Quotes About Jazz

I read every book there was on jazz, about the original players - King Oliver, Buddy Bolden and all those groups. At one time I was fairly well schooled in that... I could tell you who played where and when, historically, way before my time.

People like Art Blakey and Buddy Rich, you look at them playing music, and it's just like looking at a heavy metal drummer. I mean, they're playing with the same amount of ferocity. It's not to say all jazz is like that.

As a child brought up in Paris, I dreamed of America, that lost world my parents had left behind - it was in my genes. Plus, American music has always been close to my own aesthetic, because of the mix of symphonic music with jazz.

I play citified Count Basie piano. As few notes as possible, my left hand in my pocket, that kind of stuff.

I'm from the beatnik generation, where everybody wanted to be a poet or writer or something. And at that time, I was a jazz critic, and I was always thinking, theorizing about what makes great art or what's important in art.

I wasn't a jazz player, but a classical musician, and I improvised arrangements of popular songs using classical motifs.

I have a large collection of biographies about jazz musicians.

A lot of the commercial world wants to bank in on the cachet that jazz brings.

My strength is to communicate with an audience and to know what jazz singing is capable of.

I was in band all the way through high school, and I played in jazz competitions all across Iowa.

I'd like to play for you one of my compositions, my only composition.

We intend to pursue future gifts to exceed $8.1 million in conjunction with UMSL, Jazz St. Louis and the business community to ensure perpetual growth and a sustainable impact to the education of St. Louis children and beyond.

In Sweden we have a jazz festival, and I would try to see all these people like Angie Stone there when I was younger.

Jazz music is to be played sweet, soft, plenty rhythm.

Big band music, to me, it really has three key elements. First is the lyrics are really sweet, and they're just really family-friendly. The second thing is the music is jazz music, so the music is complicated enough to hold your attention for 5 or 6 million plays. That makes the songs interesting. The last part is the fact that it's danceable.

We play rock & roll, but we swing when we play. We want that ongoing flow, that lightness, that forward rush of jazz.

Swing is my favorite kind of music.

My grandfather was a massive influence in my music. Growing up, he would play a lot of old-school records to me. A lot of jazz and swing music, actually, growing up.

I went through the whole number, you know. The swing era, the boogie woogie era, the bebop era. Thelonious Monk is still one of my favorites. So a lot of these people had their effect on me.

I'd take the syncopation and play swing, and then read the syncopation lines with my left hand.

As far as I'm concerned, the essentials of jazz are: melodic improvisation, melodic invention, swing, and instrumental personality.

Swing will never sound as good as it did in the '40s.

When I was 16 or 17 I heard the Count Basie band with Jo Jones and Lester Young and Herschel Evans and I couldn't believe it. They were the greatest swing band. I really fell in love with that sound. Everybody danced!

I came out with my five-piece group and opened at Billy Burke's Swing Oar. This was when Hollywood was really jumpin'. This was when Frankie Laine used to come in and ask if he could sing a number.