Jazz Quotes - Page 22

• If you want to play somebody's music, you'd better go into his house.

  Herbie Mann

  Music, Play, House

  4 Copy quote

• If you keep your head in the sand, you don't know where the kick's coming from.

  Herbie Mann

  Music, Sand, Kicks

  8 Copy quote

• Jazz is so incestuous that it's starting to kill itself.

  Branford Marsalis

  Music, Starting

  4 Copy quote

• My job is to write songs that have emotional meaning to me.

  Branford Marsalis

  Music, Song, Jobs

  4 Copy quote

• So much of Jazz doesn't have an audience other than music students or musicians.

  Branford Marsalis

  Music, Students, Audience

  7 Copy quote

• Pop doesn't really look back. It can't. What makes pop work is simplicity.

  Branford Marsalis

  Music, Simplicity, Looks

  14 Copy quote

• You don't know what you like, you like what you know. In order to know what you like, you have to know everything.

  Branford Marsalis

  Music, Order, Like You

  10 Copy quote

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

  Wynton Marsalis

  Music, Moments, Beats

  7 Copy quote

• I started playing jazz by slowing down Tal Farlow records and analyzing his runs

  Lenny Breau

  Music, Running, Playing Jazz

  5 Copy quote

• Whenever you study composition you inevitably encounter Bach right off the bat. You can't get across the room without running into him and the other greats. Analyzing Bach absolutely influenced my jazz playing.

  Howard Roberts

  Music, Running, Bats

  4 Copy quote

• People who love jazz musicians love us when we play what we want to play and we're starving. But as soon as you commercialize your sound like Wes Montgomery did, the jazz fans and the critics are down on you!

  George Benson

  Music, Play, People

  4 Copy quote

• Back in the day in my teens I was listening to Joe Pass and Wes Montgomery a lot; before that I was listening to what I would call now the more 'simple' jazz players (but still very valid), like Barney Kessell or Johnny Smith; I learnt a lot of voicings from Johnny Smith records. Now, I listen to the old blues players; that's what you'd hear in my house if there was music on. It would be Albert Collins or Albert King.

  Larry Carlton

  Music, Kings, Simple

  7 Copy quote

• And what happened was, it's the same thing an older, more successful writer of ficition might say to a student: write about what you know. And what I knew - of course I knew jazz, but I also knew country, blues and some rock and roll. And that came out.

  Larry Coryell

  Music, Country, Writing

  12 Copy quote

• For me, jazz, R&B, jump swing, Chicago blues, country blues, early hillbilly music, and honky tonk all stem from the same source

  Duke Robillard

  Music, Country, Swings

  7 Copy quote

• Barney Kessel was 'Mr. Guitar,' the foremost jazz guitarist of his generation. He had an amazing imagination, his solos were incredible, he swung his tail off, he was a heck of an arranger and could out-read anybody.

  Larry Coryell

  Music, Guitar, Imagination

  6 Copy quote

• If a jazz player is really playing, the classical player will have to respect him.

  Wes Montgomery

  Player, Ifs

  44 Copy quote

• My faith is the grand drama of my life. I'm a believer, so I sing words of God to those who have no faith.
  I give bird songs to those who dwell in cities and have never heard them, make rhythms for those who know only military marches or jazz, and paint colors for those who see none.

  Olivier Messiaen

  Life, Music, God

  62 Copy quote

• Since about 1980 Kenny Werner has been one of jazz’s unsung heroes

  Harvey Pekar

  Hero, Kenny, Has Beens

  13 Copy quote

• I always challenge myself. I get out in deep water and I always try to get back. But I get hung up. The audience never knows, but that's when I smile the most, when I show the most ivory.

  Earl Hines

  Smile, Deep Water, Ivory

  10 Copy quote

• I always thought jazz was like the trunk of a tree. After the tree has grown, many branches have spread out. They're all with different leaves and they all look beautiful. But at the end of the season, they fold back up and it's still the tree trunk.

  Earl Hines

  Beautiful, Tree, Different

  11 Copy quote

• A young tenor player was complaining to me that Coleman Hawkins made him nervous. Man, I told him Hawkins was supposed to make him nervous! Hawkins has been making other sax players nervous for forty years!

  Cannonball Adderley

  Music, Player, Men

  14 Copy quote

• There's no future without the past and anybody who doesn't really understand where jazz has come from has no right to try to direct where it's going.

  Cannonball Adderley

  Past, Trying, Direct

  Interviewed by the "Chicago SEED", November, 1968.

  33 Copy quote

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• 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

• You learn from music, from watching great athletes at work - how disciplined they are, how they move. You learn these things by watching a shortstop at work, how he concentrates on one thing at a time. You learn from classic music, from the blues and jazz, from bluegrass. From all this, you learn how to sustain a great line without bringing in unnecessary words.

  Ernest Gaines

  Moving, Athlete, Crafts

  7 Copy quote

• Ever since I was a kid, I've been into clothes, but not really labels- that's kind of only been in the last year or so. It's something I've always cared about. I used to just constantly thrift and make stuff and cut stuff up and borrow my dad's stuff and borrow my little brother's stuff and all that jazz. ... It's just, if something is cool, then it's cool.

  Lorde

  Fashion, Brother, Dad

  15 Copy quote