Bebop Quotes

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

— Woody Herman

[Bebop is] Chinese music.

— Louis Armstrong

Bebop has set music back twenty years.

— Tommy Dorsey

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

— Anonymous

I can't imagine my life without the extraordinary bebop jazz revolution in New York in late '40s and '50s.

— Robert Wyatt

Bebop didn't have the humanity of Duke Ellington. It didn't have that recognizable thing. Bird and Diz were great, fantastic, challenging --…

— Miles Davis

I still prefer the bebop of the '40s. The very stuff I started out with is still the best to me. I…

— Carla Bley

From folk to tribal to Cab Calloway, Cole Porter, Gershwin to the Rolling Stones, whose first record was all covers, to country-western,…

— Cat Power

You don't see the European classical musicians allowing the music of Bach, Brahms, or Beethoven to become extinct. That music has gone…

— Rahsaan Roland Kirk

My first love in music was jazz, but I like it all," "I reacted emotionally to Art Blakey and, of course, to…

— Larry Carlton

I can take any series of numbers and turn it into music, from Bach to bebop, Herbie Hancock to hip-hop,

— Donald Byrd

Bebop was like humming along to Mitch Miller to me.

— Albert Ayler

Bebop is the music of the future (as soon as they learn how to play it).

— Dexter Gordon

In those days before hearing Charlie Parker and Dizzy, and before learning of the so-called bebop era--by the way, I have some…

— J. J. Johnson

Basically my influences have been American influences. It's been blues, gospel, swing era music, bebop music, Broadway show music, classical music.

— Horace Silver

Man always thinks about the past before he dies.

— Jet Black

Most of what I listen to now is mainstream jazz from 1935 right up to and including early bebop and cool jazz.

— Dave Van Ronk

Many photographers are apt to confuse color with noise, and to congratulate themselves when they have almost blown you down with screeching…

— Walker Evans

They said Bird played bebop, but Bird could still swing. I've heard a lot of guys play bebop, but they wasn't swinging.

— Jay McShann

If you have a counterculture band, you put a name on it, you call them beatniks, and you can sell something -…

— Jim Jarmusch

When I was a little kid wanting to play music, it was because of people like Pete Johnson, Huey Smith, Allen Toussaint,…

— Dr. John

Basically my influences have been American influences. It's been blues, gospel, swing era music, bebop music, Broadway show music, classical music. It's…

— Horace Silver

[On bebop years] All I did was sing 'How High the Moon.' It seemed like the only song I ever sang.

— Ella Fitzgerald

All the forms of popular music from jazz to hip-hop, to bebop, to soul [come from black innovation]. You talk about different…

— Michael Jackson

I have pretty ecumenical tastes. I'm interested in a lot of different kinds of music, so I don't listen with a jaundiced…

— David Sanborn