Jazz Quotes · Page 15

I expect the audience to come up to my level.

— Don Ellis

Blues is the first step to get to jazz.

— Paul Gilbert

If people don't like it [my music] now, they will.

— Albert Ayler

Nostalgia ain't what it used to be.

— Stan Kenton

Trane was the father. Pharoah was the son. I was the holy ghost.

— Albert Ayler

Love songs last because they are about feelings that don't change.

— Diana Krall

I think you have to have a jazz pedigree to be on jazz radio.

— Rita Coolidge

The Jazz have got one of the most loyal fanbases.

— Derrick Favors

When Lester plays, he almost seems to be singing; one can almost hear the words.

— Billie Holiday

We're working as if it were going out of style-which of course it is.

— Paul Desmond

If Music is a Place -- then Jazz is the City, Folk is the Wilderness, Rock is the Road, Classical is a…

— Vera Nazarian

Holy flowers floating in the air, were all these tired faces in the dawn of Jazz America.

— Jack Kerouac

My songs were influenced not so much by poetry on the page but by poetry being recited by the poets who recited…

— Bob Dylan

In college, I was able to be the vocalist for the jazz band at Arkansas State.

— Ashley McBryde

One thing I like about jazz, kid, is that I don't know what's going to happen next. Do you?

— Bix Beiderbecke

It's so special to hear a room full of thousands of kids who are usually between 15 and 25 screaming along to jazz standards.

— Laufey

I have very eclectic taste in music. I like everything from Nirvana, which is featured in the film, to world music, to…

— Isla Fisher

I like soul, I like rock, I like new wave, I like punk music, I like blues, I like jazz, and I…

— DJ Premier

There's been this perception that Europeans still hold on to, that they discover the real talented ones in American culture and give…

— Andrew Bird

Music is the shorthand of emotion. Emotions, which let themselves be described in words with such difficulty, are directly conveyed to man…

— Leo Tolstoy

When I was very young, there was a lot of music at home, mostly jazz. I was walking around singing and pretending…

— Nile Rodgers

I felt quite frankly having been raised during the depression and looking back at the roaring twenties, the jazz age, which was…

— Hugh Hefner

There's a richness to the old works if you look before the 1950s. The chord progressions and the language was more complicated,…

— Tori Amos

I grew up listening to John Coltrane and jazz, so they were subtle influences. I sometimes think about doing some kind of…

— Kim Gordon

“The thing in jazz that will get Bix Beiderbecke out of his bed at two o’clock in the morning, pick that cornet…

— Wynton Marsalis

Reactionary conservatives are smiling through the racial apocalypse. To them, race baiting is a joke, as 'humorist' Rush Limbaugh will tell you…

— John Ridley

My dad's also a musician, so jazz was always around the house. When I was 11, I developed an interest in it,…

— Kamasi Washington

Playing octaves was just a coincidence. And it's still such a challenge, like chord versions, block chords like cats play on piano.…

— Wes Montgomery

By the latter part of high school, by the middle of junior year in high school, Jay Rodriguez played me some Irakere…

— Jon Gordon

I started playing music around 13 or 14, played jazz in high school, and played other stuff in college. After college, I…

— Jesse Andrews

I worry more about the marketing that's taken hold since the 70s. The Jazz era, the Swing era, those were huge. Entire…

— Wynton Marsalis

Then it evolved into more of a ballad style singer/songwriter thing. And there was a conflict in trying to merge the two…

— Van Morrison

I think music as we know it, is autobiographical.

— Julius Hemphill

Film in the 20th century, it's the American art form, like jazz.

— Martin Scorsese

Jazz music creates so many phenomenal figures.

— Wynton Marsalis

Is jazz a rhythm, or is it a vibration?

— Anthony Braxton

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

— Tommy Chong

There is no art without intention.

— Duke Ellington

Blues is to jazz what yeast is to bread--without it, it's flat.

— Carmen McRae

If I am playing any music at all it is jazz music.

— Ginger Baker