Jazz music is an intensified feeling of nonchalance. — Francoise Sagan
Jazz music is to be played sweet, soft, plenty rhythm. — Jelly Roll Morton
Jazz is the favorite music [of America]. It is a type of music invented by [American] Blacks to please their primitive tendencies and desire for noise. — Sayyid Qutb
To jazz, or not to jazz, there is no question! — Louis Armstrong
Jazz music is a style, not compositions; any kind of music may be played in Jazz if one has the knowledge. — Jelly Roll Morton
Jazz is not just music, it's a way of life, it's a way of being, a way of thinking. — Nina Simone
Jazz is the only music in which the same note can be played night after night but differently each time. — Ornette Coleman
Jazz is music made by and for people who have chosen to feel good in spite of conditions. — Johnny Griffin
Jazz will be the classical music of the future. — Dizzy Gillespie
Jazz shouldn't have any mandates. Jazz is not supposed to be something that's required to sound like jazz. For me, the word 'jazz' means, 'I dare you.' — Wayne Shorter
Jazz to me is a living music. It's a music that since its beginning has expressed the feelings, the dreams, hopes, of the people. — Dexter Gordon
Jazz washes away the dust of every day life. — Art Blakey
Jazz is neither specific repertoire, nor academic exercise... but a way of life. — Lester Bowie
Jazz is the continual pulsation of the now. — Pat Martino
Short Jazz Music Quotes
Jazz is the type of music that can absorb so many things and still be jazz. — Sonny Rollins
Jazz is one of the best things that you can find in your life, it can always be your friend. — George Gershwin
Jazz is freedom. You think about that. — Thelonious Monk
Jazz is a beautiful word. I love it. — Dexter Gordon
The spirit of jazz is the spirit of openness. — Herbie Hancock
Jazz does not belong to one race or culture, but is a gift that America has given the world. — Ahmad Alaadeen
Music represents nature. Nature represents life. Jazz represents nature. Jazz is life. — Sonny Rollins
Jazz is a white term to define black people. My music is black classical music. — Nina Simone
Jazz, like leadership, combines the unpredictability of the future with the gifts of individuals. — Max De Pree
What I came back to is that jazz is a music to be played and not to be intellectualized on. — Gerry Mulligan
Music is enough for a lifetime - but a lifetime is not enough for music. — Sergei Rachmaninoff
Technically, I'm not a guitar player, all I play is truth and emotion. — Jimi Hendrix
My music is the spiritual expression of what I am: my faith, my knowledge, my being. — John Coltrane
Starting in the middle of a musical sentence and moving in both directions at once. — John Coltrane
I say, play your own way. Don't play what the public want - you play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doing - even if it does take them fifteen, twenty years. — Thelonious Monk
There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind. — Duke Ellington
The most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen. — Duke Ellington
Each man has his own music bubbling up inside him. — Louis Armstrong
If I don’t practice for a day, I know it. If I don’t practice for two days, the critics know it. And if I don’t practice for three days, the public knows it. — Louis Armstrong
Life is like a piano, the white keys represent happiness and the black shows sadness, but as you go through life's journey, remember that the black keys also makes music.
Jazz Song Quotes
There's a category for me. I like to be referred to as a good singer of good songs in good taste. — Sarah Vaughan
The whole of life itself expresses the blues. That's why I always say the blues are the true facts of life expressed in words and song, inspiration, feeling and understanding. The blues can be about anything pertaining to the facts of life. The blues call on God as much as a spiritual song do. — Willie Dixon
Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood," a song that was written for Simone, she confronted the band's lead singer, Eric Burdon. "So you're the honky," she said, "who stole my song and got a hit out of it? — Nina Simone
Behind every girl's favorite song there is an untold story.
[On bebop years] All I did was sing 'How High the Moon.' It seemed like the only song I ever sang. — Ella Fitzgerald
I like a very dark house, just black. I sit there and just think. Once I'm still and quiet inside, I'll begin. It's very personal; it has to be. One song may be Bach, the next blues, a song from TV, or a nursery rhyme or jazz piece. — Bobby McFerrin
I regard singing pretty much like acting. Each song is like playing a different role. I get very involved with my material. I feel a responsibility for the emotion it brings out in the listener. — Peggy Lee
The earth has music for those who listen.
Love songs last because they are about feelings that don't change. — Diana Krall
If you're gonna sing meaningful songs, you have to be committed to living a life that backs that up. — Joan Baez
People were saying that Southern folk song was dead, that the land that had produced American jazz, the blues, the spirituals, the mountain ballads and the work songs had gone sterile. — Alan Lomax
The old jazz singers or old blues singers, you always just saw them kind of sitting down and singing. They weren't worried as much about their voice sounding perfect. They would make the song kind of fit their voice. — Lucinda Williams
Jazz Musician Quotes
I have no illusions about being a genius musician. I pride myself on being a soldier, a warrior for jazz. I trained a lot of young people, and I've learned my lessons well. I'd like to keep the flame burning. — Phil Woods
My music is the spiritual expression of what I am — my faith, my knowledge, my being...When you begin to see the possibilities of music, you desire to do something really good for people, to help humanity free itself from its hangups...I want to speak to their souls. — John Coltrane
Marijuana is taken by musicians. And I'm not speaking about good musicians, but the jazz type. — Harry J. Anslinger
A real leader faces the music, even when he doesn't like the tune.
Well, I'm too old to pimp, and too young to die, so I'm just gonna keep playin' — Clark Terry
I never practice my guitar. From time to time I just open the case & throw in a piece of raw meat. — Wes Montgomery
Jazz is the big brother of Revolution. Revolution follows it around. — Miles Davis
Art is how we decorate space; Music is how we decorate time.
After the war, once the bop revolution had taken hold, there were all kinds of young musicians, talented young musicians, who were ready for this fusion of classical and jazz. — Gunther Schuller
As far as being a 'player's player,' you've only got to go to Nashville or Argentina and you can forget about it. The world is full of amazing guitar players, and you know it, and I know it...it's a humbling experience. — Mark Knopfler
A band ought to have a sound all of its own. It ought to have a personality. — Glenn Miller
Regardless of what you play, the biggest thing is keeping the feel going. — Wes Montgomery
Jazz Quotes
I don't believe that jazz will ever really die. It's a nice way to express yourself. — Chet Baker
There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing, result from marijuana usage. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others. — Harry J. Anslinger
When I was a kid, some of the guys would try to get me to hate white people for what they've been doing to Negroes, and for a while I tried real hard. But every time I got to hating them, some white guy would come along and mess the whole thing up. — Thelonious Monk
A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence.
Jazz is my adventure. I'm after new chords, new ways of syncopating, new figures, new runs. How to use notes differently. That's it. Just using notes differently. — Thelonious Monk
Flow is being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
In Europe they look upon jazz as art. In America it's a diversion. Somebody opens a restaurant and installs another band off to the side. People don't listen. — Chet Baker
People are like Music, some speak the truth and other are just noise
Gospel music rhythms are not African in origin, although I know that's what the jazz experts say. — Mahalia Jackson
Most of what I listen to now is mainstream jazz from 1935 right up to and including early bebop and cool jazz. — Dave Van Ronk
Just because you're not a drummer doesn't mean you don't have to keep time. — Thelonious Monk
Benny Goodman was one of the big influences as a clarinet player. That's why I wanted the clarinet. — Lee Konitz
Jazz Band Quotes
My brother had a big band in high school; after that we continued to play together, eventually forming a group called the Jazz Brothers, that recorded for Riverside Records. — Chuck Mangione
I suppose subconsciously I was thinking in terms of having the scale of it matching the scale of the images. Hence the sort of string quartet, jazz band and electronic stuff. — Jonny Greenwood
I was in every band class I could get in, like after school jazz band and marching band, and that's where I really learned to read music from elementary all the way through junior high and high school. — Chad Smith
Music is the emotional life of most people.
I used to sing with my father's jazz band and then when I was ten years old a musician friend of his suggested that I try out for the first west coast production of Annie. — Molly Ringwald
Communication is the essential medium of a creative culture: the communal sea in which we all swim. A company that can't communicate is like a jazz band without instruments: Music just isn't going to happen. — John Kao
I wonder what an agent would do if he had to travel with the band he's booking. — Mary Lou Williams
One good thing about music. When it hits you, you feel no pain.
You know somethin', man? Some day I'm gonna be walkin' up the street one way and you're gonna be comin' down the other way, and we're gonna pass each other and I'm gonna say 'Hello, best white band in the world' and you're gonna say 'Hello, best colored band in the world. — Chick Webb
Shared leadership... is less like a an orchestra, where the conductor is always in charge, and more like a jazz band, where leadership is passed around ... depending on what the music demands at the moment and who feels most moved by the spirit to express the music. — Phillip C. Schlechty
It's just music. It's trying to play clean and looking for the pretty notes. The beat in a bop band is with the music, against it, behind it. It pushes it. It helps it. Help is the big thing. It has no continuity of beat, no steady chug-chug. Jazz has, and that's why bop is more flexible. — Charlie Parker
Most of the stuff I learned to play, I learned in high school. I had a band in high school, a jazz-fusion thing, and I was the keyboard player. I was interested in how the instruments worked and the theory behind playing with them. — Brian McKnight
Playing Jazz Quotes
Don't worry about playing a lot of notes. Just find one pretty one. — Miles Davis
I like jazz, but I could never play it. You just sit there with a guitar the size of a Chevy on your chest, wearing a stupid hat, playing the same solo for an hour. — Dave Mustaine
The music I like to play is Rock 'N Roll. I like to rock like a wild animal. I like to rock it well enough to whip a yak's ass. I love to rock it good on a horse's ass. I like to rock it real hard. I love to rock it all the way to Russia. I like to kick out the Jazz and kick it out all the way. — Wesley Willis
Without music, life would be a mistake.
Master your instrument. Master the music. And then forget all that bullshit and just play. — Charlie Parker
It's the honesty you apply to your playing that makes music enjoyable. The style of the music has little to do with it. It's only honesty makes it beautiful. — Elvin Jones
Jazz is all about improvisation and it's about the moment in time, doing it this way now, and you'll never do it this way twice. I've studied the masters. Why would I want to play ball after the guys who sit on a bench? I want to play like Michael Jordan. — Brian McKnight
One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain
A chimpanzee could learn what I do physically, but it goes way beyond that. When you play, you play life. — Jaco Pastorius
I'm not a jazz artist. Don't get me wrong now, it's all music to me. I just played music and if it's likeable, someone liked the sound, then fine, but I'm not interested in being a jazz musician. I don't consider myself a jazz musician. I don't have anything to do with that word. — Pharoah Sanders
I never had much interest in the piano until I realized that every time I played, a girl would appear on the piano bench to my left and another to my right. — Duke Ellington
I tell my students, 'It's an important tradition and you have to go back and hear this music and learn its language all the way through. How are you going to know what's new to play, if you haven't listened to everything that's old?' — Jackie McLean
Jazz Records Quotes
I think as long as people are around and can hear a record and hear people like Lester Young on a recording, there will always be a great inspiration for somebody to try to create jazz. — Sonny Rollins
When you are studying jazz, the best thing to do is listen to records or listen to live music. It isn't as though you go to a teacher. You just listen as much as you can and absorb everything. — Carla Bley
I always hated jazz guitar. I loved jazz saxophone but I hated jazz guitar. If I would buy an organ trio record I would make sure I'd buy one that did not have a guitar player on it. The sound was awful! — Tom Verlaine
I think all record companies should be run by a musician. Just as you wouldn't trust your health to an electrician. — Paul Bley
The whole point is, give me a break with the standards. You go to the average jazz label and suggest a record and they want to know which standards you're going to play. I'm saying let's break the formula. — Branford Marsalis
My dream is to do whatever I want without any interference from the record company. — Sarah Vaughan
Many fail to realize this great recording industry was built by so-called jazz artists. And at the other end of the spectrum, a base in European classical music as well. — Ahmad Jamal
There's so much around, you don't know what to listen to. All I've got at home is Bo Diddley, some Stones and Beatles stuff, and old jazz records. — Syd Barrett
Jazz isn't like pop, where you sell millions of records with a hit. Your spirit and soul aren't important in pop music. But jazz is like classical music. If people like you, they'll remember you and you'll last forever. — Freddie Hubbard
People think it is all about country music, and I know a lot of country music has come out of there, but like Blonde on Blonde by Bob Dillon was recorded there. A lot of great records; R&B records, jazz records. It's a lot of great players and great studios. — Elvis Costello
Jazz And Blues Quotes
The further jazz moves away from the stark blue continuum and the collective realities of Afro-American and American life, the more it moves into academic concert-hall lifelessness, which can be replicated by any middle class showing off its music lessons. — Imamu Amiri Baraka Jones
The further jazz moves away from the stark blue continuum and the collective realities of Afro-American and American life, the more it moves into academic concert-hall lifelessness, which can be replicated by any middle class showing off its music lessons. — Amiri Baraka
My baby lives in shades of blue, blue eyes and jazz and attitude. — Lana Del Rey
Blues is to jazz what yeast is to bread--without it, it's flat. — Carmen McRae
The blues is the foundation, and it's got to carry the top. The other part of the scene, the rock 'n' roll and the jazz, are the walls of the blues. — Luther Allison
All the classic jazz players all sang and a lot of 'em sang blues. — Mose Allison
I wanna show that gospel, country, blues, rhythm and blues, jazz, rock 'n' roll are all just really one thing. Those are the American music and that is the American culture. — Etta James
My father's rich, my momma's good looking. Right? And I can play the Blues. I've never suffered and don't intend to suffer. — Miles Davis
When I die, I want them to play The Black and Crazy Blues, I want to be cremated, put in a bag of pot and I want beautiful people to smoke me and hope they got something out of it. — Rahsaan Roland Kirk
It occurred to me by intuition, and music was the driving force behind that intuition. My discovery was the result of musical perception. — Albert Einstein
Smooth Jazz Quotes
The whole rise of new adult contemporary music and smooth jazz was a nice surprise. — Kenny G
Jazz is smooth and cool. Jazz is rage. Jazz flows like water. Jazz never seems to begin or end. Jazz isn't methodical, but jazz isn't messy either. Jazz is a conversation, a give and take. Jazz is the connection and communication between musicians. Jazz is abandon. — Nat Wolff
I, of course, wanted to play real jazz. When we played pop tunes, and naturally we had to, I wanted those pops to kick! Not loud and fast, understand, but smoothly and with a definite punch. — Count Basie
Whoever invented smooth jazz, man, I wanna kill 'em: You're turning an art form into a hooker. — Phil Woods
I couldn't get my album played over the so-called smooth jazz stations. Jazz stations would not play it. You don't always know who you're making that soul connection with. — Roy Ayers
People are always defining and re-defining music. My style of playing has been characterized as smooth jazz and acid jazz. I listen as I play; I'm not caught up in defining the type of music I play. — Roy Ayers
Jazz music should be inclusive. Smooth jazz to me rules out a certain kind of drama and a certain tension that I think all music needs. Especially jazz music, since improvising is one of the cornerstones of what jazz is. And when you smooth it out, you take all the drama out of it. — David Sanborn
Well, I guess my unease with that is... I'm always a little uneasy with that phrase - smooth jazz, as opposed to what? — David Sanborn
I find that jazz loosens up the deep place of my mind, lets me find my own strange rhythms. Generally, I find the knottier the jazz, the better. Anything with singing is a distraction. Listening to classical music tends to have the unconscious effect of making my writing too smooth. — Paul Lynch
Dinner 'conversation' at the Cohens' meant my sister, mom, and I relaying in brutal detail the day's events in a state of amplified hysteria, while my father listened to his own smooth jazz station in his head. — Andy Cohen
Jazz And Life Quotes
All a musician can do is to get closer to the source. — John Coltrane
Whatever I'd say would be an understatement. I can only say my life was made much better by knowing him. He was one of the greatest people I've ever known, as a man, a friend, and a musician. — John Coltrane
My life is music, and in some vague, mysterious and subconscious way, I have always been driven by a taut inner spring which has propelled me to almost compulsively reach for perfection in music, often - in fact, mostly - at the expense of everything else in my life. — Stan Getz
It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing. — Duke Ellington
The idea is more important than the style you're playing in. — Ornette Coleman
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. — Branford Marsalis
The idea is more important than the object. — Damien Hirst
If it sounds good and feels good, then it IS good! — Duke Ellington
Let your life be your music and let your music be your life. — Kevin Eubanks
Blues Music Quotes
Everybody started calling my music rock and roll, but it wasn't anything but the same rhythm and blues I'd been playing down in New Orleans. — Fats Domino
I would like to involve myself in some black music. I would like to do some blues and some gospel music. I want to try stuff from other genres and try to widen my musical base. — Greg Lake
Music means communication to me. I say 'listen you people out there, listen to my music, let's be one.' Music is a friend to me when I am lonely, when I am blue. You can't define music 'cause music is cosmos and it knows no barrier or definition. You have to feel music to dig it. — Robert Plant
The blues tells a story. Every line of the blues has a meaning. — John Lee Hooker
If you don't know the blues... there's no point in picking up the guitar and playing rock and roll or any other form of popular music. — Keith Richards
With the Stray Cats at least, we really took the music somewhere else. First, we wrote our own songs. That's a real weak point in modern classics if you do rockabilly or blues. — Brian Setzer
I dabbled in things like Howlin' Wolf, Cream and Led Zeppelin, but when I heard Son House and Robert Johnson, it blew my mind. It was something I'd been missing my whole life. That music made me discard everything else and just get down to the soul and honesty of the blues. — Jack White
I would think, to me, growing up in the south, growing up with all the gospel music, singing in the church and having that rhythm and blues - the blues background was my big inspiration. — Jackie DeShannon
The blues are the roots and the other musics are the fruits. It's better keeping the roots alive, because it means better fruits from now on. The blues are the roots of all American music. As long as American music survives, so will the blues. — Willie Dixon
They say the blues is sad, but when B.B. sings 'I got a sweet little angel, I love the way she spreads her wings,' that don't sound too sad to me! — Buddy Guy
Put it this way: Jazz is a good barometer of freedom... In its beginnings, the United States of America spawned certain ideals of freedom and independence through which, eventually, jazz was evolved, and the music is so free that many people say it is the only unhampered, unhindered expression of complete freedom yet produced in this country. — Duke Ellington
Over all, I think the main thing a musician would like to do is give a picture to the listener of the many wonderful things that he knows of and senses in the universe. . . Thats what I would like to do. I think thats one of the greatest things you can do in life and we all try to do it in some way. The musicians is through his music. — John Coltrane
I will never again play anything that does not have social significance. We American jazz musicians of African descent have proved beyond all doubt that we are master musicians of our instruments. Now what we have to do is employ our skill to tell the dramatic story of our people and what we've been through. — Max Roach
I never even thought about whether or not they understand what I'm doing . . . the emotional reaction is all that matters as long as there's some feeling of communication, it isn't necessary that it be understood. — John Coltrane
A note can be as small as a pin or as big as the world, it depends on your imagination. — Thelonious Monk
Where human eyes have never seen, where human beings have never been, I build a world of abstract dreams, and I wait for you. — Sun Ra
Jazz has borrowed from other genres of music and also has lent itself to other genres of music. — Herbie Hancock
I don't have a definition of Jazz. You're just supposed to know it when you hear it. — Thelonious Monk
One of the reasons I believe in jazz is that the oneness of man can come through the rhythm of your heart. It’s the same anyplace in the world, that heartbeat. It’s the first thing you hear when you’re born — or before you’re born — and it’s the last thing you hear. — Dave Brubeck
I don't believe in geniuses, I believe in hard work. — Michel Petrucciani
I think jazz is a beautiful, democratic music. It encourages musicians with very strong, and many times, very different points of view to work together as a team while, at the same time, giving them the space to express their individuality. It's a very important art form and can be used as a model for different cultures to work together. — Marcus Miller
When you know the lyrics to a tune, you have some kind of insight as to it's composition. — Dexter Gordon
In Conclusion
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