Jazz Quotes · Page 49

I always liked jazz. And my people liked the old blues, race records and the doo-wop and all that.

— Amiri Baraka

My dad listened to a load of jazz - Mahavishnu, Weather Report, Herbie Hancock.

— Julian Barratt

I really like the complexity of jazz, the emotional depth; I feel like there's no other music that's really as satisfying as…

— Jose James

My strength is to communicate with an audience and to know what jazz singing is capable of.

— Kurt Elling

We were either listening to jazz or Robert Johnson, the old blues man, but not to our peers.

— Butch Trucks

Jazz is not the format where I want to stay, but it really is a starting point for me.

— Justin Guarini

Many jazz artists go to L.A. seeking a more comfortable life and then they really stop playing.

— Sonny Rollins

Joe Sample was one of my heroes. I met him at the Curacao Jazz festival, and I fanned out like he was…

— India Arie

I already experimented with free jazz in the 1960s and, in my opinion, to play free jazz, you have to be a…

— John McLaughlin

In Jazz, improvisation isn't a matter of just making any ol' thing up. Jazz, like any language, has its own grammer and…

— Wynton Marsalis

I think when you love music, you love a lot of it. Now when it comes to jazz, it's very much in…

— Charles Lloyd

For me, I listened to a lot of female jazz artists. And of course, the Motown and Philly sounds, all that stuff…

— Philip Bailey

There were so many specific things from high school jazz band that I remembered: the conductor searching out people who were out…

— Damien Chazelle

I was serious about ballet for a long time, but my mom got me into tap and jazz and modern and hip-hop,…

— Greta Gerwig

I find Indian music very funky. I mean it's very soulful, with their own kind of blues. But it's the only other…

— John McLaughlin

If there had never been the Great Migration there would never have been jazz, there would never have been Michelle Obama. A…

— Ayana Mathis

The most important thing to do as an artist is to get out of your comfort zone and work with different people:…

— Katie Noonan

People with talent are not interested in showing off behind another person. They're more interested in the music. [Charlie Parker] was playing…

— Helen Merrill

Why a musician loves playing jazz or classical music or what makes them happy, and why an artist likes to paint -…

— Elisabeth Moss

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

— Robert Wyatt

When I start to think about all the things, I'm doing sometimes I just have to thank the man upstairs. Because I'm…

— Ramsey Lewis

What I can't understand why Blacks can't achieve royal status when it comes to forms that they have largely created? I mean…

— Ishmael Reed

I was a weird kid. I shouldve been gay because I listened to a lot of Broadway musicals. I dont know why…

— Frank Oz

Mum left school at 15, and after a few years of modelling and dating jazz musicians, was married by 21 to my…

— Natascha McElhone

I never liked jazz or anything else. Early rock n' roll - that was music to me. Everything else was boring.

— Lemmy

Learn to play the piano, man, and then you can figure out crazy solos of your own.

— Dizzy Gillespie

It's something that jazz has gotten away from, and it's unfortunate. Players aren't physical anymore.

— Branford Marsalis

The strange thing about Africa is how past, present and future come together in a kind of rough jazz, if you like.

— Ben Okri

An artist should write for himself & not for an audience. If the audience likes it, great. If not, they can keep away.

— Artie Shaw

I think more than writers, the major influences on me have been European movies, jazz, and Abstract Expressionism.

— Don DeLillo

“I'm eclectic,' she said to the HDs once and I could see them trying to work out where she plugged in.”

— Cath Crowley

“I’m always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up in the morning and see the light.”

— Miles Davis

[Jazz musicians] couldn't cut rock. I had to be more limited and specific about what I was doing.

— Van Morrison

My vocal influences are a lot of jazz singers: Billie Holiday, Julie London, they had this tenderness to their voice.

— Borns

Souljazz doesn't reinvent soul, jazz or the fusion thereof, but it plays all of the above with the passion that drove its…

— Anthony Fantano

the French write plays and paint as naturally as we play jazz - it's just a national gift.

— Alice B. Toklas

I used to sing in jazz clubs with a friend until she went another way.

— Ophelia Lovibond

When I was 12, I began listening to John Coltrane and I developed a love for jazz, which I still have more…

— Wynton Marsalis

I had heard blues and jazz all my life but I was never aware that it was associated with nightclubs and drinking.

— Nina Simone

Music, of course, is what I hear and something that I more or less live by. It's not an occupation or profession,…

— Duke Ellington