A Quote by Walter Becker
My primary influences were the best jazz players from the 50's and 60's and later some of the pop people from the same time period along with the better of the well known blues musicians.
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My primary influences were the best jazz players from the 50's and 60's and later some of the pop people from the same time period along with the better of the well-known blues musicians.
My early influences were the Shadows, who were an English instrumental band. They basically got me into playing and later on I got into blues and jazz players. I liked Clapton when he was with John Mayall. I really liked that period.
I visited New York in '63, intending to move there, but I noticed that what I valued about jazz was being discarded. I ran into `out-to-lunch' free jazz, and the notion that groove was old-fashioned. All around the United States, I could see jazz becoming linear, a horn-player's world. It made me realize that we were not jazz musicians; we were territory musicians in love with all forms of African-American music. All of the musicians I loved were territory musicians, deeply into blues and gospel as well as jazz.
I was considered as a jazz man rather than as a blues player. There were no blues players-you played one sort of jazz of another sort of jazz.
I always tell people that, just to be a bad jazz musician, you have to be better than most musicians. The worst jazz musicians are normally better than most musicians, because you have to know so much.
The jazz and blues clubs are like the jazz and blues musicians - they're disappearing.
My big influences are Joni Mitchell, and a lot of classical and Indian music, as well as Nina Simone and the personal blues and jazz of Billie Holiday. Other influences for me include Bjork, Nick Drake, and Sufjan Stevens.
The most important thing to do as an artist is to get out of your comfort zone and work with different people: people who can't read a note of music, people who have incredible classical skills, blues and jazz musicians, pop artists, visual artists, dancers and actors. Learn from people who are creative in a different way to you and you'll keep evolving.
I listened to classical guitar and Spanish guitar, as well as jazz guitar players, rock and roll and blues. All of it. I did the same thing with my voice.
It's always difficult to define what jazz is or what jazz isn't. To me, the only definition that I can think of is it's music where a lot of different elements are played at the same time. The harmonic, the melodic... You're pushing the boundaries on every level. That could be true of rhythm and blues as well. I'm a musician.
I learned jazz; that comes from blues. I learned rock; that comes from blues. I learned pop; that comes from blues. Even dance, that comes from blues, with the answer-and-response.
Well first of all, I'm a singer. I sing since I talk. So the great ballad singers, the people that sang with so much feeling, jazz, blues, all those singers, they were songs that I listened to, records that my mom played for me, and then later I bought.
I have always loved jazz music and as a teen growing up in New York City and then later on as an adult have great memories of the jazz clubs that were all located on 52nd Street. I still catch as many jazz shows as I can when I am in New York. And when I perform, I have my jazz quartet by my side. Jazz musicians keep things spontaneous and very "live," which is the way I like to perform.
There were times I thought I was going to turn to the blues, but then I'd hear better blues players.
I think we as a band, as individuals, understand that all popular music stems from blues and jazz and even pop, but rock 'n' roll especially comes from blues.
It's perhaps easier to say what prog rock isn't than what it is: it's not three-minute pop songs, it's not straightforward rock, metal, blues or jazz, but can have elements of all them and more. It's a form that is on the boundaries of many different forms, that is open to all sorts of influences.
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