A Quote by Wynton Marsalis

The blues. It runs through all American music. Somebody bending the note. The other is the two-beat groove. It's in New Orleans music, it's in jazz, it's in country music, it's in gospel.
Bill Monroe spoke of bringing 'ancient tones' into his music with echoes of British and Irish fiddle and bagpipe music, while also delving deeply into American blues, gospel, folk hymnody, and hill country dance music. To that gumbo, he added the invigorating rhythms and harmonies of hot jazz. It was a new kind of American music, named in honor of his band The Blue Grass Boys to be known, simply, as bluegrass.
I've always had a love for music, and it developed as I learned jazz, blues, and gospel. And I performed with jazz singers in New Orleans.
Presley is country music, white music. Jazz is black music - it was invented by the blacks in New Orleans. And I'm really a jazz singer. I was impressed with Elvis - he was the handsomest guy I ever met in my life, and a very nice person, too. But the music doesn't impress me.
I wanna show that gospel, country, blues, rhythm and blues, jazz, rock 'n' roll are all just really one thing. Those are the American music and that is the American culture.
If anybody was Mr. Jazz it was Louis Armstrong. He was the epitome of jazz and always will be. He is what I call an American standard, an American original. ... I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues. ... I don't need time, I need a deadline. ...There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind. ... Music is my mistress, and she plays second fiddle to no one.
New Orleans had a great tradition of celebration. Opera, military marching bands, folk music, the blues, different types of church music, ragtime, echoes of traditional African drumming, and all of the dance styles that went with this music could be heard and seen throughout the city. When all of these kinds of music blended into one, jazz was born.
In New York, I was excited about the music in New York because the only music that I was more or less involved with in the South was either country and western or hillbilly music as we used to call it when I was a kid and, ah, gospel. There was no, there was no in between. And when I got to New York all the other musics that's in the world just came into my head whether it was the classics, jazz, I never knew what jazz was about all, had heard anything about jazz.
Beale Street is a very famous street in the history of America. You know, American music in particular. From the blues to jazz, it's a connecting city from New Orleans that goes all the way up to Buffalo through New York.
I'm all into Jazz; I'm into New Orleans type music. There is country, there is southern gospel. I'm a huge southern gospel fan.
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 forget what the official name of it was, but they did an all-day of roots music - every kind of music you can imagine from around the country - New Orleans Jazz to Indian flute players, R&B, you name it. I met and became good friends with (blues guitar player) Joe Louis Walker. He was on the show.
If I have to be considered any type of jazz artist, it would be New Orleans jazz because New Orleans jazz never forgot that jazz is dance music and jazz is fun. I'm more influenced by that style of jazz than anything else.
When I did the Abyssinian mass, I went through the whole history of the church music and the gospel music, even with the Anglo American hymns, the Afro American hymns, the spirituals and how it developed, up to Thomas Dorsey and the Dixie Hummingbirds, going through the history of the music, jazz musicians.
What isn’t on my iPod playlist? I have very eclectic tastes. Jazz. Classic Rock. Hip Hop. Ska. Soul. Electronica.World Music. Funk. Blues. Chamber Music. Reggaeton. Gospel. And a whole lot of Prince. (I am a Minnesota gal through and through.)
I don't know why people call me a jazz singer, though I guess people associate me with jazz because I was raised in it, from way back. I'm not putting jazz down, but I'm not a jazz singer...I've recorded all kinds of music, but (to them) I'm either a jazz singer or a blues singer. I can't sing a blues – just a right-out blues – but I can put the blues in whatever I sing. I might sing 'Send In the Clowns' and I might stick a little bluesy part in it, or any song. What I want to do, music-wise, is all kinds of music that I like, and I like all kinds of music.
What I consider to be the barometer for what is a rock artist and what is not, is somebody who has a certain element of blues, even a hint of soul or blues music, derivative of African-American blues, folk, spiritual, or gospel.
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