Jazz Music Quotes - Page 8

• What I'm doing, I prefer to call that jazz, because it is a beautiful word - I love it.

  Dexter Gordon

  Music, Beautiful, Jazz

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• Sometimes I see players that think, and you can tell they're thinking of the next phrase to play or the next thing to do, the next little cute trick, and that's sad, man, you know. That's not makin' music; that's puttin' together puzzles, you know. Music should flow from you and it should be a force; it should be feeling, all feeling, man.

  Sonny Sharrock

  Cute, Music, Player

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• In America, for a brief time, people who followed John Coltrane were studied and considered important, but it didn't last long. The result is that the kind of music I played in the '60's is completely dismissed in this country as a wrong turn, a suicidal effort.

  Archie Shepp

  Music, Country, Suicidal

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• There was a lot that was tricky about playing with [Thelonious Monk]. It's a musical language where there's really no lyrics. It's something you feel and you're hearing. It's like an ongoing conversation. You really had to listen to this guy. Cause he could play the strangest tempos, and they could be very in-between tempos on some of those compositions. You really had to listen to his arrangements and the way he would play them. On his solos, you'd really have to listen good in there. You'd have to concentrate on what you were doing as well.

  Roy Haynes

  Music, Play, Guy

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• Basically my influences have been American influences. It's been blues, gospel, swing era music, bebop music, Broadway show music, classical music. It's like making a stew. You put all these various ingredients in it. You season it with this. You put that in it. You put the other in it. You mix it all up and it comes out something neat, something that you created.

  Horace Silver

  Music, Swings, Bebop

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• I was talented but crazy, semi-autistic and eccentric.

  Andrew Hill

  Music, Crazy, Eccentric

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• I'm trying to make music a sensual expression, not an academic experiment.

  Andrew Hill

  Music, Expression, Sensual

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• I finally realized that my relaxation is practicing the piano and writing. I've tried to do other things, but I've learned through the decades, that this is what I enjoy, practicing music and writing.

  Andrew Hill

  Music, Writing, Piano

  "A Fireside Chat With Andrew Hill". Interview with Fred Jung, jazzweekly.com.

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• These magic moments when rhythms and harmonies extend themselves and jell together and the people become another instrument. These things are priceless and they can't be learned; they can only be felt.

  Andrew Hill

  Music, Magic Moments, People

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• The whole basis of my singing is feeling. Unless I feel something, I can't sing.

  Billie Holiday

  Music, Feelings, Singing

  Billie Holiday, William Dufty (2011). “Lady Sings the Blues: The 50th-Anniversay Edition with a Revised Discography”, p.163, Broadway Books

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• [Lee Morgan] was the only young cat that scared me when he played. He had so much fire and natural feeling. I had more technique, but he had that feeling. People seemed to like him more than they like me at the beginning.

  Freddie Hubbard

  Music, Cat, Fire

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• Don't make the mistakes I made of not taking care of myself. Please, keeps your chops cool and don't overblow. If you are going to play hard, be sure to warm up. I'd get carried away trying to stay right with the momentum [of Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers]. I used to try and play like Coltrane and solo for 30 or 40 choruses. It all caught up with me.

  Freddie Hubbard

  Music, Art, Mistake

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• I used to try to play like [Miles Davis], and Miles caught me copying him one night at Birdland. He said, 'Hey man, why don't you play some of your own stuff.' So, I finally did, because I had copied all his solos.

  Freddie Hubbard

  Music, Night, Men

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• 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

  Music, Remember You, Remembers You

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• Music needs the juxtaposition of opposites to achieve its drama, so harshness and dissonance are simply part of the material a musician can use to create a musical work. All one thing is a bore - all dissonance, or all fatuous consonance. George Winston and Guns and Roses are two sides of the same worthless coin in my esthetic world.

  Chuck Israels

  Music, Drama, Gun

  "Chuck Israels: Evans, Education And Philosophy". Interview with Sean Dietrich, www.allaboutjazz.com. May 27, 2010.

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• Everything-everything-was communicated through the sound of the music. There were no other signals of any kind ever-no count-offs, head nods, spoken instructions...nothing.

  Chuck Israels

  Music, Sound, Jazz

  "Chuck Israels: Evans, Education And Philosophy". Interview with Sean Dietrich, www.allaboutjazz.com. May 27, 2010.

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• 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

  Music, Song, Misunderstood

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• 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

  Music, Artist, Europe

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• I can see forms and shapes in my mind when I solo, just as a painter can see forms and shapes when he starts painting. And I can see different colors.

  Elvin Jones

  Music, Color, Mind

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• My mom would have liked it that I patterned myself more after Jimmy Reed.

  Zoot Sims

  Music, Mom, Reeds

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• Ninety-five percent of my audience was white.

  Zoot Sims

  Music, White, Jazz

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• A prophet is not without honor except in his own country among his own people.

  Sun Ra

  Music, Country, People

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• What I'm dealing with is so vast and great that it can't be called the truth. It's above the truth.

  Sun Ra

  Music, Jazz

  "Sun Ra: Un noir dans le cosmos". Book by Aurelien Tchiemessom, April 1, 2005.

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• I am a musician, but I'm another type of musician.

  Sun Ra

  Music, Jazz, Type

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• People behind the Iron curtain have such an incredible image of America and jazz. I expected to find a Gerry Mulligan or Miles Davis on every corner...I almost expected a Shorty Rogers to deliver the milk, a Bud Shank to be the mailman.

  Gabor Szabo

  Music, Iron, America

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