Jazz Quotes - Page 15

• External instruments are only extensions of the biological instrument.

  Yusef Lateef

  Music, Instruments, Extensions

  51 Copy quote

• As long as you've got your horn in your mouth, you're developing.

  Zoot Sims

  Music, Long, Mouths

  47 Copy quote

• If I can't play music, what am I gonna do? Music keeps people sane. When you enjoy yourself, most of the time the people who are listening to you enjoy it.

  Zoot Sims

  Music, Play, People

  19 Copy quote

• 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

  Music, Country, Expression

  167 Copy quote

• If it sounds good and feels good, then it IS good!

  Duke Ellington

  Inspirational, Music, Feel Good

  18 Copy quote

• Gray skies are just clouds passing over.

  Duke Ellington

  Music, Failure, Adversity

  Duke Ellington (1973). “Music is my mistress”, Doubleday Books

  89 Copy quote

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• A beat is a moment in the life a groove.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Music, Moments, Beats

  7 Copy quote

• I cringed when I heard myself described as a Jazz singer. I've always thought of myself as a Jazz vocalist.

  Cassandra Wilson

  Music, Singers, Heard

  20 Copy quote

• I was never interested in singing in the church or school. I was more interested in becoming a musician.

  Cassandra Wilson

  Music, School, Church Choir

  8 Copy quote

• Never lose the groove to find a note.

  Victor Wooten

  Music, Notes, Groove

  50 Copy quote

• Jazz musicians have some outlaw in them somewhere.

  Mike Zwerin

  Music, Outlaw, Musician

  1985 La Tristesse de Saint Louis: Swing Under the Nazis, ch.4.

  8 Copy quote

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• Art is self expression. If you are expressing someone else's personality, that is not art.

  Bennie Wallace

  Music, Art, Self

  45 Copy quote

• "Music, for me, has always been a place where anything is possible--a refuge, a magical world where anyone can go, where all kinds of people can come together, and anything can happen. We are limited only by our imaginations.

  Bill Frisell

  Music, Imagination, People

  46 Copy quote

• Count Basie was college, but Duke Ellington was graduate school.

  Clark Terry

  Music, School, College

  11 Copy quote

• You may have holes in your shoes, but don't let the people out front know it. Shine the tops.

  Earl Hines

  Music, Shoes, People

  Stanley Dance, Earl Hines (1983). “The World of Earl Hines”

  7 Copy quote

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• Jazz is improvisation and syncopation, with resilience and flow, with earthy elegance, nuance and subtlety, with the integrity of individual expression within (usually) a group context, with true democracy in action.

  Greg Thomas

  Music, Integrity, Expression

  4 Copy quote

• I think that a musician is like a doctor, he's supposed to heal people and make them feel better.

  Steve Turre

  Music, Feel Better, Thinking

  45 Copy quote

• Jazz is such a powerful cultural statement that it's almost as if it's intertwined with society.

  Tom Harrell

  Music, Powerful, Intertwined

  7 Copy quote

• Your sound is you & what you really feel inside.

  Clark Terry

  Music, Sound, Feels

  21 Copy quote

• When people ask me how is it I was a musician, I facetiously say that I'm a firm believer in reincarnation and in a previous life I was Johann Sebastian Bach's guide dog.

  George Shearing

  Music, Dog, People

  13 Copy quote

• Traveling with a big band is like being an inmate in a traveling zoo.

  Hoagy Carmichael

  Music, Zoos, Inmates

  Hoagy Carmichael, Stephen Longstreet (1999). “The Stardust Road & Sometimes I Wonder: The Autobiography of Hoagy Carmichael”

  8 Copy quote

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• Everybody came. Everybody came to the Cotton Club.

  Cab Calloway

  Music, Clubs, Cotton

  11 Copy quote

• An artist can only be evaluated after he's dead. At the 11th hour he might do something that will eclipse everything else.

  Van Cliburn

  Music, Artist, Might

  11 Copy quote

• This whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking, “Is there a meaning to music?” My answer to that would be, “Yes.” And “Can you state in so many words what the meaning is?” My answer to that would be, “No.”

  Aaron Copland

  Music, States, Composer

  "What to Listen For in Music".

  26 Copy quote

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• The idea is more important than the style you're playing in.

  Ornette Coleman

  Music, Ideas, Style

  21 Copy quote