Jazz Quotes - Page 7

• There are four qualities essential to a great jazzman. they are taste, courage, individuality, and irreverence.

  Stan Getz

  Individuality, Quality, Essentials

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  Jazz today, as always in the past, is a matter of thoughtful creation, not mere unaided instinct.

  Duke Ellington

  Thoughtful, Past, Matter

  Mark Tucker, Duke Ellington (1995). “The Duke Ellington Reader”, p.326, Oxford Paperbacks

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• That's kind of like how jazz is sometimes. You're out there predicting the future, and no one believes you.

  Branford Marsalis

  Believe, Kind, Sometimes

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• There's nothing wrong with it. It's only a word. What's in a name? Nothing! Cats say, "Call me Muhammed so-and-so. "

  Art Blakey

  Cat, Names, Call Me

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• You had many jazz musicians who lived in the United States, who had a hard time being accepted over here and had to play in sort of these inferior type dives.

  Sonny Rollins

  Hard Times, America, Play

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• There are singers that I have enjoyed, from Nina Simone and Ray Charles onward. But the music that made music the number one thing for me as a youth was jazz.

  Robert Wyatt

  Music, Numbers, Rays

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• In a way, the history of jazz's development is a small mirror of classical music's development through the centuries. Now jazz is a living form of original music, while classical music has gotten to the end of its cycle in terms of exploring its form.

  Mike Figgis

  Mirrors, Development, Way

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• From blood banking to the modern subway, from jazz to social justice, the contributions of African Americans have shaped and molded and influenced our national culture and our national character.

  Bill Frist

  Character, Blood, Justice

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• If I am playing any music at all it is jazz music.

  Ginger Baker

  Jazz Music, Ifs

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• I have seen great jazz musicians die obscure and drinking themselves to death and not really being able to get any work and working in small, funky jazz clubs.

  Sonny Rollins

  Drinking, Musician, Clubs

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• I'm not a jazz singer.

  Boz Scaggs

  Singers

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• I've been informed by both sides, jazz, western music, Asian music, African music, all sides, because I've been interested in the sound of the universe, and that sound is without limit.

  Joseph Jarman

  Sound, Asian, African Music

  Interview with Jason Gross, www.furious.com. October 1999.

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• There is a view that jazz is 'evil' because it comes from evil people, but actually the greatest priests on 52nd Street and on the streets of New York City were the musicians. They were doing the greatest healing work. They knew how to punch through music that would cure and make people feel good.

  Garth Hudson

  New York, Healing, Evil People

  "The Last Waltz". Documentary, Music, 1978.

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• Music is my mistress and she plays second fiddle to no one.

  Duke Ellington

  Music, Marriage, Work

  Music Is My Mistress act 8 "Pedestrian Minstrel" (1973)

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• One chord is fine. Two chords are pushing it. Three chords and you're into jazz.

  Lou Reed

  Two, Three, Velvet Underground

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

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• Music represents nature. Nature represents life. Jazz represents nature. Jazz is life.

  Sonny Rollins

  Life, Music, Nature

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• Remember that a book is many drafts - mine certainly are. It's improvisation. It's as much jazz and the way we talk and the way I heard people preach coming up as it is writing.

  John Edgar Wideman

  Book, Writing, People

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• "If you don't make mistakes, you aren't really trying."

  Coleman Hawkins

  Success, Music, Fitness

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• Jazz will endure just as long people hear it through their feet instead of their brains.

  John Philip Sousa

  Music, Feet, Free Jazz

  John Philip Sousa (2010). “Six marches”, p.52, A-R Editions, Inc.

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• Music is an addiction.

  Miles Davis

  Music, Addiction, Musical

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• Making the simple complicated is commonplace.

  Charles Mingus

  Creativity, Simple, Plain Language

  Charles Mingus' statement in Mainliner Magazine (July 1977); later quoted in Olivia Bertagnolli "Creativity and the writing process" (p. 182), 1982.

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• If I don’t practice for a day, I know it. If I don’t practice for two days, the critics know it. And if I don’t practice for three days, the public knows it.

  Louis Armstrong

  Life, Music, Practice

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• If you don't make mistakes you are not really trying.

  Coleman Hawkins

  Fitness, Workout, Mistake

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• What about a blues in W, in the key of W.

  Rahsaan Roland Kirk

  Music, Keys, Jazz Music

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• You have to know composition to be a good improviser.

  Roscoe Mitchell

  Music, Composition, Knows

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