Quotes About Jazz

I wanted to keep pushing the musical ideas I had about jazz, music from Africa and the Caribbean.

I flow between modern and traditional jazz, between samba and choro - all maybe in a week's time.

I followed the Jazz as a kid.

I started playing sax when I was fourteen because I'm like a real competitive person when it comes to winning girls attention. And there was this girl that I really wanted the attention of and I found out she really liked jazz.

Mimi Fox is one of the most exciting contemporary jazz guitarists I've heard.

I love Glenn Gould. Max Steiner. John Williams. Louis Prima. Benny Goodman. Miles Davis. John Philip Sousa.

Black and white players hadn't appeared together in public before Teddy Wilson and I began working with B.G.

Teddy Wilson, I think, said a little while ago that it's much easier to come in and play whatever comes into your mind, without obeying any of the laws of bass line and harmony and so on.

The jazz clubs wind up having only rich tourists - the kids can't come. If they do, then they spend their entire monthly allotments on a 45-minute set.

I belonged to the Columbia Record Club, and that's where my records came from. For some reason, I was in the 'jazz' category. I got Benny Goodman records and Miles Davis, J.J. Johnson and Kai Winding, and that kind of stuff. I really was not a jazz guy at all, but I knew some of those names.

Jazz is like wine. When it is new, it is only for the experts, but when it gets older, everybody wants it.

I want to break down the wall of, you know, you have to put on a jacket and tie, and you have to act a certain way, and you have to know how to order the right kind of wine. All these things have suddenly been built up around jazz and the way it's presented.

The way I like to cook is to have music going, usually jazz, and something in my hand, usually a glass of wine.

I was really learning my craft as a jazz singer and working with some great players and all, really growing and feeling my wings.

The first thing is, jazz is one of the few things to let you know that there is a God and there is a creation.

When I came out of the conservatory, the first thing I did was to go see Thelonious Monk.

The people in Japan know more about the history of jazz and the musicians than the people in the United States do.

In a way, the history of jazz's development is a small mirror of classical music's development through the centuries. Now jazz is a living form of original music, while classical music has gotten to the end of its cycle in terms of exploring its form.

Man I mean, the great thing about playing clubs in Harlem is people have an appreciation not just for the music but for the history of the music.

The one thing that I've learned is that people don't change. Each new generation has the same stuff that the last one did. It's one of those things where jazz kind of works in five-year cycles.

I'm comfortable singing jazz. The only thing I was concerned about is that everybody, even in jazz, has their own style. To me, the queen of doodling was Ella Fitzgerald, and scatting is something I never thought I could do.

They all come from the street - tap, jazz and flamenco. And the streets are always changing. If it comes from the streets, change is the only thing that's consistent.

Coltrane came to New Orleans one day and he was talking about the jazz scene. And Coltrane mentions that the problem with jazz was that there were too few groups.

I always say that the problem with jazz accessibility is not the content of the music, it's people's ability to access it.