. Dutton

  13 Copy quote

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• 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

  Music, Swings, Broadway

  17 Copy quote

• Bebop has set music back twenty years.

  Tommy Dorsey

  Years, Twenties, Jazz

  11 Copy quote

• [On bebop years] All I did was sing 'How High the Moon.' It seemed like the only song I ever sang.

  Ella Fitzgerald

  Song, Moon, Years

  26 Copy quote

• If you have a counterculture band, you put a name on it, you call them beatniks, and you can sell something - books or bebop. Or you label them as hippies and you can sell tie-dyed T-shirts.

  Jim Jarmusch

  Book, Hippie, Names

  Source: www.jonathanrosenbaum.net

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• Bebop didn't have the humanity of Duke Ellington. It didn't even have that recognizable thing. Bird and Diz were great, fantastic, challenging — but they weren't sweet.

  Miles Davis

  Sweet, Bird, Challenges

  "Miles, the autobiography".

  52 Copy quote

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• [Bebop is] Chinese music.

  Louis Armstrong

  Chinese, Chinese Music, Jazz

  16 Copy quote

• In those days before hearing Charlie Parker and Dizzy, and before learning of the so-called bebop era--by the way, I have some thoughts about that word, "bebop"--my first jazz hero ever, jazz improvisor hero, was Lester Young. I was a big "Lester Young-oholic," and all of my buddies were Lester Young-oholics. We'd get together and dissect, analyze, discuss, and listen to Lester Young's solos for hours and hours and hours. He was our god.

  J. J. Johnson

  Hero, Together, Way

  13 Copy quote

• Bebop was like humming along to Mitch Miller to me.

  Albert Ayler

  Music, Jazz, Humming

  8 Copy quote

• All the forms of popular music from jazz to hip-hop, to bebop, to soul [come from black innovation]. You talk about different dances from the catwalk, to the jitterbug, to the Charleston, to break dancing -\-\ all these are forms of black dancing...What would [life] be without a song, without a dance, and joy and laughter, and music.

  Michael Jackson

  Song, Laughter, Dancing

  FaceBook post by Michael Jackson from Aug 21, 2015

  8 Copy quote

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• Man always thinks about the past before he dies.

  Jet Black

  Anime, Past, Men

  6 Copy quote

• I have pretty ecumenical tastes. I'm interested in a lot of different kinds of music, so I don't listen with a jaundiced ear to music because it's in a certain category, whether it's country or opera or hip-hop or bebop or whatever it is.

  David Sanborn

  Country, Hip Hop, Different

  "Jazzin’ Around". Interview with Mike Ragogna, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 5, 2012.

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• Man always thinks about the past before he dies, as if he were frantically searching for proof that he truly lived.

  Jet Black

  Anime, Past, Men

  8 Copy quote

• I can't imagine my life without the extraordinary bebop jazz revolution in New York in late '40s and '50s.

  Robert Wyatt

  New York, Revolution, Jazz

  Interview with Ryan Dombal, pitchfork.com. November 14, 2014.

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• Everything has a beginning and an end. Life is just a cycle of starts and stops. There are ends we don't desire, but they're inevitable, we have to face them. It's what being human is all about.

  Jet Black

  Desire, Faces, Life Is

  "Fictional character: Jet Black". "Cowboy Bebop", www.imdb.com. 1998 - 2003.

  8 Copy quote

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• I can take any series of numbers and turn it into music, from Bach to bebop, Herbie Hancock to hip-hop.

  Donald Byrd

  Numbers, Hip Hop, Hips

  7 Copy quote

• From folk to tribal to Cab Calloway, Cole Porter, Gershwin to the Rolling Stones, whose first record was all covers, to country-western, bebop, blues, and even the referencing in classic hip hop to cliched love ballads of the '80s or whatever - that is kinda gone, and that's just terrifying to me.

  Cat Power

  Country, Hip Hop, Hips

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• You don't see the European classical musicians allowing the music of Bach, Brahms, or Beethoven to become extinct. That music has gone on for centuries and centuries. We have the same obligation. Why do we have to become so 'hip' that we can say, 'Bebop is square,' or "New Orleans is square'? This, to me, is a shame.

  Rahsaan Roland Kirk

  Squares, New Orleans, Hips

  19 Copy quote

• I was reading Omar Khayyam, Kahlil Gibran, Rumi, L. Ron Hubbard, all sorts of philosophy. Bebop cats are like that. Curious. I wanted to know about everything.

  Quincy Jones

  Philosophy, Reading, Cat

  22 Copy quote

• My first love in music was jazz, but I like it all," "I reacted emotionally to Art Blakey and, of course, to Joe Pass and Wes Montgomery. I was all of 16 when I had my first guitar lesson with Joe. But I never focused on being a bebop player. I loved the harmony, rhythm and phrasing, but I wanted to apply them to my own concept and sound.

  Larry Carlton

  Art, First Love, Player

  7 Copy quote