Explore Quotes on Jazz

People were saying that Southern folk song was dead, that the land that had produced American jazz, the blues, the spirituals, the mountain ballads and the work songs had gone sterile.

The trouble with most musicians today is that they are copycats. Of course you have to start out playing like someone else. You have a model, or a teacher, and you learn all that he can show you. But then you start playing for yourself. Show them that you're an individual. And I can count those who are doing that today on the fingers of one hand.

One of the reasons I believe in jazz is that the oneness of man can come through the rhythm of your heart. It’s the same anyplace in the world, that heartbeat. It’s the first thing you hear when you’re born — or before you’re born — and it’s the last thing you hear.

I was a weird kid. I shouldve been gay because I listened to a lot of Broadway musicals. I dont know why Im not gay. I listen to a lot of jazz and world music, like African or Cuban music. Something that has vitality to it. A lot of the American stuff just feeds on itself.

I have a respect for Elvis and my friendship. It ain't my business what he did in private. The only thing I want to know is, 'Was he my friend?', 'Did I enjoy him as a performer?', 'Did he give the world of entertainment something?' - and the answer is YES on all accounts. The other jazz just don't matter.

Bebop didn't have the humanity of Duke Ellington. It didn't even have that recognizable thing. Bird and Diz were great, fantastic, challenging — but they weren't sweet.

For me, music and life are all about style.

Kenny Burrell is overall the greatest guitarist in the world and he's my favorite.

I love good rock'n'roll, blues and jazz, gospel, and a little reggae.

I love music. My secret dream has always been to be a jazz musician. I tried the saxophone for a year or two when I was younger, but unfortunately I had to face the fact that I was not really talented !

I've been invited to do a trio with a fantastic jazz guitarist and a harmonica player

I think that a rap aficionado, the hardcore rap fan, will always go away from pop, in the same way a hardcore jazz fan will never think Kenny G is really a jazz artist. You gotta kind of know there's always going to be that purist who's going to be like if it ain't beats and rhymes, if there ain't a DJ, then that ain't Hip Hop.

Humans are imperfect. That's one of the reasons that classical and jazz are in trouble. We're on the quest for the perfect performance and every note has to be right. Man, every note is not right in life.

I'm not going to play funk licks on a jazz album. That makes no sense.

I progressed through so many different styles of music through my teen years, both as a player and a vocalist, particularly the jazz and pop of the early 20th Century.

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.

Of course, there are a lot of ways you can treat the blues, but it will still be the blues.

When I was young and very green, I worte that tune, Sister Kate, and someone said that's fine, let me publish it for you. I'll give you fifty dollars. I didn't know nothing about papers, and business, and I sold it outright.

You see, pops, that's the kind of talk that's ruining the music. Everyone's trying to do something new, no one trying to learn the fundamentals first. All them young cats playing their wierd chords. And what happens? No one's working.

If I don’t practice for a day, I know it. If I don’t practice for two days, the critics know it. And if I don’t practice for three days, the public knows it.

If there's any such thing as a perfect man, I think John Coltrane was one. And I think that kind of perfection has to come from a greater force than there is here on earth.