Gary Giddins Quotes

• You've got to have a gimmick if your band sucks.

  Gary Giddins

  4 Copy quote

• Charlie Parker was the greatest individual musician that ever lived. Every instrument in the band tried to copy Charlie Parker, and in the history of jazz there had never been one man who influenced all the instruments.

  Gary Giddins

  Men, Musician, Jazz

  Gary Giddins (1987). “Celebrating Bird: the triumph of Charlie Parker”, University of Maryland Sea Grant Publications

  4 Copy quote

• Jazz is for joy. It's for euphoria, it's for emotion, and anguish, and excitement, and all of the joys that great art can produce, and if it loses that, then it's lost everything.

  Gary Giddins

  Art, Joy, Jazz

  Source: bigthink.com

  7 Copy quote

• If I'm reviewing a record, man, I play that record to death, which is ironic in a way because if I review a concert I feel very confident in myself, certainly at this point, and have for most of my career. You're only hearing it once and then you go to your typewriter and you write the review.

  Gary Giddins

  Writing, Men, Ironic

  Source: bigthink.com

  4 Copy quote

• I think all of us begin as writers. I wanted to be a writer from the time I as eight, long before I heard of jazz. The question is, once you have that obsession, what is your subject going to be and you often don't know for some time. It might become fiction, it might be non-fiction, and if it's non-fiction it can go in any number of directions.

  Gary Giddins

  Thinking, Long, Jazz

  Source: bigthink.com

  4 Copy quote

• Nobody knows where jazz is going, because nobody has ever known where jazz was going. I mean, you couldn't possibly predict the Swing Era from the '20's or bebop from the Swing Era or Avant-garde from Bebop, or Effusion, or on and on and on. So, we don't really know where it's going.

  Gary Giddins

  Mean, Jazz, Nobody Knows

  Source: bigthink.com

  4 Copy quote

• Even my colleagues don't read classic criticism. And my feeling is that if you don't do that then you're not really practicing your craft. That's how you learn how to do it. You don't learn how to write about jazz just from listening to jazz. You learn how to write by reading the great writers and how they worked, the great music critics.

  Gary Giddins

  Reading, Writing, Feelings

  Source: bigthink.com

  4 Copy quote

• There are reviews that are clearly wrong. Dr. Johnson's famous Life of Savage, he's clearly wrong about the value of Savage. But it's one of the great works in English literature. You can learn more about the artistic expression and what the poet does and how to write about art from that than any number of guys who are terrible writers, who have no original ideas, but who say yes, "Hamlet" is a wonderful play. It's a meaningless statement.

  Gary Giddins

  Art, Writing, Guy

  Source: bigthink.com

  7 Copy quote

• I hate the idea of turning jazz into homework assignments. I would never have a quiz saying, "Who's the clarinetist on the Hot Five?" I don't care. If you like the clarinetist, you'll know who it is.

  Gary Giddins

  Hate, Hot, Care

  Source: bigthink.com

  4 Copy quote

• I can't get very excited about a musician who can do Art Tatum because I've got the Art Tatum records. I want to hear him take that and do something that hasn't been done. And there's enough of that going around that keeps the music very exciting. There's so many great young players coming out. I think we're in some kind of renaissance, especially in the rhythm section. I mean the musicians on drums and bass and guitar are really trying to figure out different ways to bring a rhythm section together.

  Gary Giddins

  Art, Mean, Player

  Source: bigthink.com

  4 Copy quote

• You're writing for some version of yourself. You're writing the kinds of things that you like to read or wanted to read at a certain point. So, primarily for most of my career, I've written the kind of criticism that fascinates me. The things I discovered the things that get me going, that I'm excited about.

  Gary Giddins

  Writing, Criticism, Kind

  Source: bigthink.com

  4 Copy quote

• I am astounded at my age with a 20-year-old daughter to discover that kids of her generation don't want to watch black and white movies. I understand that they gave up on silent films, but black and white? So, now movies have to be taught in academia because people don't know how to watch them, they don't know how to appreciate them.

  Gary Giddins

  Daughter, Kids, Black And White

  Source: bigthink.com

  4 Copy quote

• One of the things I always underscore when I teach criticism is that young critics, or would be critics, frequently have this illusion that if they write about music they're somehow part of music, or if they write about movies they're part of movies, or of they write about theater they're part of theater, or write about literature. Writing is a part of literature, we belong the species of literature. If you add all the music reviews together that have ever been written, they don't create two notes of music.

  Gary Giddins

  Writing, Criticism, Together

  Source: bigthink.com

  4 Copy quote

• I never really wanted to be a daily critic who goes out every night and writes 300 word reviews, I wanted to write essays. And that gave me the luxury to be able to go out and if it was lousy, I could just say, well the hell with that, I'll go to hear something else, or, I'll go tomorrow night; I as writing for a weekly.

  Gary Giddins

  Writing, Night, Tomorrow

  Source: bigthink.com

  4 Copy quote

• Bing Crosby said that Armstrong is "the beginning and the end of music in America," and he wasn't far wrong.

  Gary Giddins

  Source: bigthink.com

  4 Copy quote

• People should not feel intimidated by received wisdom. You have to discover it yourself. If I tell you that Armstrong is great, it's meaningless; you have to hear it.

  Gary Giddins

  People, Intimidated, Meaningless

  Source: bigthink.com

  4 Copy quote

• Humility is a very important trait in a critic.

  Gary Giddins

  Humility, Important, Critics

  Source: bigthink.com

  4 Copy quote

• Writing style is something is a consequence of who you are. I think that I had a certain propensity for a style that I recognize in my early work, but that doesn't mean I didn't have to learn certain basics and the longer you write the better you get. The rhythms come from you. If the rhythm seem to echo the music, then that's delightful if people see that, but it's certainly not something that's intentional on my part. I'm trying to be as clear and precise as I can be and at the same time, I'm trying to be eloquent and witty and entertaining. I mean, writing should be a pleasure.

  Gary Giddins

  Witty, Writing, Mean

  Source: bigthink.com

  4 Copy quote

• If you're genuinely candid and expressive then you're never wrong, even when you are wrong.

  Gary Giddins

  Source: bigthink.com

  4 Copy quote

• Criticism ultimately at some degree is about the writer and not the subject. It's very easy if everybody else says, "He's a genius," to echo that, but then you're not functioning as a critic or as a writer in any meaningful way. You've got to take the risk of being wrong.

  Gary Giddins

  Meaningful, Risk, Criticism

  Source: bigthink.com

  4 Copy quote

• I'm a critic. That means you are a writer. So, yes, you have to make yourself an authority on whatever subject it's going to be. Music, movies, literature, whatever it's going to be, but what you really want to do is learn your trade by reading other writers. I think you have to read veraciously, especially people who have done what you have done to see how it's been done in the past; what works, what doesn't work.

  Gary Giddins

  Reading, Mean, Past

  Source: bigthink.com

  4 Copy quote

• When I teach criticism, the first thing I say, and this sometimes pisses off younger - I mean, students, is that, opinions are the least part of criticism. We've all had the experience of going with a friend to a movie or a concert and you leave the theater and one of you loved it and one of you hated it, and that doesn't mean that one of you is an idiot. That's the way things work.

  Gary Giddins

  Mean, Criticism, Opinion

  Source: bigthink.com

  4 Copy quote

You May Also Like:

Stanley Crouch

Louis Armstrong

Terry Teachout

Bing Crosby

Charlie Parker

Cassandra Wilson

Sonny Rollins

Gerald Early