Most of what I listen to now is mainstream jazz from 1935…

I cut myself off from the mainstream of jazz. It stood me in good stead later on, as a musician.

— Dave Van Ronk

I don't like totally free jazz, unless it's done by somebody like Coltrane, who did bebop and cool jazz, so he was allowed to…

— John Densmore

I suppose it was later on that I realized that there was some reaction among the musicians themselves, some of whom resented the success…

— Ashley Kahn

What I love about Sonny's playing is that he is so inventive within the mainstream Jazz vernacular. Because he knows so many ways to…

— Pete La Roca

I listen to jazz mainly. Mainstream jazz.

— Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

I think cool originates with the jazz culture in the '40s. There was probably cool before that, but that's when people started talking about…

— Alissa Quart

the beauty of America, neither cool jazz nor devoured Egyptian heroes, lies in lives in the darkness I inhabit in the midst of sterile…

— Frank O'Hara

I just saw a recent television program about art, and it was saying how from the end of the Second World War, so much…

— Robert Wyatt

If the whole idea, in the original bebop days, was to get to soloing, then that's all it should be about.

— Allan Holdsworth

“Everything has a beginning and an end. Life is just a cycle of starts and stops. There are ends we don't desire, but they're…

— Anonymous

I was reading Omar Khayyam, Kahlil Gibran, Rumi, L. Ron Hubbard, all sorts of philosophy. Bebop cats are like that. Curious. I wanted to…

— Quincy Jones

Bebop has set music back twenty years.

— Tommy Dorsey

[Bebop is] Chinese music.

— Louis Armstrong

Musically, the bebop route was magnificent, but businesswise, it was the dumbest thing I ever did.

— Woody Herman

Truth of the matter is, jazz is American music. And that doesn't mean bebop. Jazz is really about improvising. All the music that's been…

— Jaimoe