Jazz Quotes - Page 38

• I listened to Billie Holiday a lot in order to learn to sing. She remains one of the extraordinary jazz singers. But my intent is to become my own voice, to be able to interpret these songs in my own way.

  Madeleine Peyroux

  Song, Holiday, Order

  4 Copy quote

• That mainstream English is essential to our self-preservation is indisputable . . . but it is not necessary to abandon Spoken Soul to master Standard English, any more than it is necessary to abandon English to learn French or to deprecate jazz to appreciate classical music.

  John R. Rickford

  Self, Appreciate, Soul

  8 Copy quote

• Edward Isaac Bickert in never one to blow his own horn - figuratively - he is one of the most modest and unassuming men in Jazz. But literally - he blows up a storm .

  Frank Rutter

  Blow, Men, Storm

  4 Copy quote

• I couldn't get my album played over the so-called smooth jazz stations. Jazz stations would not play it. You don't always know who you're making that soul connection with.

  Roy Ayers

  Play, Smooth Jazz, Soul

  7 Copy quote

• I think if it wasn't for the blues, there wouldn't be no jazz.

  T-Bone Walker

  Thinking, Ifs

  18 Copy quote

• In the sense that I also try to reflect the fullness of the black experience, I’m very much a jazz poet.

  Jayne Cortez

  Black, Trying, Poet

  8 Copy quote

• Amsterdam must have more than a million people. But the only area where jazz is really profitable and successful in an economic sense is in Japan. That's because they haven't been exposed enough.

  Norman Granz

  Successful, Japan, People

  45 Copy quote

• For years, Jazz At The Philharmonic albums were the only ones of their kind.

  Norman Granz

  Years, Albums, Kind

  7 Copy quote

• I don't know who's 18 years old today that, 20 years hence, is going to be a jazz fan.

  Norman Granz

  Years, Fans, Today

  4 Copy quote

• I don't think that jazz, as any kind of an art form, has any permanence attached to it, apart from the practitioners of it.

  Norman Granz

  Art, Thinking, Kind

  7 Copy quote

• I don't want to sound as if I'm doing something tremendously special. But I am a jazz fan.

  Norman Granz

  Special, Sound, Fans

  4 Copy quote

• The public, hearing pop music, is, without knowing it, also soaking up jazz.

  Norman Granz

  Knowing, Hearing, Pops

  7 Copy quote

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

  Norman Granz

  Names, America, Use

  6 Copy quote

• I don't know if I have enough guts to do a whole standard jazz record.

  Gary Cherone

  Records, Enough, Standards

  8 Copy quote

• At Carnegie Hall the Preservation Hall Jazz Band showed how easily it could hop from era to era. It could work like a rhythm-and-blues horn section or a tightly arranged little big band if need be, but it could also switch back into the polyphonic glories of vintage New Orleans jazz, in which nearly every instrument seems to improvise around the tune at the same time.

  Jon Pareles

  New Orleans, Vintage, Tunes

  4 Copy quote

• Hearing Marilyn Crispell play solo piano is like monitoring an active volcano. She is one of a very few pianists who rise to the challenge of free jazz.

  Jon Pareles

  Volcanoes, Play, Piano

  4 Copy quote

• Historians in the future, in my opinion, will congratulate us on very little other than our clowning and our jazz.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Littles, Opinion, Historian

  Kurt Vonnegut (1982). “Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage”, Dell Books

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• I know of musicians who have played together for decades who hate each other. The Modern Jazz Quartet for one.

  Gary Burton

  Hate, Together, Musician

  4 Copy quote

• Jazz, I mean, music will always move, because it can't become stagnant. Because if it becomes stagnant, it's like a river, it'll kill us all. It has to keep moving, music will always flow.

  Art Blakey

  Moving, Mean, Rivers

  35 Copy quote

• When I was 12, I began listening to John Coltrane and I developed a love for jazz, which I still have more and more each year.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Years, Listening, Coltrane

  Scholastic Interview, www.scholastic.com. February 2002.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• I, of course, wanted to play real jazz. When we played pop tunes, and naturally we had to, I wanted those pops to kick! Not loud and fast, understand, but smoothly and with a definite punch.

  Count Basie

  Real, Play, Tunes

  12 Copy quote

• Comedy is the ultimate truth. Jazz is hitting the notes that that no one else would hit, and comedy is saying words that no one else would say.

  Tommy Chong

  Hitting, Comedy, Notes

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'm a person of change and I must be honest to my artistry and my creativity. That's part of the word 'jazz'... it's an adventure.

  Maynard Ferguson

  Creativity, Adventure, Honest

  9 Copy quote

• If you are in an improv jazz ensemble or a small chamber group, you learn to think fast on your feet and how to be flexible and to collaborate and compromise, and that may yield a creative outcome.

  J. Richard Hackman

  Thinking, Yield, Feet

  "Executive Life; Learning Teamwork By Making Music" by Amy Zipkin, www.nytimes.com. November 16, 2003.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

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

  Louis Armstrong

  Mean, Remember, Beats

  24 Copy quote