Jazz Quotes
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Rock and roll ain't nothing but jazz with a hard backbeat.
Keith Richards The Rolling Stones -
I think the other thing that's important is getting to a place, which very, very rarely happens with improvising groups, where somebody can decide not to play for a while. You watch any group of musicians improvising together and they nearly all play nearly all the time. In fact I often say that the biggest difference between classical music and everything else is that classical musicians sometimes shut up because they're told to, because the score tells them to. Whereas any music that's sort of based on folk or jazz, everybody plays all the time.
Brian Eno Roxy Music
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I cringed when I heard myself described as a Jazz singer. I've always thought of myself as a Jazz vocalist.
Cassandra Wilson -
I think we as human beings need to be able to appreciate each other's differences and I think jazz really takes us in that direction.
Herb Alpert -
I listen to instrumental jazz and bluegrass, but aside from my AM workout, I have no rituals.
David B. Coe -
I don't think that jazz, as any kind of an art form, has any permanence attached to it, apart from the practitioners of it.
Norman Granz -
If there had never been the Great Migration there would never have been jazz, there would never have been Michelle Obama. A lot of amazing black people exist in this country because of the Great Migration. That's nation-building.
Ayana Mathis -
I was a jazz major in high school, in an all-jazz band. No matter what I do, it features my musical influences.
Wyclef Jean Fugees
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You can't teach it [jazz singing]. There's nobody who can teach you how to sing jazz. Either you know how to sing jazz, or you don't.
Tony Bennett -
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 that obsession, what is your subject going to be and you often don't know for some time. It might become fiction, it might be non-fiction, and if it's non-fiction it can go in any number of directions.
Gary Giddins -
So the whole basis for jazz music is based on the fact that the bass player could not play his instrument.
Miroslav Vitous -
I always say that the problem with jazz accessibility is not the content of the music, it's people's ability to access it.
Esperanza Spalding -
I didn't plan on rock-n-roll. I wanted to learn jazz; I got to know some people doing rock-n-roll with jazz, and I thought I could make some money playing music.
Robby Krieger The Doors -
Around age 11 or 12, I started playing jazz bass. From there, I went to electric bass and then guitar, which I kept up for a long time.
Joshua Roman
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The first jazz musician was a trumpeter, Buddy Bolden, and the last will be a trumpeter, the archangel Gabriel.
Wynton Marsalis -
I did get to sing at Carnegie Hall when they were made Landmarks! I sang ALL THAT JAZZ with the NY Pops ...what a total thrill.
Karen Mason -
For me, jazz will always be the soundtrack of the civil rights movement.
Henry Rollins Black Flag -
I'm really not this jazz traditionalist guy you've been making me out to be all of these years.
Christian McBride -
When I got pretty good I went on the road with a group. We starved.
Wes Montgomery -
American films are the best films. This is a fact. Cinema is - along with Jazz - the great American art form. And cinema in a very real sense created the American identity that has been exported around the world.
Ben Dreyfuss
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The music is what sustains the player from beginning to end. That’s where you get your life from. That’s why you play jazz.
Art Farmer -
Say That! is an iron fist upside the mushy head of smooth jazz, and Grant Geissman's defiant declaration of independence.
Bill Milkowski -
Jazz has always been a melting pot of influences and I plan to incorporate them all.
Esperanza Spalding -
Jazz is really about the human experience. It’s about the ability of human beings to take the worst of circumstances and struggles and turn it into something creative and constructive. That’s something that’s built into the fiber of every human being. And I think that’s why people can respond to it. They feel the freedom in it. And the attributes of jazz are also admirable. It’s about dialogue. It’s about sharing. And teamwork. It’s in the moment, and it's nonjudgmental.
Herbie Hancock