Jazz Quotes

My mother was a jazz fanatic and she wanted me to play the piano so I could play jazz tunes. I wish I had learned but I was too busy getting into trouble!

My early influences were the Shadows, who were an English instrumental band. They basically got me into playing and later on I got into blues and jazz players. I liked Clapton when he was with John Mayall. I really liked that period.

To most jazz critics I was basically Kenny G.

Eclecticism is the word. Like a jazz musician who creates his own style out of the styles around him, I play by ear.

Jazz was more of a tool for me to use to enhance my musicality.

Some people are born with a brain that has this weird, magical mathematical thing that makes them an amazing jazz musician.

Live action writers will give you a structure, but who the hell is talking about structure? Animation is closer to jazz than some kind of classical stage structure.

Certainly, jazz has become more of a niche, which is surprising, because it's our music. It's the national music of America.

What 'jazz' means to me is the worst kind of working conditions, the worst in cultural prejudice. The term 'jazz' has come to mean the abuse and exploitation of black musicians.

Jazz is a music of great achievements but speed and chops serve a different function in jazz.

If it has more than three chords, it's jazz.

The way that we imitate each others' riffs is something that other bands don't do as much. If we're jamming with a jazz band, or I am jamming with a jazz band, I have to catch myself, the tendency is always to do that.

I also thought of playing improvisational jazz and I did take lessons for a while. At first I tried to write fiction by making up things that were completely alien to my life.

Jazz radio is not very friendly to pop singers who decide to make a jazz record. But a lot of people have been. A lot of the people I've talked to like the record.

Boxing is like jazz. The better it is, the less people appreciate it.

I've been saying for almost 20 years that I need to do a jazz project and it ought to be either big band or I should do some jazz songs with a trio or quartet.

I have a fondness for jazz, particularly for jazz singers, Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald all the way through the Sinatra era.

There is an apprenticeship system in jazz. You teach the young ones. So even if the musicians weren't personally that likable, they felt an obligation to help the younger musicians.

I put out a recording of me singing mostly jazz because I wanted people to know I'm coming from a jazz background.

The memory of things gone is important to a jazz musician.

My favorite type of music to sing to would be rock and roll, Tenacious D, Led Zeppelin, some Queen - I love all of them. I love singing to them because they're all just great voices. I love listening to very obscure jazz.

I'm reserved, so I've always needed to find a way of opening up. Jazz helped me do that.

I'm really getting to appreciate traditional jazz now - the New Orleans stuff - a lot more than I did before.

Blues and jazz pulled me away from what was left of my family.

I don't regard myself as a great classical or jazz pianist. I like country music, but I'm not a great player. I just like music. Drums 'n' bass is pretty exciting and I'd love to explore it.

Most jazz players work out their solos, at least to the extent that they have a very specific vocabulary.

It is veneer, rouge, aestheticism, art museums, new theaters, etc. that make America impotent. The good things are football, kindness, and jazz bands.

Giving jazz the Congressional seal of approval is a little like making Huck Finn an honorary Boy Scout.

For years, Jazz At The Philharmonic albums were the only ones of their kind.

So the whole basis for jazz music is based on the fact that the bass player could not play his instrument.