Jazz Quotes · Page 14

Don't worry about playing a lot of notes. Just find one pretty one.

— Miles Davis

Jazz is something you have to feel, something you have to live.

— Ray Brown

The true artform is being a human being.

— Herbie Hancock

There's a jazz influence in my music in general.

— Alexandre Desplat

My foundation is jazz. I do all the things jazz musicians do.

— Dianne Reeves

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

— Louis Armstrong

Jazz is restless. It won't stay put & it never will.

— J. J. Johnson

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

— Wynton Marsalis

I'd love to act. I feel that it's another naked, mysterious challenge, like jazz. It kind of intrigues me in the same…

— Paula Cole

I have believed for many years that Oscar Peterson is not only the greatest pianist in jazz today, but the greatest it…

— Gene Lees

My favorite music is jazz, actually. It's what I listen to, it's what I was raised on, and it's what I prefer…

— Brian Stokes Mitchell

What was the competition? Well, I remember this Puerto Rican who came out in a short skirt and a gun.

— Sarah Vaughan

I never practice my guitar. From time to time I just open the case & throw in a piece of raw meat.

— Wes Montgomery

I really liked Wynton when I first met him. He's still a nice young man, only confused.

— Miles Davis

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

— Colin Greenwood

Trumpet players are just belligerant, and cocky, and you know, just hard-headed.

— Wynton Marsalis

I just love all the music. My grandma was a church organist for 40 years, and she got me into jazz music…

— Zach Anner

Jazz is very important. It's not something I can put my finger on. When I'm writing at my favorite time, I like…

— Miller Williams

I liked the more sophisticated urban style of blues like Ray Charles and B. B. King, Bobby Blue Bland, Lou Rawls; people…

— Edgar Winter

Footballers can be like artists when the mind and body are working as one. It is what Miles Davis does when he…

— Lilian Thuram

Jazz scares me. I've witnessed so many incredible singers and jazz musicians. Pop and soul music have always been the things that…

— Sam Smith

Trombone virtuoso and innovative composer, Papo combines the best of jazz and Latin music to create a genre that is unique and…

— Michael Brecker

Judy Garland was the singer I most wanted to sound like then, not to copy, but to get some of her soul…

— Sarah Vaughan

I think that people should learn about that. In most music, there's one way that you do something, and that's the only…

— Billy Higgins

It's hard to explain what happens when jazz and punk fuse with a violin twist but it works. Probably because Anson Choi…

— Melina Marchetta

I anticipated all the changes in jazz because they were all problematical things, that I was dealing with myself. In New York…

— Paul Bley

We don't live in a jazz world, unfortunately. I think if I had lived in a jazz world, I would have done…

— George Benson

You know, John Coltrane has been sort of a god to me. Seems like, in a way, he didn't get the inspiration…

— Wes Montgomery

I got into playing the jazz. I played jazz for a good while. I did the popular stuff first. You got the…

— Papa John Creach

My faith is the grand drama of my life. I'm a believer, so I sing words of God to those who have…

— Olivier Messiaen

One interesting thing about jazz, or art in general, but jazz especially is such an individual art form in the sense that…

— Damien Chazelle

Instead of the metaphor of scales in balance, I prefer the idea of a jazz quartet: you're trying to make music that…

— Stewart D. Friedman

This is so nice, it must be illegal.

— Fats Waller

I have to plead basic ignorance of most new jazz artists here.

— Gary Lucas

Day in, day out. That same old voodoo follows me about.

— Johnny Mercer

Jazz is a racist musical form invented by whites to enslave blacks.

— Lyndon LaRouche

Jazz is letting everybody do his or her thing with the music.

— Percy Heath

I am a musician, but I'm another type of musician.

— Sun Ra

“Did Bach ever eat pancakes at midnight?”

— Nathan Reese Maher

I think I was supposed to play jazz.

— Herbie Hancock