A Quote by Walter Becker

I love guys like Charlie Parker.

Walter Becker

Quote Topics

Charlie Guys Like Love Parker

Quote Author

Walter Becker
American - Musician
February 20, 1950 - September 3, 2017

[Charlie "Bird" Parker] would sit down and ask [Phil Wood], "What do you think about this whole secondary Viennese school with Schoenberg, Berg and Webern? Are you listening to that music and what do you feel about it?" These were the conversations that he was having. And he also said, what he learned from Charlie Parker was, not that he studied with him in the formal sense, is that the first thing that Charlie Parker would always ask was, "Did you eat today?".

Jon Gordon

Charlie Parker was the greatest individual musician that ever lived. Every instrument in the band tried to copy Charlie Parker, and in the history of jazz there had never been one man who influenced all the instruments.

Gary Giddins

I grew up listening to Ravel, Debussy, Bartok and jazz like Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Cannonball Adderley, Charlie Christian and Django Reinhart. It was incredibly inspiring! And I was given a guitar and I said 'What the hell is this?!'

Allan Holdsworth

When [Charlie Parker] saw the young guys, especially the ones that were scuffling... "Did you eat today?" And if you hadn't eaten, he'd take you and buy you some lunch.

Jon Gordon

Whenever I'm in Kansas City, I think back to all the jazz-blues greats who played the blues here - like Count Basie, Charlie Parker and Jay McShann. I watched those guys jam in different places and heard a lot of things - but I couldn't do what they did. They were too good.

B. B. King

If you started in New York you were dealing with the biggest guys in the world. You're dealing with Charlie Parker and all the big bands and everything. We got more experience working in Seattle.

Quincy Jones

I grew up with all these old jazz guys in the '70s in L.A., and they grew up idolizing Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus, Lester Young - all of these incredible musicians.

Flea

I listen to anything anyone gives me. I always go back to a few basic favorites. I can always listen to Django Reinhardt and hear something I haven't heard before. I like to listen to Art Tatum and Coltrane and Charlie Parker. Those are guys who never seem to run out of ideas.

Jerry Garcia

As a very small girl, I listened to Charlie Parker and loved him and Max Roach and people like that.

Aretha Franklin

I went up to his [Hank Jones'] house and there were four guys there: Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, and Max Roach. Not a bad place to be. Scared shitless, but a nice place to be on my second day in New York.