Quotes about jazz (122 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny.”

Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer

'Be-Bop Tango (Of the Old Jazzmen's Church)
Roxy & Elsewhere (1974)
Variant: Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny

Dead

“If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know.”

Louis Armstrong (1901–1971) American jazz trumpeter, composer and singer

“You will never know what the meaning of Jazz is if ask what it means.”

Louis Armstrong (1901–1971) American jazz trumpeter, composer and singer

“I once took a ride to the beach in L. A., and all along the shore there were all these so-called jazz places. And I saw these college guys and session players playing this fusion Muzak stuff. It was just a lot of notes, and the more notes they played, the more it kept them from expressing anything. So I came back home and got out my Zeppelin albums.”

Jeff Buckley (1966–1997) American singer, guitarist and songwriter

О музыке

Guy , Home

“I see every director as a different brand. That way, it’s easy for me to compartmentalise my work. So I can easily switch from one film to the other and refresh myself when I hit a mental block. I don’t want my music to sound like a pastiche of other works. So I stop listening to my songs once the audio for a film is released. When I unwind, it’s usually with jazz.”

Yuvan Shankar Raja (1979) Indian musician

Yuvan Unplugged (2009)

Music , Way

“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 (1928–1975) American jazz alto saxophonist

Interviewed by the "Chicago SEED", November 1968

Understanding , Past , Future

“[Bill Evans talking about Miles Davis's change of style to jazz fusion] I would like to hear more of the consummate melodic master, but I feel that big business and his record company have had a corrupting influence on his material. The rock and pop thing certainly draws a wider audience. It happens more and more these days, that unqualified people with executive positions try to tell musicians what is good and what is bad music. It’s tempting for the musician to prejudice his own views when recording opportunities are so infrequent but I for one am determined to resist the temptation.”

Bill Evans (1929–1980) American jazz pianist

http://jazztimes.com/articles/20128-miles-davis-and-bill-evans-miles-and-bill-in-black-white.

People , Music , Feeling , Business

“Life is a lot like jazz - it's best when you improvise.”

George Gershwin (1898–1937) American composer and pianist

Life , Life

“Are you stalking me, Mr. Fulton?" The idea both amused and horrified Jazz.”

Barry Lyga (1971) American writer

Source: I Hunt Killers

Idea

“People who worked with me or knew me still called me the "world's fastest human" because I almost never stopped. I'd found that I could get more done with no regular job or regular hours at all, but by being on my own, flying to speak here, help with a public relations campaign for some client there, tape my regular jazz radio show one morning at 5:00 a. m. before leaving on a plane for another city or another continent three hours later to preside over a major sporting event.”

Jesse Owens (1913–1980) American track and field athlete

Jesse Owens, Champion Athlete (1990)

People , World , Sport , Help

“The beauty of America, neither cool jazz nor devoured Egyptian
heroes, lies in
lives in the darkness I inhabit in the midst of sterile millions.”

Frank O'Hara (1926–1966) American poet, art critic and writer

Ode: Salute to the French Negro Poets (l. 34-36) (1960).

Beauty

“When I was a little kid I thought I would grow up to be black and sing jazz in nightclubs.”

Molly Ringwald (1968) American actress, singer, dancer, and author

As quoted in Funny Ladies: The Best Humor from America's Funniest Women (2001) by Bill Adler, p. 47

Singing

“I went through a lot of mental pains and anguish about choosing between jazz and classical. I realized that where I functioned was where I should be, and where I functioned was in jazz, so that was it.”

Bill Evans (1929–1980) American jazz pianist

http://www.billevanswebpages.com/billquotes.html.

Pain

“Don't believe that jazz about there's nothing you can do, "turn on and drop out, man" — because you've got to turn on and drop in, or they're going to drop all over you.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Source: The Beatles Anthology (2000), p. 263

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

Wynton Marsalis (1961) American jazz musician

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_trumpeters&oldid=33992072#Quotation
Attributed

“Jazz is the false liquidation of art — instead of utopia becoming reality it disappears from the picture.”

Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) German sociologist, philosopher and musicologist known for his critical theory of society

Perennial fashion — Jazz, as quoted in The Sociology of Rock (1978) by Simon Frith

Art , Reality , Falseness

“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 W. Adorno (1903–1969) German sociologist, philosopher and musicologist known for his critical theory of society

"Perennial Fashion — Jazz" (1978), Prisms, p. 129, as translated by Samuel Weber and Shierry Weber (1981)

“I have discovered three things which know no geographical borders - classical music, American jazz, and applause as the sign of the public's favor.”

Jascha Heifetz (1901–1987) Lithuanian violinist

Heifetz official web site http://www.jaschaheifetz.com/about/quotes.html

Music

“A great deal of work is sedentary, and most manual work exercises only a few specialized muscles. When crowds assemble in Trafalgar Square to cheer to the echo an announcement that the government has decided to have them killed, they would not do so if they had all walked twenty-five miles that day. This cure for bellicosity is, however, impracticable, and if the human race is to survive – a thing which is, perhaps, undesirable – other means must be found for securing an innocent outlet for the unused physical energy that produces love of excitement. This is a matter which has been too little considered, both by moralists and by social reformers. The social reformers are of the opinion that they have more serious things to consider. The moralists, on the other hand, are immensely impressed with the seriousness of all the permitted outlets of the love of excitement; the seriousness, however, in their minds, is that of Sin. Dance halls, cinemas, this age of jazz, are all, if we may believe our ears, gateways to Hell, and we should be better employed sitting at home contemplating our sins. I find myself unable to be in entire agreement with the grave men who utter these warnings. The devil has many forms, some designed to deceive the young, some designed to deceive the old and serious. If it is the devil that tempts the young to enjoy themselves, is it not, perhaps, the same personage that persuades the old to condemn their enjoyment? And is not condemnation perhaps merely a form of excitement appropriate to old age? And is it not, perhaps, a drug which – like opium – has to be taken in continually stronger doses to produce the desired effect? Is it not to be feared that, beginning with the wickedness of the cinema, we should be led step by step to condemn the opposite political party, dagoes, wops, Asiatics, and, in short, everybody except the fellow members of our club? And it is from just such condemnations, when widespread, that wars proceed. I have never heard of a war that proceeded from dance halls.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1950s, What Desires Are Politically Important? (1950)

Love , Men , War , Age

“Jazz music is a form of accelerated unconcern.”

Françoise Sagan book A Certain Smile

Un certain sourire (1955, A Certain Smile, translated 1956)

Music

“And it's the same across the nation
Black and white discrimination
Yellin' "You can't understand me!"
'N all that other jazz they hand me
In the papers and TV and
All that mass stupidity
That seems to grow more every day
Each time you hear some nitwit say
He wants to go and do you in
Because the color of your skin
Just don't appeal to him
(No matter if it's black or white)
Because he's out for blood tonight.”

Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer

"Trouble Every Day"
Freak Out! (1966)

Stupidity , Color , Understanding , Time

“First of all, this is Duke's band, and this is Tchaikovsky. Knowing things in their original sources, I abhor taking a concert thing and trying to treat it in a jazz light. In the beginning they have a very nice orchestral usage, but the minute they start going into Johnny Hodges and 4/4, it just doesn't fit. It comes out neither fowl nor fish. The orchestration is enjoyable because, for one reason, they've done a nice job of getting nice, legitimate, straight-sounding things. The melodies are very lovely, but, of course, Duke is the master in this type of thing. But over-all, from a jazz standpoint, I don't appreciate it at all. If I didn't know it was Tchaikovsky, for instance, with the tambourine bit and all, I would feel it was straight out of an MGM Arabian movie. The harmonies he used, particularly some of the background things, interested me more than the melodies, probably because the harmonic part of music interests me more than any. From an orchestrational standpoint I would give this somewhere around 3½ stars; but from a jazz standpoint, none.”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

Reviewing "Arabesque Cookie" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJtWZ771OqA from Ellington's The Nutcracker Suite; as quoted in "Clare Fischer: Blindfold Test" http://www.mediafire.com/view/fix6ane8h54gx/Clare_Fischer#rjvay58eo774rhe by Leonard Feather, in Downbeat (October 25, 1962), p. 39

Love , Music , Feeling , Star

“For me writing is a question of finding a certain rhythm. I compare it to the rhythms of jazz.”

Françoise Sagan (1935–2004) French writer

Paris Review interview (1956)
Context: For me writing is a question of finding a certain rhythm. I compare it to the rhythms of jazz. Much of the time life is a sort of rhythmic progression of three characters. If one tells oneself that life is like that, one feels it less arbitrary.

Question

“The memory of things gone is important to a jazz musician. ”

Louis Armstrong (1901–1971) American jazz trumpeter, composer and singer

Memory

“Don't believe that jazz about there's nothing you can do, "turn on and drop out, man"”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

because you've got to turn on and drop in, or they're going to drop all over you.
Source: The Beatles Anthology (2000), p. 263

“If Music is a Place -- then Jazz is the City, Folk is the Wilderness, Rock is the Road, Classical is a Temple.”

Vera Nazarian (1966) American writer

Music

“That’s the thing about jazz: it’s free flowing, it comes from your soul.”

Billy Crystal (1948) American actor

Soul

“Now I am old-fashioned. A woman, I consider, should be womanly. I have no patience with the modern neurotic girl who jazzes from morning to night, smokes like a chimney, and uses language which would make a billingsgate fishwoman blush!”

Agatha Christie book Murder on the links

Source: The Murder on the Links

Girl , Fashion , Patience , Night

“There are only three things that America will be remembered for 2000 years from now when they study this civilization: The Constitution, Jazz music, and Baseball. These are the 3 most beautiful things this culture's ever created.”

Gerald Early (1952) American poet

Beauty , Music , Study

“Anyone who's just driven 90 yards against huge men trying to kill them has earned the right to do Jazz hands.”

Craig Ferguson (1962) Scottish-born American television host, stand-up comedian, writer, actor, director, author, producer and voice a…

Men

“and will I like being called a jazz baby? --You will love it.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Beautiful and Damned

Source: The Beautiful and Damned

Love , Baby

“We real cool. We
Left school. We
Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We
Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We
Jazz June. We
Die soon.”

Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) American writer

"We ReaI CooI" , The Bean Eaters (1960)
The "We"—you're supposed to stop after the "We" and think about their validity, and of course there's no way for you to tell whether it should be said softly or not, I suppose, but I say it rather softly because I want to represent their basic uncertainty, which they don't bother to question every day, of course.
"An Interview with Gwendolyn Brooks", Contemporary Literature 11:1 (Winter 1970)
The WEs in "We Real Cool" are tiny, wispy, weakly argumentative "Kilroy-is-here" announcements. The boys have no accented sense of themselves, yet they are aware of a semi-defined personal importance. Say the "We" softly.
Report from Part One (1972)
Source: Selected Poems

School , Singing

“Each jazz musician when he takes a horn in his hand — trumpet, bass, saxophone, drums — whatever instrument he plays — each soloist, that is, when he begins to ad lib on a given composition with a title and improvise a new creative melody, this man is taking the place of a composer.”

Charles Mingus (1922–1979) American jazz double bassist, composer and bandleader

What Is A Jazz Composer? (1971)

“Jazz musicians have some outlaw in them somewhere if they are serious about this music…The is no valid motivation for it other than love– outlaw motivation in a profit-motivated society.”

Mike Zwerin (1930–2010) American jazz musician

La Tristesse de Saint Louis: Swing Under the Nazis, Chapter. 4, 1985, Dictionary of Quotations, Chambers: Edinburgh, U.K, 2005, p. 937

Love , Music , Motivation

“[If] you don't have any soul and you don't have any talent, jazz is what you should do. … any fool can do it; all you gotta do is practice.”

Stewart Copeland (1952) American musician; drummer of The Police

From an interview published at JamBase.com http://www.JamBase.com

Fools , Soul

“Each jazz musician is supposed to be a composer. Whether he is or not, I don't know. I don't listen to that many people. If I did, I probably wouldn't play half as much to satisfy myself. As a youth I read a book by Debussy and he said that as soon as he finished a composition he had to forget it because it got in the way of his doing anything else new and different. And I believed him. I used to work with Tatum, and Tatum knew every tune written, including the classics, and I think it got in the way of his composition, because he wasn't a Bud Powell. He wasn't as melodically inventive as Bud. He was technically flashy and he knew so much music and so much theory that he couldn't come up with anything wrong; it was just exercising his theory.”

Charles Mingus (1922–1979) American jazz double bassist, composer and bandleader

What Is A Jazz Composer? (1971)

People , Books , Youth , Music

“When I was young, I never bought records because my brother Joseph played saxophone and had a record player. I loved listening to his records: The Dorsey Brothers, Duke Ellington, all the big American jazz bands, and vocalists like Ella Fitzgerald, Ernestine Anderson, and Kitty White, a singer from the US who was a friend of Nina Simone. Nobody in America seems to know about her, but she was quite popular in South Africa.”

Miriam Makeba (1932–2008) South African singer and civil rights activist

As quoted in Poet, J. (11 February 2009)

Love

“Something happened when I got pregnant, and I'm not able to listen to that kind of music as much. I feel like I'm going nuts when I listen to it. I used to listen to Dead Kennedys, Circle Jerks, PiL, Butthole Surfers. But today, I can't. I love Alanis Morissette, Emmylou Harris' latest album, and all sorts of jazz and blues. If I want to hear something heavy duty, I'll put on the Foo Fighters or a good rocking Rolling Stones song. But that's as intense as I've got.”

Gillian Anderson (1968) American-British film, television and theatre actress, activist and writer

David Wild, Rolling Stone "X-Files Undercover" http://www.rollingstone.com/tv/features/x-files-undercover-19960516 (May 16, 1996)
1990s

Love , Music , Jerk , Feeling

“In America, the first generation out of slavery invented jazz music. It is a free-form expression. It comes from the soul and it is true.”

Donald Miller book Blue Like Jazz: nonreligious thoughts on Christian spirituality

Blue Like Jazz (2003, Nelson Books)

Music , Soul

“[jazz and Neo-Plasticism are] highly revolutionary phenomena: they are destructive constructive. They do not destroy the actual content of form, but rather deepen form only in order to elevate it to a new order. They break the bonds of 'form as individuality' in order to make possible a universal unity.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

Quote in: 'De Jazz en de Neo-plastiek', Piet Mondriaan, in 'i 10', 1927 pp. 421-427
1920's

Universe

“This somewhat unpleasant tale, published as a novelette in the "Smart Set" in July, 1920, relates a series of events which took place in the spring of the previous year. Each of the three events made a great impression upon me. In life they were unrelated, except by the general hysteria of that spring which inaugurated the Age of Jazz, but in my story I have tried, unsuccessfully I fear, to weave them into a pattern — a pattern which would give the effect of those months in New York as they appeared to at least one member of what was then the younger generation.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book May Day

On "May Day"
Quoted, Tales of the Jazz Age (1922)

Life , Age , Fear , Spring

“Playing that music delivered me from the pressures of my life. I played with my eyes closed and found that my backaches ceased and my headaches would go. The response to that rhythm was "My God, this makes me feel good." I never really remembered having that much fun with it before or thought about jazz making me feel good. But, at 46, it suddenly dawned on me that my body had priorities that my mind didn't allow, and I decided to (play Latin/jazz)✱ for myself and started having a helluva fine time.”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

As quoted in "He Arranges, Composes, Performs: Fischer: A Renaissance Man Of Music" http://articles.latimes.com/1987-05-14/entertainment/ca-8949_1_clare-fischer.
<center><sup>✱</sup> The parenthetical addition is Zan Stewart's; exactly what it's replacing – whether simply filling a space, or replacing an unintelligible word or two – is not revealed.</center>

Life , God , Music , Feeling

“Eclecticism is the word. Like a jazz musician who creates his own style out of the styles around him, I play by ear.”

Ralph Ellison (1914–1994) American novelist, literary critic, scholar and writer

"The Essential Ellison", interview by Ishmael Reed in Y'Bird 1, no. 1 (1978): 130-59.

“Maybe the years I spent playing the piano in taverns in Chicago and elsewhere led me to believe that the people who did that mundane work were as important to an understanding of art as the better-known players who produced the recognized classics of jazz. Growing up … may have led me to think that the craftsman who help make art works areas important as the people who conceive them… Learning the "Chicago tradition" of sociology from Everett C. Hughes and Herbert Blumer surely led to a skepticism about conventional definitions of the objects of sociological study.”

Howard S. Becker (1928) American sociologist

Source: Art Worlds (1982), p. ix.

People , Art , Understanding , Thinking

“Not only was I fiddling around at the keyboard but there were all these other children of all backgrounds wanting to play every sort of music bits of classical, jazz, pop, improvisation.”

Joanna MacGregor (1959) British musician

The Guardian - 26/05/2000
Childhood

Children , Music

“…I don’t think of myself as a pop star. I started out as a jazz singer. And I love having the chance to just jump in and sing songs that touch me or move me.”

Helen Reddy (1941) Australian actress

On her comeback to singing before a live audience with "album cuts"
Freeman interview (September 2012)

Love , Star , Thinking , Singing

“Writing is like jazz. It can be learned, but it can’t be taught.”

Paul Desmond (1924–1977) American jazz musician

Unsourced

Learning

“When I had my own company on Traffic and Coonskin, all metaphors were able to get to the screen clearly. In Cool World, with the producer and Paramount watching me carefully to make sure I was in good taste, I instinctively poured stuff into the picture that I wanted to talk about. But when you force stuff, it's not really very clear. But, I have a great love for Max Fleischer, especially some of his Black & White Betty Boops with their strange Cab Calloway and Louis Armstrong black folk tale jazz hipness that part of Cool World was a homage in style to those films and that style of cartooning. The Grim Reaper is right out of a Max Fleischer cartoon or old Terrytoons, which is why I hired and love Milton Knight the artist. He understands totally the Uncle Remus fable like qualities behind Fleischer and Terrytoons. Milton Knight is probably the purest artist of that style in the business. He has a hard time because studios think he is old fashioned…but that's the point.”

Ralph Bakshi (1938) Animator, filmmaker

[c. 17 September 2004, http://www.wild-things.com/bray/documents/ralphb.doc, Questions for Ralph Bakshi, DOC, Ralph Bakshi Forum, 2007-11-27]

Love , World , Fashion , Understanding

“They had a hi-fi phono, boy, did they let it blast
Seven hundred little records,
all rock, rhythm and jazz
But when the sun went down,
the rapid tempo of the music fell
"C'est la vie", say the old folks,
it goes to show you never can tell”

Chuck Berry (1926–2017) American rock-and-roll musician

"You Never Can Tell" (1964)
Song lyrics

Music , Boy , Sun

“From historical burdens such as slavery and injustice to the celebration of faith, much of the origin of African-American music reflects our national story. The work songs, shouts and hollers, spirituals, and ragtime of an earlier era laid the creative foundation for many of America' s most distinctive and popular musical genres. These include rhythm and blues, jazz, hip hop, gospel, rap, and the roots of rock and roll.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2001, Black Music (June 2001)

Faith , Music

“Jazz I regard as an American folk music; not the only one, but a very powerful one which is probably in the blood and feeling of the American people more than any other style of folk music.”

George Gershwin (1898–1937) American composer and pianist

"The Relation of Jazz to American Music", in Henry Cowell (ed.) American Composers on American Music (1933); reprinted in Gregory R. Suriano (ed.) Gershwin in His Time (New York: Gramercy, 1998) p. 97.

People , Music , Feeling

“For the moment, the jazz is playing; there is no melody, just notes, a myriad of tiny tremors. The notes know no rest, an inflexible order gives birth to them then destroys them, without ever leaving them the chance to recuperate and exist for themselves…. I would like to hold them back, but I know that, if I succeeded in stopping one, there would only remain in my hand a corrupt and languishing sound. I must accept their death; I must even want that death: I know of few more bitter or intense impressions.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Nausea (1938)

Death , Birth , Chance

“I didn't start with rock or jazz musicians. It was just my great dear friend whom I miss very much who is no more, Yehudi Menuhin, Lord Yehudi Menuhin. We got very friendly from the year 1952. And when I came to Europe and started performing, we cut three albums in those days, known as "West Meets East." And then I did many other things later on, of course. My student George Harrison, who is like my son, and a great friend of mine, whom I taught sitar initially but later on he was so interested he composed a lot of songs being influenced by our Indian music and Indian spiritual and religious teachings, things like that. And I've done a lot of experimentations, which I don't like to call fusion or trying to mix Indian music or Western music like a cocktail to make it interesting. Genuinely what I wanted to do is have the base as pure as possible Indian music within the framework of raga and tala, and use non-Indian musicians, non-Indian instruments for a special sound, for the range, for the volume, for the colors and all that. And I think some of them came out nice. Of course I was very much criticized also for it…”

Ravi Shankar (1920–2012) Indian musician and sitar player

Ravi Shankar during his talk with Gross.

Music , Color , Thinking

“Most marijuana smokers are colored people, jazz musicians, and entertainers. Their satanic music is driven by marijuana, and marijuana smoking by white women makes them want to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers, and others. It is a drug that causes insanity, criminality, and death — the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind.”

Harry J. Anslinger (1892–1975) 1st Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics

As quoted in Legalizing Marijuana : Drug Policy Reform and Prohibition Politics‎ (2004) by Rudolph Joseph Gerber, p. 9; also in Hawking Hits on the Information Highway : The Challenge of Online Drug Sales for Law Enforcement (2008) by Laura L. Finley , p. 28, and "The Emperor Wears No Clothes: The Authoritative Historical Record of Cannabis and the Conspiracy Against Marijuana" (1994) by Jack Herer, Jeanie Cabarga, and Jeanie Herer, p. 29.
Disputed

Death , Women , People , Music

“To show that this end [of art by its dissolution into real life] is only a beginning, it is essential that.... the series of galleries [of the future museum of modern art] be followed by a room in which painting and sculpture will be realized by the interior itself.... demonstrating that what is lost for art is gained for life. This room could therefore be designed for use as a lecture room, a restaurant.... as a bar with an American jazz band.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

Mondrian's reaction on a questionnaire (c. 1931?)
Quote of Mondrian, as cited in Mondrian, -The Art of Destruction, Carel Blotkamp, Reaktion Books LTD. London 2001, p. 166
1930's

Life , Art , Future , Painting

“Unfortunately Sting's jazz work isn't nearly as inventive as his rock songs.”

Andrew Sega (1975) musician from America

Static Line interview, 1998

“I am one of the best kept secrets in jazz history. Many of my early records are hard to find and it is still difficult to release new ones.”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

As quoted in "Clare Fischer: The Best Kept Secret in Jazz" http://www.artistinterviews.eu/?page_id=5&parent_id=22/

Secret , History

“Flexibility is an essential part of Jazz. It's what gives Jazz music the ability to combine with all other types of music and not lose its identity.”

Wynton Marsalis (1961) American jazz musician

Attributed

Music , Parting

“I spent a lot of time teaching myself theory and harmony so I could be free to express myself on the instrument. I learned what relatives and substitutes could be played against a root of a chord, like E minor related to G, and so forth. I've also gathered all this knowledge because for ten years all I've done is play jazz, every day.”

George Benson (1943) American musician

[Denyer, Ralph, The Guitar Handbook, 2002, 115, 0-679-74275-1]

Knowledge , Learning , Time

“By and large, jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn't want your daughter to associate with.”

Duke Ellington (1899–1974) American jazz musician, composer and band leader

Nat Hentoff, At the Jazz Band Ball: Sixty Years on the Jazz Scene (2011).

Daughters

“The other day I went to a Japanese restaurant and then to Target, and I got bugged. But just last night, I went to a jazz bar. Nobody bugged me there. So it all depends upon where I go to hang out. It’s never that bad. Honestly, most people are like super cool, and they’ll just come up to me and shake hands, and that’ll be it. But it rarely gets out of control.”

Joe Trohman (1984) American musician

My Heart Will Always Be The B-Side To My Tongue (2004), Ultimate Guitar Interview (2008)

People , Dependency , Night

“He could jazz up the map-reading class by having a full-size color photograph of Betty Grable in a bathing suit, with a co-ordinate grid system laid over it. The instructor could point to different parts of her and say, "Give me the co-ordinates."… The Major could see every unit in the Army using his idea…. Hot dog!”

Norman Mailer book The Naked and the Dead

On Maj. Dalleson, in Pt. 4, Ch. 1
The Naked and the Dead (1948)

Dogs , Color , Idea , Reading

“His strongest tastes were negative. He abhorred plastics, Picasso, sunbathing and jazz — everything in fact that had happened in his own lifetime.”

Evelyn Waugh book The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold

Source: The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold (1957), Chapter 1

“Jazz music is a lifestyle. It’s not notes, chords and arpeggios. Today’s improvisation is too based on the knowledge of chords and the way they practice the chords. It’s not a melodic thing anymore like the older days. It was much more important to play shorter and to play more variable, valid stuff. Today, a lot of solos are long and uninteresting and the influence usually comes from John Coltrane’s group. He himself was a master musician, but he put so much emphasis on chord knowledge and technique, and now the kids want to show how fast they can play. This is the same with piano players and most instrumentalists—it’s speed. That’s gonna change again and hopefully the kids who are now 16 and 17 years old have a little more sense and maybe some more stories to tell.”

Joe Zawinul (1932–2007) austrian composer and pianist

Reflecting on the new generation's take on jazz music
Prasad interview (1997)

Music , Way , Knowledge , Sense

“Before it was over, I had built a mission in Chilibre, a small village with black Jamaicans and brown Panamanians, and one at the Palo Seco Leper Colony. They had been waiting for someone like me all their life. We built a church out of palm trees and mango leaves. We sang in Spanish and in English and occasionally I played my clarinet for them and warned them against civilization. I told them to stay out of Panama City, to lay off their home brew made from masticated corn and to quit smoking coco leaves. In return, I no longer went to movies, quit playing jazz and didn’t touch my penis except to piss for two whole years. They elected me to the Board of Deacons at the First Baptist Church in Balboa after I became so successful in the jungle. They even sent some of my color slides to the churches back home and told them that a “Mexican Billy Graham” was converting natives right and left. In exchange the Southern Baptists sent Pastor Beebee more money to make new additions to the church. It already looked like an old mansion on a southern plantation.”

Oscar Zeta Acosta book Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo

Source: Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo (1972), p. 133.

Life , Money , Color , Home

“I could hear the band playing a cheery sort of music. I don’t like jazz music as a rule, but I was glad to hear it that night. I think it helped us all.”

Steve Turner (1949) British writer

Source: The Band That Played On (Thomas Nelson, 2011), p. 143

Music , Thinking , Help , Night

“I think there is an incredible crisis now of how we train performers. Their training encourages them to behave as though they are back in the 19th century, and they are not allowed to get out of that box very much. 'If they play a tiny bit of contemporary music, it's looked on as a bit eccentric, and it's sort of tolerated instead of absolutely encouraged. And they certainly can't improvise, and they find it difficult to encounter jazz or jazz styles. 'I think they're all waking up to this, and it's very difficult for them, because the training and the value systems that get put on them go against what we all know to be the real world. Musicians do want to break out of these constraints. It's slightly boring to just play the same cycle of pieces over and over again.”

Joanna MacGregor (1959) British musician

Denver Post, 18/02/2005
On Classical Music

World , Music , Thinking , Training

“I firmly believe that the more one is exposed to bossa nova, the less one is interested in how he can fit it to his jazz concept and the more he becomes interested in what his improvisation can do for bossa nova.”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

From "Clare Fischer on Bossa Nova" http://www.mediafire.com/view/fix6ane8h54gx/Clare_Fischer#3f6344g3cshffpj in Downbeat (November 8, 1962), p. 23

“I relate to everything. I'm not just jazz, Latin or classical. I really am a fusion of all of those; not today's fusion, but my fusion.”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

As quoted in "He Arranges, Composes, Performs: Fischer, A Renaissance Man Of Music" http://articles.latimes.com/1987-05-14/entertainment/ca-8949_1_clare-fischer

“The power of the United States depended heavily on its pale empire of ideas, attitudes and innovations. Its ideas alighted effortlessly on foreign ground, irrespective of who owned the ground. Much of its influence came from such innovations as the telephone, electricity, aircraft and the cheap car, nuclear weapons and spacecraft, computers and the Internet. Its influence came through jazz, cartoons, Hollywood, television and popular culture. Its influence came from an excitement about technology and economic change, and a belief in incentives and individual enterprise. It was also the most ardent missionary for the creed of democracy. While military and economic might was vital to the success of the United States, the power of its pale empire of ideas was probably even more pervasive.”

Geoffrey Blainey book A Short History of the World

A Short History of the World (2000)

Cars , Democracy , Idea , Change

“In a lot of classical playing there isn't much expressiveness: I don't hear a voice in the playing. What I really admire about jazz musicians is that they develop a sound early on and it's unique to them. Classical players are screened from that by always playing other people's notes.”

Joanna MacGregor (1959) British musician

The Times, 21/04/2006
On Classical Music

People

“When jazz is played in another nation, it is called American. When it is played in another country, it sounds false. Jazz is the result of the energy stored up in America.”

George Gershwin (1898–1937) American composer and pianist

Page 387
The Composer in the Machine Age (1933)

Falseness , Country

“From New Orleans and the back roads of the Mississippi Delta to Harlem and Chicago, black musicians set enduring and distinctive standards for American creativity. The blues of Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, the gospel of Mahalia Jackson, the jazz of Duke Ellington, and the soul of Marvin Gaye claim fans of all ages from around the world. The trumpeting genius of Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie illustrate the exceptional musicianship so prominent in various genres of African-American music.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2001, Black Music (June 2001)

Age , World , Music , Soul

“I've listened to Jazz since I was born and always knew I'd be a Jazz singer!”

Jane Monheit (1977) American singer

USA Today (9/24/2004)

“I know when I was a kid, I used to look at these pictures and listen to the songs of the Gay Nineties, and I used to say to my mother, 'Oh, I wish I had lived then; it was so gay and so wonderful.' […] Now [the Jazz Age] seems very mysterious and wonderful to you, kids, and when you have kids, they'll say, 'Gee, Dad, those 50's, they were something.' […] I really think it goes in cycles. When your kids come in and say 'Gee, Dad, I wish we had done that,' and so on and so forth, it's the same thing. I don't think it's changed a great deal.”

Helen Kane (1904–1966) American actress

1959 interview. https://archive.org/details/HelenKaneInterview

Age , Thinking , Change

“The term "chorus form" is often used to denote a type of performance - typically in jazz or rhythm 'n' blues, but also sometimes in country music and rock 'n' roll - where a given structural unit is repeated an indefinite number of times. The unit itself may be sectionally elaborate, as in the case of most Tin Pan Alley ballads. It may be twelve-bar blues, or something similar, as in the case of many R&B and rock 'n' roll numbers: here, a three-line AAB lyric, set to a three-phrase melody, is underpinned by a single gestural sweep in the harmony. Occasionally - as in some funk, dub reggae, and hip-hop, for example - it may approach the status of open-ended process.”

Richard Middleton British musicologist

[Key Terms in Popular Music and Culture, ISBN 0631212639, Middleton, Richard, 1999]

Music , Time , Country

“Do you really believe that a man like me, who suffers for a country where B52s make 260 incursions a day, could miss the good life and jazz orchestras? I don't miss anything. I'm in mourning, and I don't even think of the carefree days of back then. What's done is done. If I had my Lancias, my Alfa Romeos and my Mercedes, I wouldn't know what to do with them now.”

Norodom Sihanouk (1922–2012) Cambodian King

Said during his exile in Peking, as quoted by Oriana Fallaci (June 1973), Intervista con la Storia (sixth edition, 2011). pages 105-106.
Interviews

Life , Thinking , Suffering , Country

“In spite of recent jazzed-up one-day matches, cricket to be fully appreciated demands leisure, some sunny warm days and an understanding of its finer points.”

J.B. Priestley (1894–1984) English writer

Source: The English (1973).

Understanding

“Gallery visitors did not tell Picasso to invent cubism. Jazz fanatics did not suggest that Miles Davies should work with hip-hoppers. Moviegoers did not propose to Lars von Trier, the Danish film director, that he make Breaking the Waves. And customers sure as hell did not come up with the idea for CDNow or Amazon. com. If you want to do something really interesting and revolutionary, learn to ignore your customers.”

Jonas Ridderstråle (1966) Swedish business theorist

Source: Funky Business Forever, 2007, p. 184

Idea , Hell , Learning

“The hardest thing to do is to swing quietly, with control and restraint. Lots of bands swing loudly. I refuse to let my band play loudly in order to try to swing when it isn’t swinging softly. I think that the best jazz in the long run is the jazz that is controlled and will swing on its own terms.”

John Dankworth (1927–2010) British musician

Times obituary, 8 Feb 2010 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article7018290.ece

Thinking

“Classical musicians can sometimes get very hung up on the idea that there's a right way and there's a wrong way. You can see this destroy a lot of players. Jazz musicians have a way of understanding that there are a lot of different ways of doing things. That's what's great about them, they're so friendly. And they are so individualistic - that's why they can accept someone like me.”

Joanna MacGregor (1959) British musician

The Independent, 03/04/1998
On Classical Music

Way , Idea , Understanding

“I … started out to become a jazz pianist; in the meantime I started singing and I sang the way I felt and that's just the way it came out.”

Nat King Cole (1919–1965) American singer and jazz pianist

Spoken in VOA interview http://www.library.unt.edu/resolveuid/24bc6899959ba29ac6feca22c5ad8ed9 broadcast on Pop Chronicles Show 22 - Smack Dab in the Middle on Route 66: A skinny dip in the easy listening mainstream. http://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc19775/m1/
Also on cassette 3, side B of [Gilliland, John, w:John Gilliland, Pop Chronicles the 40's: The Lively Story of Pop Music in the 40's, 978-1-55935-147-8, 31611854, 1994, Mind's Eye, audiobook]

Way , Singing

“What does the term "anti-American" mean? Does it mean you are anti-jazz? Or that you're opposed to freedom of speech? That you don't delight in Toni Morrison or John Updike? That you have a quarrel with giant sequoias? Does it mean that you don't admire the hundreds of thousands of American citizens who marched against nuclear weapons, or the thousands of war resisters who forced their government to withdraw from Vietnam? Does it mean that you hate all Americans?”

Arundhati Roy (1961) Indian novelist, essayist

From a speech entitled Come September http://ada.evergreen.edu/~arunc/texts/politics/comeSeptember.pdf.
Speeches

Hate , War , Freedom

“Jazz was my passion for a little while. I felt that all other kinds of music were stupid when I was into jazz. But I got over the addiction very soon”

A. R. Rahman (1966) Indian singer and composer

The A R Rahman Chat

Stupidity , Music , Passion

“His musical inspiration operates in a world uncluttered by conventional bar lines, conventional chord changes, and conventional ways of blowing or fingering a saxophone. Such practical 'limitations' did not even have to be overcome in his music; they somehow never existed for him. Despite this--or more accurately, because of this--his playing has a deep inner logic. Not an obvious surface logic, it is based on subtleties of reaction, subtleties of timing and color that are, I think, quite new to jazz--at least they have never appeared in so pure and direct a form.”

Ornette Coleman (1930–2015) American jazz musician

Gunther Schuller, quoted in [All American Music: Composition in the Late Twentieth Century, 1983, Rockwell, John, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, ISBN 0394511638].
About

World , Music , Color , Way

“O. K., I'm a rock critic. I also write and record music. I write poetry, fiction, straight journalism, unstraight journalism, beatnik drivel, mortifying love letters, death threats to white jazz critics signed "The Mau Maus of East Harlem," and once a year my own obituary (latest entry: "He was promising…").”

Lester Bangs (1948–1982) American music critic and journalist

"An Instant Fan's Inspired Notes: You Gotta Listen" (1980), from Da Capo Best Music Writing 2000, ed. Peter Guralnick (Da Capo Press, 2000, ISBN 0306809990), p. 100

Love , Death , Music

“Of course that's Bud and Laurindo. I liked Laurindo very much, and I love some of the tunes he does. In fact, I've been doing some piano transcriptions of some guitar things of his, and we recently recorded a tune of his. This particular thing again—how are you going to equate it? As jazz? As Brazilioan music or what? I wiould much rather hear Laurindo in his native habitat. I know he and Bud have been associated this way before, yet I don't feel that a real good rapport goes on between them. The constant mixing—half-jazz, half-Brazillian—I don't think it's good. You lose certain features of the one when you try to come out with the other. Let's give that three stars.”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

Reviewing "Tocata" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a940h3-1NV0 from Brazilliance; as quoted in "Clare Fischer: Blindfold Test" http://www.mediafire.com/view/fix6ane8h54gx/Clare_Fischer#rjvay58eo774rhe

Love , Music , Way , Feeling

“I didn't plan on rock 'n' roll. I wanted to learn jazz; I got to know some people doing rock 'n' roll with jazz, and I thought I could make money playing music. In rock 'n' roll you can realize anything that you can in jazz or anything. There's no limitation other than the beat. You have more freedom than you do in anything except jazz — which is dying — as far as making any money is concerned.”

Robby Krieger (1946) American rock guitarist and songwriter

Comment posted at his official website http://www.robbykrieger.com.

Money , People , Music , Freedom

“I have no idea who that is. It's a terrible performance, the band is horribly out of tune—is that Maynard Ferguson? It starts off at a dynamic peak and never deviates from it. It also starts out with what is supposed to be jazz musicians trying to play some sort of a Latin bag, which is not making it, because there's no solidity of rhythms. Latin rhythm sections being based on the constant contrast of instruments, and it never moves any place. And then that thing on the end—what's that supposed to be? An adaptation of Porgy and Bess of some sort? I guess it was some sort of an allusion toward Porgy and Bess. But then if it is, it's completely escaped all the rest of it. It's like giving a paragraph of reference out of a two-page article and then saying, Well, this is about this.”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

That's one star for me.
Reviewing Slide Hampton's arrangement of "It Ain't Necessarily So" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a940h3-1NV0 from Two Sides of Slide; as quoted in "Clare Fischer: Blindfold Test" http://www.mediafire.com/view/fix6ane8h54gx/Clare_Fischer#rjvay58eo774rhe

Star , Idea

“I keep reverting (to Duke Ellington), he to me is the greatest ever and my favorite jazz philosopher, as such.”

Cannonball Adderley (1928–1975) American jazz alto saxophonist

Interviewed by the "Chicago SEED", November 1968

“To me, this is very boring music—most of it. It has nothing happening. Nothing is sticking. They’re playing music perfectly with wonderful intonation and technique, but it’s dangerous for jazz itself. I do wish these people all the best.”

Joe Zawinul (1932–2007) austrian composer and pianist

On Wynton Marsalis and the revival of traditional jazz
Prasad interview (1997)

People , Music

“Saving Silverman is so bad in so many different ways that perhaps you should see it, as an example of the lowest slopes of the bell-shaped curve. This is the kind of movie that gives even its defenders fits of desperation. Consider my friend James Berardinelli, the best of the Web-based critics. No doubt 10 days of oxygen deprivation at the Sundance Film Festival helped inspire his three-star review, in which he reports optimistically, "Saving Silverman" has its share of pratfalls and slapstick moments, but there's almost no flatulence." Here's a critical rule of thumb: You know you're in trouble when you're reduced to praising a movie for its absence of fart jokes, and have to add "almost"… as for Neil Diamond, Saving Silverman is his first appearance in a fiction film since The Jazz Singer, and one can only marvel that he waited 20 years to appear in a second film, and found one even worse than his first one.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/saving-silverman-2001 of Saving Silverman (9 February 2001)
Reviews, Half-star reviews

Way , Star , Appearance , Waiting

“When I came back [from a temporary stay in Paris] and heard you play with Charles Mingus, and when you and Cecil Taylor [also a free Jazz musician] opened up the 'Five Spot' in the Fall of 1956, I felt better about being in New York. All the musicians who create from the gut as well as their intellect can change things. People will never understand what we are doing if they can't feel... All art is abstract. All music is abstract. But it's all real... When you improvise, I can see the seeds of a symphony you could write. When I first heard Charlie Parker in Chicago, I could see he was a symphony.... we were all trying to bring that spirit, that spontaneous energy, into our work.”

Joan Mitchell (1925–1992) American painter

talking to jazz-player David Anram in the jazz club the 'Five Spot', in 1956, she was visiting with Franz Kline
Quoted by David Anram in 'Introduction', in The Stamp of Impulse, Abstract expressionist prints, ed. David Acton, David Amram, David Lehman, Worcester Art Museum, 2001 p. 21
1950 - 1975

People , Art , Music , Feeling

“There's no record industry, and so musicians I know, because I get mail from young musicians, I mean, they're really just struggling to survive, because they're not gonna get a record contract! So what are they doing? To survive? Like I did? I mean, okay I drove trucks, and sold caviar and repaired instruments just to survive. But in the end, you know, I'm in the studio, you know, recording rock music, pop music, whatever! Whatever gives me money to put in my, you know, food in my mouth. And so there's a lot of great musicians today, they're just looking for a gig! And what are the gigs that are going around? The gigs with pop bands or with smooth jazz, funky jazz, you know, a lot of this kind of cliched music. I'm sorry to criticize it like that, but I grew up with Tony (Williams) and you know Miles (Davis), (John) Coltrane, and real things, where there's blood all over the floor, blood all over the stage, that's what the passion's all about.”

John McLaughlin (1942) guitarist, founder of the Mahavishnu Orchestra

On record industry, as quoted in "John McLaughlin: State of the Musical Arts", by The Snapshots Foundation; directed by Jonathan Bewley, YouTube, Jul 11, 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utqp7ECKUl0

Money , Food , Music , Passion

“I came from a background of blues and rock based(music). I hadn’t listened to Jazz or even Classical Music until just recently. Listening to Stan Getz, you know, he is one of my favorite Saxophonists, so he’s influenced my sound and influences how I play this music. Right now.”

Ross Mintzer (1987) American musician and performer

NPR interview (2005)

Music

“An entire composition written in jazz could not live.”

George Gershwin (1898–1937) American composer and pianist

Page 388
The Composer in the Machine Age (1933)

“I know I get up people's noses," "Everyone wants to pigeonhole you. Early on in my career I somehow got labelled 'Bach, John Cage and a bit of jazz'. But the fact that I love to play Beethoven, too, really infuriates people. It doesn't fit. They can't make sense of it. The received wisdom is that you can't possibly do all these things without it sounding terrible or crass or just plain wrong.”

Joanna MacGregor (1959) British musician

Musician's life

Love , Wisdom , People , Sense

“When I asked Sergio Mendes why he still called his group Brasil '66 in 1967, he said "'66 was a very good year!" That's his group and the French song from The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. It's not one of their better tracks. Some of the things they've done I have enjoyed tremendously, though it's getting to the point where he's had commercial success doing what he's doing, so it's now somewhere in between strong Brazilian music and quasi-rock. Joao Palma is an excellent drummer. Here they have John Pisano of the Tijuana Brass playing an amplified guitar. He is one of the few people who, on the regular amplified guitar, has really got the Brazilian thing down. He can play in the Baden Powell style, which is so compelling and so dynamic. Sergio is usually a much more melodic pianist, but here he's trying to give a hardness and vitality to the over-all commercial sound, and he comes out lacking what he usually has—his lines are usually very smoothly melodic. This has nothing to do with jazz, but I find it pleasant; on the other hand, some of the things they do, like O Pato [from Mendes' previous album], or some of the faster things, I enjoy much more. Two stars.”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

Reviewing Mendes' recording of Michel Legrand's '"Watch What Happens," from the album Equinox; as quoted in "Clare Fischer: Blindfold Test" http://www.mediafire.com/view/fix6ane8h54gx/Clare_Fischer#2nmgk677qzm4cnu

People , Music , Star , Strong

“If the modern spirit, whatever that may be, is disinclined towards taking the Lord’s word at its face value (as I hear is the case), we may observe that Isaiah’s testimony to the character of the masses has strong collateral support from respectable Gentile authority. Plato lived into the administration of Eubulus, when Athens was at the peak of its jazz-and-paper era, and he speaks of the Athenian masses with all Isaiah’s fervency, even comparing them to a herd of ravenous wild beasts.”

Albert Jay Nock (1870–1945) American journalist

Source: Isaiah's Job (1936), II

Support , Strong

“I love Pops, I love the way he sings, the way he plays - everything he does, except when he says something against modern-jazz music.”

Miles Davis (1926–1991) American jazz musician

In Playboy to Alex Haley (1962); also in [Milestones: The music and times of Miles Davis since 1960, Jack, Chambers, Beech Tree Books, 1983, 9780688046460, 209], [The Playboy Interviews, Alex, Haley, Murray, Fisher, Ballantine, 1993, 9780345383006, 15], [The Miles Davis companion: four decades of commentary, Gary, Carner, Gary, Carner, Schirmer Books, 1996, 9780028646121, 19], and in [Miles Davis and American Culture, Missouri Historical Society Press Series, Gerald Lyn, Early, Missouri History Museum, 2001, 9781883982386, 205]
1960s

Love , Music , Way , Singing