Quotes About Jazz Musicians

#1. 'Swing' is an adjective or a verb, not a noun. All jazz musicians should swing. There is no such thing as a 'swing band' in music.

Artie Shaw

#2. I was being ridiculed for going to school ... But, you see, I had looked hard at the other musicians and the whole show-business scene ... They were doing with jazz musicians what they usually reserved for rock n' roll cats: making them overnight successes, then overnight antiques.

Donald Byrd

#3. Jazz is the greatest American art form and our greatest export. We don't pay attention to the youth of jazz, don't stoke the fires creatively for the youth coming up. I feel like jazz musicians became too much of purists - with Donald Byrd doing funk jazz in the '70s.

Talib Kweli

#4. Jazz musicians are the coolest people on the planet. Can I have some cool?

Jon Stewart

#5. Why can't jazz musicians just leave a melody alone?

Peter Capaldi

#6. You had many jazz musicians who lived in the United States, who had a hard time being accepted over here and had to play in sort of these inferior type dives.

Sonny Rollins

#7. The Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame will provide a center where the lives and the artistry of the greatest jazz musicians will be celebrated, and where people will come to learn about jazz, something to which my brother devoted his life's work.

Ahmet Ertegun

#8. 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

#9. I started to listen to Japanese jazz musicians when I went to high school. Some people I listened to were Yosuke Yamashita, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Sadao Watanabe.

Hiromi

#10. Many of the jazz musicians whom are no longer here. You don't realize that it's history when it is happening and then time passes and you look at a picture and you say "Wow, there is history attached to that."

Carol Friedman

#11. My novels and poems are meant to be read aloud. That's why jazz musicians have been able to adapt my stuff.

Ishmael Reed

#12. I loved Art Tatum! And, through him, and other different jazz musicians, I actually found my technique.

Tony Bennett

#13. Dali's Reclining Woman Wearing a Chemise looks like a dead slaughtered doll, and I can see preying eagles, broken arrows, and jazz musicians in Jackson Pollock, and because I believe that Man Ray and Duchamp were lovers.

Dionne Brand

#14. My great inspiration has always been Studs Terkel, who is a wonderful American oral historian. He was a radio DJ at first, interviewed a lot of jazz musicians, and at some point started to interview Americans about work.

Hans Ulrich Obrist

#15. I found that jazz musicians, possibly more than their classical counterparts, wear long-standing friendships easily and gracefully.

Andre Previn

#16. I took some lessons as a kid but trained myself by ear. I did it the way jazz musicians used to learn years ago, which is to play records and slow them down to figure out the notes. At first I tried to imitate Red Garland, who was my favorite jazz pianist.

Donald Fagen

#17. Jazz musicians have some outlaw in them somewhere.

Mike Zwerin

#18. Musicians like to converse. There's always interesting conversation with musicians - with classical musicians, with jazz musicians, musicians in general.

Wynton Marsalis

#19. Kansas City Lightning succeeds as few biographies of jazz musicians have ... This book is a magnificent achievement; I could hardly put it down.

Henry Louis Gates

#20. I never gave up on that idea, you know, that jazz musicians have the same opportunity as everybody else and that it's what you put on that record that makes the difference whether you sell it or not or are able to get it into people's households.

George Benson

#21. I have seen great jazz musicians die obscure and drinking themselves to death and not really being able to get any work and working in small, funky jazz clubs.

Sonny Rollins

#22. Jazz is the last refuge of the untalented. Jazz musicians enjoy themselves more than anyone listening to them does.

Tony Wilson

#23. I've met a lot of jazz musicians in my day, and they're all funny.

Tommy Chong

#24. It is my belief that there is a tendency among the so-called 'modern' or 'hip' jazz musicians to consider styles other that their own, 'corny', and it is my contention that in actuality it is these musicians who are producing that which in future years perceptive critics will deem 'corny'.

Don Ellis

#25. Comedians and jazz musicians have been more comforting and enlightening to me than preachers or politicians or philosophers or poets or painters or novelists of my time. Historians in the future, in my opinion, will congratulate us on very little other than our clowning and our jazz.

Kurt Vonnegut

#26. I've been around jazz and jazz musicians most of my life.

Kenneth Rexroth

#27. Regarding jam sessions: Jazz musicians are the only workers I can think of who are willing to put in a full shift for pay and then go somewhere else and continue to work for free.

George Carlin

#28. Astronomers, like burglars and jazz musicians, operate best at night.

Miles Kington

#29. What I can say is that for may years jazz musicians had to go to Europe, for instance, to be respected and to be sort of treated not in a discriminatory way. I don't think there is anything controversial about me saying that. This is just a fact.

Sonny Rollins

#30. Angel, you got checkout girls in these here grocery stores cain't feed their own kids right, jazz musicians workin' for the post office because music don't pay the charge of admission to a nightclub. You might love your work but one day you wake up and find that your work don't love you.

Walter Mosley

#31. Orchestras are not used to playing the kind of stuff jazz musicians like to play. It requires a lot of rehearsal and recording time, so it's much easier to do on a synth or sampler. So, we came up with that idea.

Eberhard Weber

#32. I loved men and was going mad with suppressed desire. It pushed me into a series of affairs with dubious jazz musicians. Sex was not what I imagined. It was tension, scent and prosaic misalliance. It was sweet and sad revelation, and all expectation dashed.

James Ellroy

#33. Coltrane would do what you'd get a Roland Pro Tools module to do but with a group of jazz musicians.

Colin Greenwood

#34. If I knew what it was going to look like, I wouldnt be so excited to be a part of it. Jazz is a music of surprise; its a music of spontaneity. I think jazz musicians live
I know I do
for being surprised and not knowing whats going to come next.

Joshua Redman

#35. I have always been a person who is concerned with the dignity of jazz music and the way jazz musicians have been treated and are treated, and the fact that the music has not been given the kind of due that it deserves.

Sonny Rollins

#36. Comedians talk to other comedians the way jazz musicians can talk to each other.

David Steinberg

#37. To say that the Afro American created jazz doesn't mean anything bad about Anglo Americans, and I always teach my younger jazz musicians that at this point the entirety of the American tradition is your heritage, and you need to know it.

Wynton Marsalis

#38. There's been this perception that Europeans still hold on to, that they discover the real talented ones in American culture and give them proper credit and that's not true anymore - it used to be. A lot of jazz musicians would get respect in Europe.

Andrew Bird

#39. What separates great jazz musicians from average ones is Taste. Those who have taste consistently choose notes, tempos, timbres and voicings that seduce and satisfy attentive listeners.

Marc Myers

#40. Now as jazz musicians we're saying for this society, you can free up your imagination. You can proceed in an area without much information and you can function in an area without much information.

Paul Bley

#41. One of the things that's clear to me from interviews that I've read is that the more popular successful jazz musicians had audiences above and beyond the music community.

Branford Marsalis

#42. Actually John, Paul Rutherford, and Trevor Watts, and several other rather well known English jazz musicians had got their training by joining the Air Force, which was a pretty standard way for people to get some kind of musical education in those days.

Evan Parker

#43. Europe was a very contentious subject in literature and yet jazz musicians still depended on Europe. Now it's not such a big deal.

Darryl Pinckney

#44. Hamp would ask me about tempos in the band: 'Jacquet,' he'd say, 'knock off that tempo.' A lot of jazz musicians didn't prefer to play for dancers, which was their loss, really. But good jazz has always had that dance feel.

Illinois Jacquet

#45. If income was directly proportional to technical proficiency and education, classical and jazz musicians would be some of the most affluent people in the world.

Robert Emerson Coleman

#46. I want them to come away with discovering the music inside them. And not thinking about themselves as jazz musicians, but thinking about themselves as good human beings, striving to be a great person and maybe they'll become a great musician.

Charlie Haden

#47. We always feel pretty creative as far as writing songs. We write them together; we just get in a room, or on occasion in Flea's garage. We just sort of improvise, like jazz musicians.

Chad Smith

#48. A lot of times, jazz musicians try to educate people. What other genre does that?

Robert Glasper

#49. I think jazz is a phenomenal creative force, because it's one man, one vote as you're playing, but it's a collective thing, what you're doing. You're listening to all the musicians around you and you're working within that structure.

Herb Alpert

#50. Some musicians play blues, others classical jazz or bluegrass. I like to play political roles because I can merge my political interests with my creative interests.

Jeffrey Wright

#51. A lot of the people that I photograph are master musicians themselves, whether they're singers or great jazz players and it's kind of fun to figure out who they came up with and who they emulated or who they idolized actually.

Carol Friedman

#52. The black hole in democracy is integrity. The great unspoken is integrity. When integrity is not first and foremost, it's quite palpable but not visible. It's always there. Jazz highlights it because musicians and jazz always represented a high level of integrity.

Wynton Marsalis

#53. I like musicians who look at the public. You have to bring the music to the largest number. Otherwise, we'll [the Jazz players] stay in the clubs. Jazz must be accessible to everyone.

Dee Dee Bridgewater

#54. I know of musicians who have played together for decades who hate each other. The Modern Jazz Quartet for one.

Gary Burton

#55. Symphony musicians are not trained in improvising, certainly not in a jazz style.

Gunther Schuller

#56. Jazz is smooth and cool. Jazz is rage. Jazz flows like water. Jazz never seems to begin or end. Jazz isn't methodical, but jazz isn't messy either. Jazz is a conversation, a give and take. Jazz is the connection and communication between musicians. Jazz is abandon.

Nat Wolff

#57. Jazz music is the power of now. There is no script. It's conversation. The emotion is given to you by musicians as they make split-second decisions to fulfill what they feel the moment requires.

Wynton Marsalis

#58. There is an apprenticeship system in jazz. You teach the young ones. So even if the musicians weren't personally that likable, they felt an obligation to help the younger musicians.

Dave Van Ronk

#59. The lion's share of what I hear right now are people who, intentional or accidental, have avoided all jazz prior to 1960. And all the musicians who were successful in the '60s spent their entire lives, prior to 1960, listening to all the musicians these people avoid.

Branford Marsalis

#60. Whitney Houston and Ella Fitzgerald are my musical mothers. I learned everything I know about true R&B, pop and jazz singing from these stunning performers and unparalleled musicians.

Ciara Renee

#61. Jazz translates the moment into a sense of inspiration for not only the musicians but for the listeners.

Herbie Hancock

#62. Jazz is very much alive. Everywhere I go there's a new generation of musicians playing Jazz music.

Toots Thielemans

#63. Music is something I couldn't live without. My dad was into music, he played for pleasure - guitar, piano. I started off doing jazz, singing with a lot of fabulous musicians here in London before I went to the States. And I still take piano lessons every Wednesday.

Marianne Jean-Baptiste

#64. I grew up with all these old jazz guys in the '70s in L.A., and they grew up idolizing Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus, Lester Young - all of these incredible musicians.

Flea

#65. Certainly one of the more common experiences in the jazz field is discovering someone new. Improvising musicians are capable of being musical travelers, voyagers. We want to join in on whatever we hear. There is a freedom to wander the musical landscape.

Gary Burton

#66. In a jazz atmosphere, the audience members were so quiet and respectful of the musicians that you felt you were almost part of a meeting at a church or a temple, where everyone was completely in tune with the sermon and what the whole event was about.

David Amram

#67. The people in Japan know more about the history of jazz and the musicians than the people in the United States do.

Billy Higgins

#68. Through the dark days of legalized segregation and on into the civil rights era, jazz shone as a beacon for achieving interracial respect and understanding. It seemed as if the dream of a color-blind society was within reach in the jazz world, where musicians were judged on merit and not skin color.

Randy Sandke

#69. Not with the Rochester Philharmonic, but I formed my own orchestra, made up of musicians from the Eastman School, where I'm on the faculty now, direct the Jazz Ensemble and teach improvisation classes.

Chuck Mangione

#70. Europeans really provided many venues over there and hailed the jazz artists, and a lot of musicians went over there and stayed over there for a long time. A lot of them moved over there, lived over there, and died over there.

Sonny Rollins

#71. My primary influences were the best jazz players from the 50's and 60's and later some of the pop people from the same time period along with the better of the well known blues musicians.

Walter Becker

#72. It's a weird thing where, especially in jazz, you have to totally mention cutting sessions and people one-upping each other and people being super, super tough on each other. And out of it emerge these genius musicians.

Damien Chazelle

#73. Jazz stands for freedom. It's supposed to be the voice of freedom: Get out there and improvise, and take chances, and don't be a perfectionist - leave that to the classical musicians.

Dave Brubeck

#74. What 'jazz' means to me is the worst kind of working conditions, the worst in cultural prejudice. The term 'jazz' has come to mean the abuse and exploitation of black musicians.

Maxim Gorky

#75. Kansas City, I would say, did more for jazz music, black music, than any other influence at all. Almost all their joints that they had there, they used black bands. Most musicians who amounted to anything, they would flock to Kansas City because that's the place where jobs were plentiful.

Jesse Stone

#76. Marijuana is taken by musicians. And I'm not speaking about good musicians, but the jazz type ...

Harry J. Anslinger

#77. As long as there are musicians who have a passion for spontaneity, for creating something that's never been before, the art form of jazz will flourish.

Charlie Haden

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

Branford Marsalis

#79. Personally, I think young musicians need to learn to play more than one style. Jazz can only enhance the classical side, and classical can only enhance the jazz. I started out playing classical, because you have to have that as a foundation.

Doc Severinsen

#80. I have learned a lot from jazz. I compare good acting to jazz music. The more you study and prepare as an actor, the more equipped you are to live in the moment. Just like the gifted musicians in my dad's quartet, it takes a courageous actor to be free.

Nat Wolff

#81. Today jazz is still very much alive. Everywhere I go there's a new generation of musicians.

Toots Thielemans

#82. After the war, once the bop revolution had taken hold, there were all kinds of young musicians, talented young musicians, who were ready for this fusion of classical and jazz.

Gunther Schuller

#83. Maybe a part of me recognized how right the improvising spirit of jazz is. Not the sounds, but the freedom to work with musicians who work that way. It felt very natural to me, but I think there's a way to do it without it being a jazz record.

Jane Siberry

#84. I always say that you should just listen to it and see what you think it sounds like it is. I don't think it should be labeled. Most musicians feel like that. No one wants to put their music in a category. But, I don't think it's all over the place. I don't go from metal to jazz, or anything crazy.

Tinsel Korey

#85. I go down to New York, do the project, and leave. I have no interest in participating in the rat race down there. Hip jazz fans know who I am. There's a generation of musicians in New York who know my records better than I do.

Paul Smoker

#86. Because the blues is the basis of most American music in the 20th century. It's a 12-bar form that's played by jazz, bluegrass and country musicians. It has a rhythmic vocabulary that's been used by rock n' roll. It's related to spirituals, and even the American fiddle tradition.

Wynton Marsalis

#87. I suppose it was later on that I realized that there was some reaction among the musicians themselves, some of whom resented the success of cool jazz in California, and that broke down into the white guys against the hard-blowing black guys in New York.

Ashley Kahn

#88. The jazz and blues clubs are like the jazz and blues musicians - they're disappearing.

Buddy Guy

#89. There is a view that jazz is 'evil' because it comes from evil people, but actually the greatest priests on 52nd Street and on the streets of New York City were the musicians. They were doing the greatest healing work. They knew how to punch through music that would cure and make people feel good.

Garth Hudson