Jazz Quotes - Page 28

• These magic moments when rhythms and harmonies extend themselves and jell together and the people become another instrument. These things are priceless and they can't be learned; they can only be felt.

  Andrew Hill

  Music, Magic Moments, People

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• The whole basis of my singing is feeling. Unless I feel something, I can't sing.

  Billie Holiday

  Music, Feelings, Singing

  Billie Holiday, William Dufty (2011). “Lady Sings the Blues: The 50th-Anniversay Edition with a Revised Discography”, p.163, Broadway Books

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• [Lee Morgan] was the only young cat that scared me when he played. He had so much fire and natural feeling. I had more technique, but he had that feeling. People seemed to like him more than they like me at the beginning.

  Freddie Hubbard

  Music, Cat, Fire

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• Don't make the mistakes I made of not taking care of myself. Please, keeps your chops cool and don't overblow. If you are going to play hard, be sure to warm up. I'd get carried away trying to stay right with the momentum [of Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers]. I used to try and play like Coltrane and solo for 30 or 40 choruses. It all caught up with me.

  Freddie Hubbard

  Music, Art, Mistake

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• I used to try to play like [Miles Davis], and Miles caught me copying him one night at Birdland. He said, 'Hey man, why don't you play some of your own stuff.' So, I finally did, because I had copied all his solos.

  Freddie Hubbard

  Music, Night, Men

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• Many jazz artists go to L.A. seeking a more comfortable life and then they really stop playing.

  Sonny Rollins

  Music, Artist, Comfortable Life

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• I'm not a jazz artist. Don't get me wrong now, it's all music to me. I just played music and if it's likeable, someone liked the sound, then fine, but I'm not interested in being a jazz musician. I don't consider myself a jazz musician. I don't have anything to do with that word.

  Pharoah Sanders

  Music, Artist, Sound

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• [John Coltrane] liked my qualities as a person and that's the reason why he let me play with him. It wasn't what I was doing musically or my instrument or anything like that. He let me play whatever I wanted to play.

  Pharoah Sanders

  Music, Play, Quality

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• He didn't say nothing. He would just do things. He never said nothing or explained nothing. He just would do it and that was it. You were on your own. You had to be very independent being around John [Coltrane].

  Pharoah Sanders

  Music, Independent, Said

  "A Fireside Chat With Pharoah Sanders". All About Jazz Interview, www.allaboutjazz.com. March 21, 2003.

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• I find that in California I can't find guys that have enough energy. They play a little bit and that's about it. They play less. If I start a tune and then the pianist has to solo, I am looking to everybody to get to a certain climate and then I come back in while the energy is up high. Somehow that doesn't happen.

  Pharoah Sanders

  Music, Play, California

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• I love more percussions more than anything. I always wanted to be a drummer.

  Pharoah Sanders

  Music, Drummer, Percussion

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• I believe in knowing all you can about the music and the people who made the music. I think it's much more important to know some good Miles Davis stories than to know how to play like Miles. I think you'll play better if you know some of the funny things he did than if you know the licks that he played.

  Sonny Sharrock

  Music, Believe, Thinking

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• Sometimes I see players that think, and you can tell they're thinking of the next phrase to play or the next thing to do, the next little cute trick, and that's sad, man, you know. That's not makin' music; that's puttin' together puzzles, you know. Music should flow from you and it should be a force; it should be feeling, all feeling, man.

  Sonny Sharrock

  Cute, Music, Player

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• In America, for a brief time, people who followed John Coltrane were studied and considered important, but it didn't last long. The result is that the kind of music I played in the '60's is completely dismissed in this country as a wrong turn, a suicidal effort.

  Archie Shepp

  Music, Country, Suicidal

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

  Matthew Shipp

  Music, Bebop, Done

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• Thelonious Sphere Monk: there's not a more perfect name to fit his compositions than that name.

  Matthew Shipp

  Music, Names, Perfect

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• 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.

  Matthew Shipp

  Music, Elements, Language

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• Composing is improvisation slowed down.

  Wayne Shorter

  Music, Composing, Improvisation

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• To hell with the rules. I'm going for the unknown.

  Wayne Shorter

  Music, Hell, Jazz Music

  Twitter post from Nov 15, 2010

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• I always think of music as interior decoration. So, if you have all kinds of music, you are fully decorated!

  Wayne Shorter

  Music, Thinking, Kind

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• You know the actor John Garfield? In one movie he walked up to this train station, the ticket booth, and the guy says, 'Yes, where are you going?' And he says, 'I want a ticket to nowhere.' I thought: that's it. The freedom to do that. I want a ticket to nowhere.

  Wayne Shorter

  Music, Guy, Actors

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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, Bebop

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• They didn't dictate to me as to what kind of music that they wanted me to play or what tunes, what musicians that I was going to use. They let me do my thing. That's one reason I stayed there for twenty-eight years.

  Horace Silver

  Music, Eight, Years

  "My Conversation With Horace Silver". All About Jazz interview, www.allaboutjazz.com. December 18, 2003.

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• Jazz is not just music, it's a way of life, it's a way of being, a way of thinking. . . . the new inventive phrases we make up to describe things - all that to me is jazz just as much as the music we play.

  Nina Simone

  Music, Thinking, Play

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• I don't like drug addicts and she sounds like a cat.

  Nina Simone

  Music, Cat, Drug

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