Jazz Quotes
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Don't play what's there, play what's not there.
Miles Davis
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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
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Some people think I'm a rock 'n' roll musician and some think I'm a jazz musician but, for me, there is no difference.
Georgie Fame
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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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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
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Duke Ellington's career traces the entire history of jazz. The repertoire associated with him contains the most important elements in the music and provides concrete examples of some of the best ways to present the music in the widest variety of settings-radio, TV, recordings, movies, concert halls, festivals, solo, small ensemble, big band, symphony orchestra, opera, Broadway shows.... You name it, he did it!
Billy Taylor
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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
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Not according to this," Jazz said, taking the report. "No evidence of sexual activity or anything like it." "Well, there's that," Howie said, sounding relieved. Jazz wondered at that - was it really so much better to be unmolested, but still murdered in a horrible fashion? To die in pain and terror, stripped, left in a field, your fingers cut off? But as long as you weren't raped, well, that was alright, then? Did it really matter at that point?
Barry Lyga
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Milton, of all people, gave the most perfect definition of the state of mind required to play jazz: ' with wanton heed and giddy cunning.' That's how you play jazz.
Paul Desmond
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Armstrong was the key creator of the mature working language of jazz. Three decades after his death and more than three-quarters of a century since his influence first began to spread, not a single musician who has mastered that language fails to make daily use, knowingly or unknowingly, of something that was invented by Louis Armstrong.
Dan Morgenstern
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Many of the jazz musicians whom are no longer here. You don't realize that it's history when it is happening and then time passes and you look at a picture and you say "Wow, there is history attached to that."
Carol Friedman
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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
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The history of all big jazz bands shows was, first they played for dancing, and then they played for singing.
Norman Granz
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Jazz was born out of the whiskey bottle, was raised on marijana, and will expire on cocaine.
Artie Shaw
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Normal adults can doodle, amble, and drift with no need to assess risk, since there is normally no risk at all. Jazz improvisation seems less subject to standards of risk than surgery, and less than much formal athletic performance, as in a tennis match.
Ernest Sosa
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Classical singing - everything had to be homogenous, and it had to just feel like one continuous flow from top to bottom, bottom to top. And in jazz, I felt like, oh, well, I can sing these deep, husky lows if I want and then sing these really, like, tiny, laser highs if I want, as well. And I have - I have no obligation to make it sound like it's just one continuous flow.
Cecile McLorin Salvant
