A Quote by James McBride

When I was coming up, a lot of serious jazz players couldn't stand funk.

James McBride

Quote Topics

Coming Funk Jazz Lot Players Serious Stand Up

Quote Author

James McBride
American - Writer
Born: September 11, 1957

Jazz is the greatest American art form and our greatest export. We don't pay attention to the youth of jazz, don't stoke the fires creatively for the youth coming up. I feel like jazz musicians became too much of purists - with Donald Byrd doing funk jazz in the '70s.

Talib Kweli

Funk could very easily be called jazz, but you call it funk. Does that really matter? People dig that they associate themselves with certain genres, but the genres to me are made up things, like an imaginary world.

Kamasi Washington

The bottom line with a lot of bands that funk is being applied to is that they don't really listen to funk and aren't versed in funk. Like, you know, Gordon Lightfoot.

Mike D

I grew up in the funk, rock and roll, blues and r&b tradition, and I came to this thing we call jazz later. And I came to improvise music from the standpoint of jazz; I was improvising, but within these other genres of music.

Hamid Drake

Being jazz-trained, things happen spontaneously. Even though it's funk rock, we still have the instincts of a jazz musician.

Trombone Shorty

I did listen to 1920s jazz or Al Johnson and a lot of early singers coming out of England. I would branch out a little bit to get a sense of the world that he might be coming into, in the '30s when jazz was changing.

Ed Speleers

I think the Flecktones are a mixture of acoustic and electronic music with a lot of roots in folk and bluegrass as well as funk and jazz.

Bela Fleck

You basically have to play everything (in New Orleans), because you're getting calls to play gigs of all different styles, from classical to R&B to funk; modern jazz to traditional jazz.

Harry Connick, Jr.

My band, Miles Long, is a jazz-funk spoken word band. There's jazz sensibilities, but I'm a bass player, so I'm very much into the head-bobbing vibe with sophisticated lyrics.

Malcolm-Jamal Warner

A lot of women do stand-up as a gateway into acting, but I love stand-up, and to be a good stand-up, you have to go on the road a lot. It means going to places in America where they've never seen a Vietnamese person in their life.

Ali Wong

It's going to be great. A lot of the players are coming. I wasn't here when they put (Jackson) up in the rafters. But to have him here as my number goes up, it brings back a lot of great memories.

Scottie Pippen

Jazz is smooth and cool. Jazz is rage. Jazz flows like water. Jazz never seems to begin or end. Jazz isn't methodical, but jazz isn't messy either. Jazz is a conversation, a give and take. Jazz is the connection and communication between musicians. Jazz is abandon.

Nat Wolff

A lot of the people that I photograph are master musicians themselves, whether they're singers or great jazz players and it's kind of fun to figure out who they came up with and who they emulated or who they idolized actually.

Carol Friedman

Stand-up is an art but since it's humor and it's funny - a lot of guys that don't think it's art are probably coming from the angle that they don't want to take it so seriously. I've always looked at it as an art but I don't look at it as a pretentious art. I understand it has to be taken lightly because it is just comedy in the end, but the good stand-up comics are someone with something to say.