Quotes About Jazz

I have a fondness for jazz, particularly for jazz singers, Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald all the way through the Sinatra era.

I think my intention was there, and my love for the music was apparent. And there are very few singers who get up and desire to take the kinds of risks that jazz musicians routinely need to be taking.

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.

In high school, we had a really great jazz program that I finally was able to be a part of. They only wanted instrumentalists; they didn't want any singers. But I made my way in, and I remember the conductor of the band wrote a lot of arrangements and asked me what I wanted to sing.

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.

A lot of young people want to become jazz singers, but there are not more jam sessions like there used to be. I just want to have the opportunity to be able to bring that to some young people.

I never really liked poetry readings; I liked to read poetry by myself, but I liked singing, chanting my lyrics to this jazz group.

I read cover to cover every jazz publication that I could and in the New York Times, every single day reading their jazz reviews even though I didn't put them in the films. I wanted to know what is going on.

In South Louisiana, every single thing we do is jazz or zydeco.

We played, jazz, blues, dixie, and it all came from the church. When I went to church, I would see the sisters and brothers doing the same beat.

My demographic is very broad. Once they come, they had an idea about jazz, and then they hear me, and they come back with sisters, brothers, and kids. My audience looks like America to me.

One of the most important functions of jazz has been to encourage a hope for freedom, for people living in situations of intolerance or struggle.

I have a sketch of an idea and I never really talk about: perhaps do another jazz record, but with other elements involved.

And I loved Fats Waller. I love his instrumental abilities, his vocal abilities and his sense of humor.

I love most melodic music - classical, reggae, big band, jazz, blues, country, pop, swing, folk.

I love that [ late-50s Verve recordings] - to me, that's the epitome of vocal jazz. It's my favorite style and era of it.

I love Ornette Coleman. I love Don Cherry. I love the way those guys play.

I love the sounds of Latin jazz, R&B, hip-hop, alternative, all that stuff. I'm a radio kid.

I guess I'm not the only one who heard their first good jazz in a whorehouse. But I never tried to make anything of it. If I'd heard Louis and Bessie at a Girl Scout jamboree, I'd have loved it just the same.

perhaps the answer is simply one: one female angel dancing alone in her stocking feet, a small jazz combo working in the background. She sways like a branch in the wind, her beautiful eyes closed, and the tall thin bassist leans over to glance at his watch because she has been dancing forever, and now it is very late, even for musicians.

Dear Readers, Take my MasterClass. Buy my books. Watch The Poetry Broadcast. Eat Triscuits. Drink Jameson. Read, stretch, laugh, and listen to really good jazz.

The gap that was created during those transatlantic voyages hundreds of years ago. That gap is the matrix of Saudade – The Longing, I think, that all Africans in the West have, that is at the root of the blues and jazz and soul and rap. If you listen you can hear it, elusive, fleeting, full of melancholy anger.

his record player he put some very cool Brubeck and very torrid Rusty Warren and then, from the tenth which he'd purchased on the way home, poured himself a precise ounce

As a rule, my focus is on classical music, but I love jazz. I love everything, actually.