Jazz Quotes - Page 31

• I love my jazz hands!

  David Dickinson

  Jazz Hands, Hands

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• Switch to piano! No. Really, if you like an instrument that sings, play the saxophone. At its best it's like the human voice. Of course, it would be best if you could actually sing with your own voice. The saxophone is an imperfect instrument, especially the tenor and soprano, as far as intonation goes. Therefore, the challenge is to sing on an imperfect instrument or 'voice' that is outside of your body. I love that challenge and have for over forty-five years. As far as playing jazz, no other art form, other than conversation, can give the satisfaction of spontaneous interaction.

  Stan Getz

  Art, Piano, Years

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• The chief trouble with jazz is that there is not enough of it; some of it we have to listen to twice.

  Don Herold

  Listening, Trouble, Enough

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• And that's the soulful thing about playing: you offer something to somebody. You don't know if they'll like it, but you offer it.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Offers, Knows, Ifs

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• Bop began with Jazz but one afternoon somewhere on a sidewalk maybe 1939, 1940, Dizzy Gillespie or Charlie Parker or Thelonious Monk was walking past a men's clothing store on 42nd Street or South Main in L.A. and from a loudspeaker they suddenly heard a wild impossible mistake in jazz that could only have been heard inside their own imaginary head, and that is a new art. Bop.

  Jack Kerouac

  Art, Mistake, Past

  Jack Kerouac, Ann Charters (1995). “The portable Jack Kerouac”, Penguin Group USA

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• The first jazz musician was a trumpeter, Buddy Bolden, and the last will be a trumpeter, the archangel Gabriel.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Musician, Gabriel, Lasts

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• I think that virtuosity is the first sign of morality in a musician. It means you're serious enough to practice.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Mean, Thinking, Practice

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• If they think they are doing something new, they ought to do what I do every day - spend at least two hours every day listening to Johann Sebastian Bach and, man, it's all there. If they want to improvise around a theme,which is the essence of jazz, they should learn from the master. He never wastes a note, and he knows where every note is going and when to bring it back. Some of these cats go way out and forget where they began or what they started to do. Bach will clear it up for them.

  Coleman Hawkins

  Music, Learning, Cat

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• New Orleans had a great tradition of celebration. Opera, military marching bands, folk music, the blues, different types of church music, ragtime, echoes of traditional African drumming, and all of the dance styles that went with this music could be heard and seen throughout the city. When all of these kinds of music blended into one, jazz was born.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Military, Echoes, New Orleans

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• My D'Angelico is a jazz archtop guitar. That guitar was made for Glenn Miller's guitar player in 1939. It's a '39 D'Angelico New Yorker.

  Brian Setzer

  Player, Guitar, Made

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• Blues is like the roux in a gumbo. People ask me if jazz always has the blues in it. I say, if it sounds good it does.

  Wynton Marsalis

  People, Sound, Gumbo

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• Jazz is the false liquidation of art - instead of utopia becoming reality it disappears from the picture.

  Theodor Adorno

  Art, Reality, Becoming

  Theodor W. Adorno (1982). “Prisms”, p.132, MIT Press

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• The aim of jazz is the mechanical reproduction of a regressive moment, a castration symbolism. 'Give up your masculinity, let yourself be castrated,' the eunuchlike sound of the jazz band both mocks and proclaims, 'and you will be rewarded, accepted into a fraternity which shares the mystery of impotence with you, a mystery revealed at the moment of the initiation rite.

  Theodor Adorno

  Giving Up, Symbolism, Sound

  Theodor Adorno, Richard Leppert, Susan H. Gillespie (2002). “Essays on Music”, p.352, Univ of California Press

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• The bad jazz that a cat blows wails long after he’s cut out.

  Lord Buckley

  Cat, Cutting, Blow

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• Jazz is the big brother of Revolution. Revolution follows it around.

  Miles Davis

  Brother, Musical, Revolution

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• Miles Davis fully embraced possibilities and delved into it. He was criticized heavily from the jazz side. He was supposed to be part of a tradition, but he didn't consider himself part of a tradition.

  Bill Laswell

  Sides, Tradition, Possibility

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• I first met Jelly Roll in Chicago. He was livin' high then. You know, Jelly was a travelin' cat, sharp and good lookin' and always about he wrote this and that and the other thing - in fact, everything!

  Zutty Singleton

  Cat, Firsts, Facts

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• I have learned as much about writing about my people by listening to blues and jazz and spirituals as I have by reading novels.

  Ernest Gaines

  Reading, Writing, People

  Ernest J. Gaines (2007). “Mozart and Leadbelly”, p.27, Vintage

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• The philosophy of jazz represents tolerance, teamwork and inclusion. That's what America is about. The music reflects that.

  T. S. Monk

  Teamwork, Philosophy, America

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• Rejoice at the death and cry at the birth: New Orleans sticks close to the Scriptures.

  Jelly Roll Morton

  New Orleans, Sticks, Scripture

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• The virtuoso element in jazz playing, all those very fast runs in the upper extremes, simply doesn't appeal to me. That's why I don't want to make my concerto "virtuosic" in the sense of a technical show-off. I want a beautiful sound and a melodic and lyrical line. I am more interested in the way someone can play musically.

  Gavin Bryars

  Music, Beautiful, Running

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• I don't get pat down, you know what's on the waist,
  I don't mean Jazz when I say I "count base."
  Fly Louis sneakers, Purple Tape coming out the speakers,
  Bumped into my high school teachers,
  They said I wouldn't be nothing, sitting on the bleachers.
  Now I'm sitting in the Phantom, trynna figure out the features.
  I'm a big fish now, I watch for the leeches.

  Sheek Louch

  Teacher, Rap, School

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• This is jazz, this is funk, this is soul, this is gospel
  This is sanctified sick, this is player Pentecostal.
  This is church front pew, Amen, pulpit,
  What my people need and the opposite of bullshit.

  Killer Mike

  Rap, Player, Opposites

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• Bop is no love-child of jazz.

  Charlie Parker

  Children, Bops, No Love

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• The history of all big jazz bands shows was, first they played for dancing, and then they played for singing.

  Norman Granz

  Sight, Dancing, Singing

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