Jazz Quotes

Jazz is the big brother of the blues. If a guy's playing blues like we play, he's in high school. When he starts playing jazz it's like going on to college, to a school of higher learning.

One of the things that's clear to me from interviews that I've read is that the more popular successful jazz musicians had audiences above and beyond the music community.

I give bird songs to those who dwell in cities and have never heard them, make rhythms for those who know only military marches or jazz, and paint colors for those who see none.

Jazz has borrowed from other genres of music and also has lent itself to other genres of music.

Jazz really does try to include everything. It's always been popular music. But the wonderful thing about jazz is its willingness to take chances.

Tone on jazz guitars is a real tough issue.

What I can say is that for may years jazz musicians had to go to Europe, for instance, to be respected and to be sort of treated not in a discriminatory way. I don't think there is anything controversial about me saying that. This is just a fact.

The stories from 1975 on are not finished and there is no resolve. I could spend 50 hours on the last 25 years of jazz and still not do it justice.

Before I became a writer, I was running a jazz bar in the center of Tokyo, which means that I worked in filthy air all the time late into the night. I was very excited when I started making a living out of my writing, and I decided, 'I will live in nothing but an absolutely healthy way.'

I was exposed to jazz early on.

I think more than writers, the major influences on me have been European movies, jazz, and Abstract Expressionism.

I think that one of the problems that jazz has is that it's so incestuous that it's starting to kill itself.

I've been informed by both sides, jazz, western music, Asian music, African music, all sides, because I've been interested in the sound of the universe, and that sound is without limit.

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.

When I was doing jazz concerts in America, I would use the biggest names I could find.

There are singers that I have enjoyed, from Nina Simone and Ray Charles onward. But the music that made music the number one thing for me as a youth was jazz.

In jazz, there is a lot of European influence harmonically.

If there was no black man there would be no Rock'n'Roll. The beat, the rhythms of Africa are what created Rock'n'Roll and Jazz.

I usually listen to surf music, not much instrumental music, and when I was younger I listened to jazz.

The spirit of jazz is the spirit of openness.

The way that I got involved with microtonal music was, frankly, through jazz.

My personal trainer is an ex-dancer so we do a lot of ballet and jazz.

When I sang that song, I felt it was almost as if some force had moved into my body. Things like that have only happened to me singing jazz. It doesn't happen when singing pop. I get so deeply into the music, it feels like I've become someone else.

As a rule, my focus is on classical music, but I love jazz. I love everything, actually.

I like contemporary American literature and I like biographies and I like jazz and I like baseball and I like writers who write about the human condition and sci-fi is just something that I happened into.

Gospel music rhythms are not African in origin, although I know that's what the jazz experts say.

My roots and Victor's are jazz, basically, but these two young fellows that we have with us come out of rock bands. And they're tremendously exciting players.

Just figure out what you think jazz is, and then if it fits into that category, it's jazz, and if it doesn't, it isn't. It's no big deal.

Jazz is the last refuge of the untalented. Jazz musicians enjoy themselves more than anyone listening to them does.

I think we as a band, as individuals, understand that all popular music stems from blues and jazz and even pop, but rock 'n' roll especially comes from blues.