Top 1200 Jazz Musician Quotes & Sayings - Page 5

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.'

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.

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

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.

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.

I want them to come away with discovering the music inside them. And not thinking about themselves as jazz musicians, but thinking about themselves as good human beings, striving to be a great person and maybe they'll become a great musician.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It might be David Adjaye talking about how the structure of jazz music informs his architecture, it might be the musician Terry Riley talking about how he thinks so much about cinema. I'd love to see more of a rupture between mediums and a flow between them.

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.

Armstrong was the key creator of the mature working language of jazz. Three decades after his death and more than three-quarters of a century since his influence first began to spread, not a single musician who has mastered that language fails to make daily use, knowingly or unknowingly, of something that was invented by Louis Armstrong.

Once a musician, always a musician.

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 think I turned to writing really just to wake up in the morning and be a musician and to have something to do, and feel like a musician every day even if I wasn't working.

I don't consider myself a musician who has achieved perfection and can't develop any further. But I compose my pieces with a formula that I created myself. Take a musician like John Coltrane. He is a perfect musician, who can give expression to all the possibilities of his instrument. But he seems to have difficulty expressing original ideas on it. That is why he keeps looking for ideas in exotic places. At least I don't have that problem, because, like I say, I find my inspiration in myself.

Playing the Opry, when I get the opportunity - it's one of the coolest honors for any musician in any genre, but especially for a country musician.

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.

I listen to jazz mainly. Mainstream jazz.

I've always thought about myself as somewhat of a folk musician. I just write words. I don't think I'm even a musician. I don't play a lot of instruments, not really a soloist or anything.

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

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.'

Musician' is not a very respected title. I'm not a musician.

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.

Normally, things are viewed in these little segmented boxes. There's classical, and then there's jazz; romantic, and then there's baroque. I find that very dissatisfying. I was trying to find the thread that connects one type of music - one type of musician - to another, and to follow that thread in some kind of natural, evolutionary way.

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.

I'm kind of a terrible musician. I'm a very functional musician. I play just about every instrument in a band setting, functionally. But I should not be taking solos.

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.

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

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.

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 was feeling privileged and self-conscious about my life as a musician, which feels self-absorbed. I can't help it, I am a musician. This is what I do.

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.

As a musician and a guitar player, I can noodle as well as anybody. But from my background as a session musician, I always try to play what is called for by the lyric and listening to the song. As a writer, that's what I do, too.

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

It is jazz music that called me to be a musician and I have always sang the songs that moved me the most. Singers, like Frank Sinatra and myself, we interpret the songs that we like. Not unlike a Shakespearean actor that goes back to the greatest words ever written, we go back to the greatest songs.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

He has a method that likens the musician to an athlete, so I do physical exercises designed to keep a musician in shape in order to perform the function, which is to play music.

'Musician' is not a very respected title. I'm not a musician.

I am a musician, but I'm another type of musician.

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.

I didn't get into music to become a blues musician, or a country musician. I'm a singer-songwriter. In my book that means I get to do whatever I want.

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 have a musician friend who, after reading Mountains, told me, "When I read the book, I wanted to quit music altogether and become a doctor." I told him, "Do you really think you can be a better doctor than you are a musician? Nobody needs you as a lousy doctor. Just be the one-of-a-kind, brilliant musician you are, and divert your success somehow to benefit the poor." You can achieve so much more this way.

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 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.

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.

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 didn't get into music to become a blues musician, or a country musician. I'm a singer-songwrit er. In my book that means I get to do whatever I want.

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.

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

I'm a terrible musician. While the band members are great, I'm tolerated and affectionately regarded because I do movies, but if I had to make my living as a musician I would starve. I'm like a Sunday tennis player.

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 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.'