Quotes on Jazz

Gray skies are just clouds passing over.

Playing 'bop' is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.

But you listen to Coltrane and that's something human, something that's about elevation. It's like making love to a woman. It's about something of value, it's not just loud. It doesn't have that violent connotation to it. I wanted to be a jazz musician so bad, but I really couldn't. There was no way I could figure out to learn how to play.

Blues is like the roux in a gumbo. People ask me if jazz always has the blues in it. I say, if it sounds good it does.

Jazz is not just 'Well, man, this is what I feel like playing.' It's a very structured thing that comes down from a tradition and requires a lot of thought and study.

Jazz is about being in the moment.

If you find a note tonight that sounds good, play the same damn note every night!

A jazz musician is not a jazz musician when he or she is eating dinner or when he or she is with his parents or spouse or neighbors. He's above all a human being . . . the true artform is being a human being.

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.

One of the interesting things an artist does is they keep rediscovering things, whether it's a jazz piece or a role you've done for 3,000 performances or a song you're singing for the 3,000th time. My job is to find that spark that keeps it fresh and alive.

Just give a drum roll, announce my name & I come out & sing. I have a contract that says I'm a singer. So I sing.

Liquid architecture. It's like jazz - you improvise, you work together, you play off each other, you make something, they make something. And I think it's a way of - for me, it's a way of trying to understand the city, and what might happen in the city.

I joined Count Basie's band to make a little money and to see the world. For two years I didn't see anything but the inside of a Blue Goose bus, and I never got to send home a quarter.

Risk is at the heart of jazz. Every note we play is a risk.

Jazz is a good barometer of freedom.

What I'm dealing with is so vast and great that it can't be called the truth. It's above the truth.

Just because I'm playing jazz I don't forget about me. I play or write me, the way I feel, through jazz, or whatever.

Jazz is a very accurate, curiously accurate accompaniment to 20th century America.

You've got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail.

That's what I tell my students at California Institute of the Arts where I taught for 27 years. I taught them if you strive to be a good person, maybe you might become a great jazz musician.

I kept thinking there's bound to be something else? I could hear it sometimes, but I couldn't play it.