I never really wanted to be a daily critic who goes out every night and writes 300 word reviews, I wanted to write essays. And that gave me the luxur….

Charlie Parker was the greatest individual musician that ever lived. Every instrument in the band tried to copy Charlie Parker, and in the history of….

There are reviews that are clearly wrong. Dr. Johnson's famous Life of Savage, he's clearly wrong about the value of Savage. But it's one of the grea….

Criticism ultimately at some degree is about the writer and not the subject. It's very easy if everybody else says, "He's a genius," to echo that, bu….

I think all of us begin as writers. I wanted to be a writer from the time I as eight, long before I heard of jazz. The question is, once you have tha….

Jazz is for joy. It's for euphoria, it's for emotion, and anguish, and excitement, and all of the joys that great art can produce, and if it loses th….

You've got to have a gimmick if your band sucks..

Bing Crosby said that Armstrong is "the beginning and the end of music in America," and he wasn't far wrong..

If I'm reviewing a record, man, I play that record to death, which is ironic in a way because if I review a concert I feel very confident in myself, ….

Even my colleagues don't read classic criticism. And my feeling is that if you don't do that then you're not really practicing your craft. That's how….

I am astounded at my age with a 20-year-old daughter to discover that kids of her generation don't want to watch black and white movies. I understand….

If you're genuinely candid and expressive then you're never wrong, even when you are wrong..

When I teach criticism, the first thing I say, and this sometimes pisses off younger - I mean, students, is that, opinions are the least part of crit….

Writing style is something is a consequence of who you are. I think that I had a certain propensity for a style that I recognize in my early work, bu….

One of the things I always underscore when I teach criticism is that young critics, or would be critics, frequently have this illusion that if they w….

I can't get very excited about a musician who can do Art Tatum because I've got the Art Tatum records. I want to hear him take that and do something ….

Nobody knows where jazz is going, because nobody has ever known where jazz was going. I mean, you couldn't possibly predict the Swing Era from the '2….

I'm a critic. That means you are a writer. So, yes, you have to make yourself an authority on whatever subject it's going to be. Music, movies, liter….

You're writing for some version of yourself. You're writing the kinds of things that you like to read or wanted to read at a certain point. So, prima….

I hate the idea of turning jazz into homework assignments. I would never have a quiz saying, "Who's the clarinetist on the Hot Five?" I don't care. I….

People should not feel intimidated by received wisdom. You have to discover it yourself. If I tell you that Armstrong is great, it's meaningless; you….