Jazz Quotes

It's sort of what jazz would be if it stopped being snobby and what rock would be if it stopped being stupid.

Jazz needs the help. It's the more sophisticated music. All the other music is on the TV, but jazz isn't.

We had common interests in the beauty of the French language. We both had a tremendous love of jazz. We shared dreams of getting married and having a family, living in the country, leading an idyllic life.

The people in Japan know more about the history of jazz and the musicians than the people in the United States do.

Seriously though, my father was the first African American to sign a contract with the Metropolitan Opera so I grew up with classical music and jazz in the home all the time.

I still love the whole history of jazz. The old things sound better than ever.

Sometimes you need to stand with your nose to the window and have a good look at jazz. And I've done that on many occasions.

My main influences have always been the classic jazz players who sang, like Louis Armstrong and Nat King Cole and Jack Teagarden.

I don't worry too much about the fundamentalist principles that are in almost any discussion about jazz.

I've been dancing my entire life. Jazz, hip hop, ballet. And then there's tap dancing. I love to tap.

What is jazz? It, It's almost like asking, What is French? Jazz is a musical language. It's a musical dialect that actually embodies the spirit of America.

The jazz chord substitutions in a country song... that was another thing that bent people's ears. I guess that my favorites are the unique ones. It's not how fast you play. It's that unique blending of different stuff I'm most proud of.

I'm saddened to see that everyone's pitched out the baby with the bath, in that we say that it can't be one or the other, it could be both. I mean, just because we listen to classical music doesn't mean that we can't listen to jazz.

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.

Rock and roll mainly but I can play passable jazz also.

My folks have played everything from rock, disco, pop, funk, and blues. My dad has always brought and played different genres like jazz, classical, and Latin. With all this in my pocket, I feel I have a taste of everything for my influences.

As far as I'm concerned, the essentials of jazz are: melodic improvisation, melodic invention, swing, and instrumental personality.

I lie around the floor with my cats Billy and Jazz or watch DVDs with my best friends.

There was a period which I refer to as the 'Golden Age of Jazz,' which sort of encompasses the middle Thirties through the Sixties, we had a lot of great innovators, all creating things which will last the world for a long, long time.

Jazz is there and gone. It happens. You have to be present for it. That simple.

I'm basically a cocktail jazz kind of pianist. I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a very good keyboard player. People think I think I'm good. I think I'm a very poor piano player.

I'm not really a country singer, although I did make a couple albums and love its simple, straight-from-the-heart approach, but I have always sung a lot of jazz, show tunes, pop tunes, gospel and blues.

They always say that jazz doesn't sell, but it's a lie, because it does sell, and it sells consistently year in and year out.

I listened to classical guitar and Spanish guitar, as well as jazz guitar players, rock and roll and blues. All of it. I did the same thing with my voice.

That's kind of like how jazz is sometimes. You're out there predicting the future, and no one believes you.

As my career has progressed, I've had the pleasure of playing with the baddest jazz cats on the planet. But that doesn't change my desire to entertain folks. That's really who I am.

I think Wes Montgomery is the greatest jazz guitarist that ever lived.

As far as I'm concerned, blues and jazz are the great American contributions to music.

Miles Davis fully embraced possibilities and delved into it. He was criticized heavily from the jazz side. He was supposed to be part of a tradition, but he didn't consider himself part of a tradition.

I have always been a person who is concerned with the dignity of jazz music and the way jazz musicians have been treated and are treated, and the fact that the music has not been given the kind of due that it deserves.