Quotes About Jazz

And will I like being called a jazz-baby? You will love it.

Oh my gosh, I love Jon Hendricks.

I've always wanted to record a jazz record. I did one in the '70s with Barbara Carroll. It's been a journey.

The stories from 1975 on are not finished and there is no resolve. I could spend 50 hours on the last 25 years of jazz and still not do it justice.

To most jazz critics I was basically Kenny G.

Nat King Cole was a really big influence.

My main influences have always been the classic jazz players who sang, like Louis Armstrong and Nat King Cole and Jack Teagarden.

Diana Krall knocks me out. I like jazz and I like her simple approach.

I've always been a jazz fan, but I don't write much about jazz, because I don't have the chops. But it's really, really hard to write about improvised instrumental music when you don't have a good knowledge of harmony and can't identify rhythm signatures very easily either.

The church we grew up playing at was not one of those churches known for its music, but it was just this all-around energy that would be happening because, at the same time we'd be playing in church, we'd be playing in the city jazz band under Reggie Edwards.

It's funny that because a lot of old jazz is being sampled now, you are finding a lot of young kids, a lot of scenesters and clubgoers, who are getting praise, laurels and dates with women because they listen to people like Herbie Hancock. In my day, listening to Herbie Hancock would have gotten you beaten up.

I haven't learned How or why Universe contrived to implode And intellectually code The myriadly unique Chromosomically orchestrated DNA-RNA, Quadripartite moleculed, Binary paired, Helically extended And unzippingly dichotomied Regenerative symphonic jazz, as A one and two, Three and four Me---You, Thee---They And more Thine and mine, Sweet citizen, THYMINE-CYTOSINE GUANINE-ADENINE

But the reasons against going to New Orleans--that spicy southern city known for jazz and Mardi Gras and hospitality--were the very reasons we had to go.

I was introduced to classical music by my grandparents - my parents were mostly into folk and jazz. Even as a young man, I was literally unaware of the distinctions between any of that, and I still think it's pointless.

He would catapult you forward, and that was his intention with the Jazz Messengers. He would take young people with a potential and help them develop a voice as a player and as a writer.

No, I don't know how to get young people to start listening to jazz again. But I do know this: Any symphony orchestra that thinks it can appeal to under-30 listeners by suggesting that they 'should' like Schubert and Stravinsky has already lost the battle.

When I have to compete with John Coltrane and Miles Davis and Louie Armstrong on iTunes, which I'm doing now, that's a problem. That means that jazz is not being heard by younger audiences.

There is an apprenticeship system in jazz. You teach the young ones. So even if the musicians weren't personally that likable, they felt an obligation to help the younger musicians.

When I was younger, I'd go to the Museum of Television and Radio in New York and watch this beautiful clip of Billie Holiday playing with a bassist, a pianist and Gerry Mulligan, who was a friend of mine, on baritone sax. At one point, she looks over at Gerry, and they just smile. When those moments happen, it's just lovely.

I usually listen to surf music, not much instrumental music, and when I was younger I listened to jazz.

I was heavily influenced by big voices when I was younger. People like Whitney Houston, Aretha Franklin, and Patti Labelle really spoke to me. When I got older, I was into Erykah Badu, Jill Scott, and Lauryn Hill, but it wasn't until I started working with a voice coach that I really dove into jazz music.

I've always thought that jazz needs to be heard by a wider audience in Puerto Rico. I want to put together a series of free concerts in the small towns - one with Miles Davis music, another with bebop, maybe Duke Ellington. I want younger people to see what is possible.

Around 2009, my audience started getting a lot more mainstream - younger people, R&B and hip-hop fans mixed in with the jazz audience.

Jazz celebrates older generations and not just the youth movement. When you 'sell' only to people of a certain age, you get cut off from the main body of experience.