Quotes About Jazz Louis Armstrong

#1. Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night
Sailed off in a wooden shoe, -
Sailed on a river of crystal light
Into a sea of dew.

Eugene Field

#2. Louis Armstrong is the master of the jazz solo. He became the beacon, the light in the tower, that helped the rest of us navigate the tricky waters of jazz improvisation.

Ellis Marsalis Jr.

#3. Louis Armstrong is quite simply the most important person in American music. He is to 20th century music (I did not say jazz) what Einstein is to physics.

Ken Burns

#4. Man, if you have to ask what it [jazz] is, you'll never know.

Louis Armstrong

#5. Venture capital is about capturing the value between the startup phase and the public company phase.

Fred Wilson

#6. If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know.

Louis Armstrong

#7. To jazz, or not to jazz, there is no question!

Louis Armstrong

#8. I'm a spade, you're an ofay. Let's play.

Louis Armstrong

#9. I lay my body down in another city, another hotel room. Once Louis Armstrong and his band stayed here. Later the hotel fell to trash. New money resurrected it. Under the red moon of justice, I dream with the king of jazz.

Joy Harjo

#10. From a floor below someone was singing with a karaoke machine, Paul McCartney's 'Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time,' completely out of tune. 'Beyond doubt the worst Christmas song ever written,' New York said to me, quietly. 'Like a request to God to end the universe.

Glen Duncan

#11. Pity! Religion has so seldom found
A skilful guide into poetic ground!
The flowers would spring where'er she deign'd to stray
And every muse attend her in her way.

William Cowper

#12. I love Ray Charles. He can still teach everybody a lot about how to make great music. Not necessarily how to make hits, but how to make great music. Of course, part of it is his incredible talent. Who are the greatest jazz singers in the world? Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday and Ray Charles.

Ahmet Ertegun

#13. Jazz is what I play for a living.

Louis Armstrong

#14. You came here because we do this better than you and part of that is letting our creatives be unproductive until they are.

Don Draper

#15. You will never know what the meaning of Jazz is if ask what it means.

Louis Armstrong

#16. I am proud to be a woman. I am sensual, nurturing and compassionate woman. I am a woman of my word and I love who I am.

Miranda Kerr

#17. Intimate singing had a wonderful style in the '30s and '40s. It came out of Broadway and the jazz of Louis Armstrong and Billie Holliday. But Sinatra created the best romantic era that we've ever had.

Tony Bennett

#18. Each man has his own music bubbling up inside him.

Louis Armstrong

#19. If you don't like Louis Armstrong, you don't know how to love.

Mahalia Jackson

#20. My main influences have always been the classic jazz players who sang, like Louis Armstrong and Nat King Cole and Jack Teagarden.

Mose Allison

#21. You ask: What is it that philosophers have called qualitative states? I answer, only half in jest: As Louis Armstrong said when asked what jazz is, 'If you got to ask, you ain't never gonna get to know.'

Ned Block

#22. I listen to jazz about three hours a day. I love Louis Armstrong.

Philip Levine

#23. Louis Armstrong is jazz. He represents what the music is all about.

Wynton Marsalis

#24. Jazz is played from the heart. You can even live by it. Always love it.

Louis Armstrong

#25. Do you think Duke Ellington didn't listen to Debussy? Louis Armstrong loved opera, did you know that? Name me a jazz pianist who wasn't influenced by European music!

Dave Brubeck

#26. All them weird chords which don't mean a thing ... you got no melody to remember, and no beat to dance to

Louis Armstrong

#27. Sometimes just explaining your predicament--to a bartender, a priest, the old woman in a shift and flip-flops cleaning the lint traps in the Laundromat dryers--is all it takes to see a way out of it.

Julia Claiborne Johnson

#28. If you have to ask what jazz is you will never know. Louis Armstrong

Louis Armstrong

#29. India is content with itself, and driven by the will to sit on the high table of prosperity. It will not be deflected in its mission by noxious practitioners of terror.

Pranab Mukherjee

#30. There's only two ways to sum up music; either it's good or it's bad. If it's good you don't mess about it, you just enjoy it.

Louis Armstrong

#31. The memory of things gone is important to a jazz musician. Things like old folks singing in the moonlight in the back yard on a hot night or something said long ago.

Louis Armstrong

#32. If anybody was Mr. Jazz it was Louis Armstrong. He was the epitome of jazz and always will be. He is what I call an American standard, an American original.

Duke Ellington

#33. If it hadn't been for Jazz, there wouldn't be no rock and roll.

Louis Armstrong

#34. Louis Armstrong was the primary contributor to jazz music in the 20th century. His improvisational skills served as the principal model for all who came after him, regardless of one's chosen instrument.

Ellis Marsalis Jr.

#35. I actually wanted to be a jazz musician first. My grandparents introduced me to Louis Armstrong. I loved Louis Armstrong so I took up the trumpet and just did that every day and practiced that.

Douglas Booth