Top 1200 Jazz Hands Quotes & Sayings - Page 3

I was nearing the end of childhood when I started to pay real attention to jazz singers. Women excelled as jazz singers; they surpassed most of the men. Black women excelled as jazz singers; they surpassed most of the whites.

For me it's the high-water mark of American culture - not so much contemporary jazz, which has become kind of academic, but the jazz from the '20s on through the '70s.

I think we're an inspiration to young people, to know they can be honest and not run away from influences that are not jazz. We're definitely breeding a new wave of jazz, for real.

I've been saying for almost 20 years that I need to do a jazz project and it ought to be either big band or I should do some jazz songs with a trio or quartet.

Louis Armstrong is the master of the jazz solo. He became the beacon, the light in the tower, that helped the rest of us navigate the tricky waters of jazz improvisation.

The people at Jazz at Lincoln Center are an amazing group and have done a phenomenal job teaching kids and audiences of all ages about jazz.

Our intention is to not only attract the hardcore jazz fan, but we're doing it in such a way that it will also be easy to take for those who are not necessarily steeped in the ways of jazz.

In 1962 I wrote for 'Jazz News,' using the pseudonym Manfred Manne, which I picked because of a jazz drummer with that name. I later dropped the 'e.'

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.

What is jazz? It, It's almost like asking, What is French? Jazz is a musical language. It's a musical dialect that actually embodies the spirit of America.

I remember the first time I was booked into a jazz club. I was scared to death. I'm not a jazz artist. So I got to the club and spotted this big poster saying, 'Richie Havens, folk jazz artist.' Then I'd go to a rock club and I'm billed as a 'folk rock performer' and in the blues clubs I'd be a 'folk blues entertainer.'

I studied jazz at home with my grandparents. They always had jazz dudes at the house, but I didn't study formally. I just hung around a lot of musicians.

I went to jazz school. Not to say I'm a great jazz musician, but I studied under some great teachers. It was an important part of my life.

Jazz comes from a tradition where it swings. Swing was the main ingredient of jazz. And once it loses the swing...well, that's it.

We all listened to a lot of recorded music, especially American jazz, modern jazz, and that's where our studies were and our inspiration came from.

It's funny to find there are still people around who think if a musician has schooling, it automatically makes him a lesser jazz player. But you don't learn jazz in school.

Flexibility is an essential part of Jazz. It's what gives Jazz music the ability to combine with all other types of music and not lose its identity.

I know jazz is completely un-American. But the reason why America doesn't like it is because it's not funny. We [americans] have made jazz funny.

I haven't got a great jazz band and I don't want one. Some of the critics, Down Beat's among them, point their fingers at us and charge us with forsaking real jazz . . . It's all in what you define as 'real jazz.' It happens that to our ears harmony comes first. A dozen colored bands have a better beat than mine. Our band stresses harmony.

I think you have to have a jazz pedigree to be on jazz radio.

The world's decay where the wind's hands have passed, And my head, worn out with love, at rest In my hands, and my hands full of dust.

Jazz is not the popular culture. Jazz is in the same position in our culture as classical music. A very small minority of people really love it.

I can only be me. I do what I do, I'm not a jazz player. ... I don't play jazz standards, at least not in any recognizable way. It's not my turf but I have plenty of respect for that style of playing.

I have a big love for jazz music. The only thing I hated about singing with a jazz band was having to wear a gown to everything.

I've always felt that most jazz artists don't need producers .. most jazz artists know what kind of sound they want. They don't need a producer to come in there and tell them, "Oh, I think you should do this." I've always found it very strange that there's been such a thing as producers in jazz.

Jazz is all about being in the moment. Whatever the music is making you feel, jazz gives you the freedom. That's the same genesis as hip-hop.

Truth of the matter is, jazz is American music. And that doesn't mean bebop. Jazz is really about improvising. All the music that's been created in America has been pretty much improvised... Whether it's hillbilly or rock n' roll for blues, it's basically jazz music... It's basically about another way of hearing what comes out of America.

I hold my face in my two hands. No, I am not crying. I hold my face in my two hands to keep the loneliness warm - two hands protecting, two hands nourishing, two hands preventing my soul from leaving me in anger.

You can't teach it [jazz singing]. There's nobody who can teach you how to sing jazz. Either you know how to sing jazz, or you don't.

The great jazz and jazz-influenced singers carry themselves with a certain panache and a certain elegance and, for lack of a better word, self-confidence.

I like musicians who look at the public. You have to bring the music to the largest number. Otherwise, we'll [the Jazz players] stay in the clubs. Jazz must be accessible to everyone.

But no one, when you stop to think, has ever equated abstract expressionism as a movement with jazz music. It's based on improvisation. The rhythms, the personal involvement, all of this is part of the jazz experience.

Keith Moon is not interested in jazz and won't ever be a jazz drummer because he's more interested in looking good and being screamed at.

Jazz has the power to make men forget their differences and come together... Jazz is the personification of transforming overwhelmingly negative circumstances into freedom, friendship, hope, and dignity.

Let my hands be of service to people. Let me earn wisdom through my hands. Let my hands do good work

It's not jazz as we know jazz here in America.

When a human being is oppressed, the natural tendency is to feel anger. Jazz is a response to oppression that is not bullets and blood. Jazz is the expression of harmony ... and at the same time of hope and freedom.

Clint Eastwood said, the only things America has contributed to civilization are the western and jazz. And I don't think westerns are bad, but lots of people make great cinema. But jazz is right there.

I've heard it said that grace is God reaching God's hands into the world. And the Bible tells us that we are part of the body of Christ, that if we let the Spirit move through us, we can become the hands of Christ on earth. Hands that heal, bless, unite, and love. I'd like to think God's hands are a bit like Grace's man hands—gentle but big, busy, and tough. God's hands are those of a creator—an artist who molded and shaped the universe out of a void, who hewed matter from nothingness.

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.

I guess certain kinds of jazz music could be Crunk. But the average jazz song, no, it's not Crunk.

I don't like totally free jazz, unless it's done by somebody like Coltrane, who did bebop and cool jazz, so he was allowed to go out there.

I've often cringed when I heard myself described as a jazz singer. I've always thought of myself as a jazz vocalist.

I started off with classical music, and I got into jazz when I was about 14 years old. And I've been playing jazz ever since.

I fell in love with jazz when I was 12 years old from listening to Duke Ellington and hearing a lot of jazz in New York on the radio.

I especially like Duke Ellington jazz, which is a little more... I lived in New York for a while. I lived in Harlem for a bit, and I just fell in love with the idea of that era of New York, that jazz era, especially jazz in Harlem.

Jazz scares me. I've witnessed so many incredible singers and jazz musicians. Pop and soul music have always been the things that I felt like I could do.

I was singing totally jazz then, but when I heard the Beatles and heard the gospel influence and everything, I just said, 'I can make jazz with R&B.'

Just because I'm playing jazz I don't forget about me. I play or write me, the way I feel, through jazz, or whatever.

My foundation is jazz. I do all the things jazz musicians do.

Improvisation in the jazz sense - like the business sense - is not formless. It is built on a skill set. Jazz, for example, involves selecting a tune.

'I Am Jazz' was more for children to understand what it means to be transgender, but with 'Being Jazz,' I wanted to get the universal message across that we are all just people, and we have to live our lives authentically.

What makes jazz different is that you can't predict it, it's all about freedom. Just when you think you know what you're going to hear there'll be a left turn, a jazz musician will change it up.

Everything that I do I hear and then I go with my hands, and since I use my hands for both piano and guitar that is kind of hands-on.

My short answer would be that there is no greatest jazz musician of the century. Jazz, like any valid art form, finds its greatness in its expression of the human spirit, and, to me, this can’t be reduced to a contest.

There aren't any labels - all jazz means is improvization and you can never play a tune the same way twice. So jazz spills over into everything.

I listen to jazz mainly. Mainstream jazz.

Jazz music is a style, not compositions; any kind of music may be played in Jazz if one has the knowledge.

Jazz really does try to include everything. It's always been popular music. But the wonderful thing about jazz is its willingness to take chances.

I hear footsteps and Four's hands wrap around my wrists. I let him pry my hands from my eyes. He encloses one of my hands perfectly between two of his. The warmth of his skin overwhelms the ache in my fingers from holding the bars. "You all right?" he asks, pressing our hands together. "Yeah." He starts to laugh.