Jazz Quotes - Page 25

• When I'm dead twenty-five years, people are going to begin to recognize me.

  Scott Joplin

  Years, People, Twenties

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

  Lenny Breau

  Music, Running, Playing Jazz

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• Whenever you study composition you inevitably encounter Bach right off the bat. You can't get across the room without running into him and the other greats. Analyzing Bach absolutely influenced my jazz playing.

  Howard Roberts

  Music, Running, Bats

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• Kenny Burrell is the grand master of jazz guitar.

  Dizzy Gillespie

  Music, Guitar, Masters

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• People ask me to describe how I play, and the most obvious answer is that I'm a jazz influenced guitar player. But I'm not a jazz guitar player. Wes Montgomery was a jazz guitarist, Joe Pass was a jazz guitarist (laughs).

  Larry Carlton

  Music, Player, Guitar

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• People who love jazz musicians love us when we play what we want to play and we're starving. But as soon as you commercialize your sound like Wes Montgomery did, the jazz fans and the critics are down on you!

  George Benson

  Music, Play, People

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• Back in the day in my teens I was listening to Joe Pass and Wes Montgomery a lot; before that I was listening to what I would call now the more 'simple' jazz players (but still very valid), like Barney Kessell or Johnny Smith; I learnt a lot of voicings from Johnny Smith records. Now, I listen to the old blues players; that's what you'd hear in my house if there was music on. It would be Albert Collins or Albert King.

  Larry Carlton

  Music, Kings, Simple

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• And what happened was, it's the same thing an older, more successful writer of ficition might say to a student: write about what you know. And what I knew - of course I knew jazz, but I also knew country, blues and some rock and roll. And that came out.

  Larry Coryell

  Music, Country, Writing

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• For me, jazz, R&B, jump swing, Chicago blues, country blues, early hillbilly music, and honky tonk all stem from the same source

  Duke Robillard

  Music, Country, Swings

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• I would urge a young player to listen to Charlie Christians' sense of time ... I'll never forget listening to my father (Bucky Pizzarelli) and Tal Farlow playing Christians' 'Solo Flight' backstage at a gig... that's when it hit me how big of an effect Christian had on jazz guitar. 'Solo Flight' was like the gospel.

  John Pizzarelli

  Music, Christian, Father

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• Barney Kessel was 'Mr. Guitar,' the foremost jazz guitarist of his generation. He had an amazing imagination, his solos were incredible, he swung his tail off, he was a heck of an arranger and could out-read anybody.

  Larry Coryell

  Music, Guitar, Imagination

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• If a jazz player is really playing, the classical player will have to respect him.

  Wes Montgomery

  Player, Ifs

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• Live action writers will give you a structure, but who the hell is talking about structure? Animation is closer to jazz than some kind of classical stage structure.

  Ralph Bakshi

  Talking, Giving, Bedtime

  Interview with Ken P., www.ign.com. May 25, 2004.

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• My faith is the grand drama of my life. I'm a believer, so I sing words of God to those who have no faith.
  I give bird songs to those who dwell in cities and have never heard them, make rhythms for those who know only military marches or jazz, and paint colors for those who see none.

  Olivier Messiaen

  Life, Music, God

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

  Harvey Pekar

  Hero, Kenny, Has Beens

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

  Kenneth Rexroth

  Musician, Jazz Music, Jazz Musician

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• I don't think I think when I play. I have a photographic memory for chords, and when I'm playing, the right chords appear in my mind like photographs long before I get to them.

  Earl Hines

  Memories, Thinking, Play

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• I always challenge myself. I get out in deep water and I always try to get back. But I get hung up. The audience never knows, but that's when I smile the most, when I show the most ivory.

  Earl Hines

  Smile, Deep Water, Ivory

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• I always thought jazz was like the trunk of a tree. After the tree has grown, many branches have spread out. They're all with different leaves and they all look beautiful. But at the end of the season, they fold back up and it's still the tree trunk.

  Earl Hines

  Beautiful, Tree, Different

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• Jazz shouldn't have any mandates. Jazz is not supposed to be something that's required to sound like jazz. For me, the word 'jazz' means, 'I dare you.'

  Wayne Shorter

  Mean, Sound, Dare

  "Wayne Shorter On Jazz: 'How Do You Rehearse The Unknown?'". "All Things Considered" with Laura Sullivan, www.npr.org. February 2, 2013.

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• A young tenor player was complaining to me that Coleman Hawkins made him nervous. Man, I told him Hawkins was supposed to make him nervous! Hawkins has been making other sax players nervous for forty years!

  Cannonball Adderley

  Music, Player, Men

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• There's no future without the past and anybody who doesn't really understand where jazz has come from has no right to try to direct where it's going.

  Cannonball Adderley

  Past, Trying, Direct

  Interviewed by the "Chicago SEED", November, 1968.

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• Thelonius Monk was not exactly 'the guy next door'.

  Dexter Gordon

  Doors, Guy, Next

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• I like all kinds of music, though I tend to prefer jazz and classics.

  Erik Larson

  Kind, All Kinds

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• 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. Now I say I just write my own songs. I thought I had to help people get me, but I don't think they need to be spoon-fed. If you connect with me that is cool. I don't need the whole world to feel like I am a soul angel.

  Laura Mvula

  Song, Angel, Writing

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