Jazz Quotes: top 100 famous quotes about Jazz

Jazz Quotes & Sayings

Happy to read and share the best inspirational Jazz quotes, sayings and quotations on Wise Famous Quotes.

The beauty of America, neither cool jazz nor devoured Egyptian
heroes, lies in
lives in the darkness I inhabit in the midst of sterile millions — Frank O'Hara

Hip-hop has a feeling element, it's not just about knowing music. It's not like classical music or jazz where you can go on raw energy. — Robert Greene

Jazz is a state of mind. There's no boundaries. — Robert Glasper

Diana Krall knocks me out. I like jazz and I like her simple approach. — Merle Haggard

Y'know, I don't like jazz much. I'll put it on once in a while and listen, and I'll appreciate it. — Joe Perry

The ink line drawing flowed the cursive journey,
created on paper canvas that brought the story to life. — Jazz Feylynn

Jazz is a way of life, and you have to learn about it on the street, so to speak. But the training comes in by giving you the tools to work with. — Paul Horn

We must be as pure as our music. — Albert Ayler

Fairy tales can come true
It can happen to you
If you're young at heart — Frank Sinatra

So the whole basis for jazz music is based on the fact that the bass player could not play his instrument. — Miroslav Vitous

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

Some people think I'm a rock 'n' roll musician and some think I'm a jazz musician but, for me, there is no difference. — Georgie Fame

The jazz and blues clubs are like the jazz and blues musicians - they're disappearing. — Buddy Guy

It's sort of what jazz would be if it stopped being snobby and what rock would be if it stopped being stupid. — Andy Partridge

A lot of jazz artists think people should like what they're doing just because it's jazz. I don't buy that. — Pat Metheny

I love Rihanna's new album, Skrillex, and Norah Jones. They're are all very different, but I love any rock, pop, and jazz. — Ashley Benson

It seems to me monstrous that anyone should believe that the jazz rhythm expresses America. Jazz rhythm expresses the primitive savage. — Isadora Duncan

One of the most important functions of jazz has been to encourage a hope for freedom, for people living in situations of intolerance or struggle. — Herbie Hancock

You had to account for every move, arrival or exit. In the world there was a conspiracy against improvisation. It was only permitted in jazz. — Anais Nin

Acting is like music and you improvise. It's like jazz, there's no rhyme or reason to it. It's not a plan. You practice to music and you just play it. — Denzel Washington

If you mess around with jazz, you better have a good drummer and a good bass player. — Gunther Schuller

I thought, If I'm gonna run a jazz club, if I've got Miles Davis' posters in my bar, I should at least know what his horn sounds like. — Oprah Winfrey

Jazz is the folk music of the machine age. — Paul Whiteman

I swear it looked like she wanted her words to slither around us and go out the door unheard. — Jazz Feylynn

I barely heard her muffled comment of "Yay," but the sarcastic jazz hands were hard to miss. — Katie McGarry

I tried practicing for a few weeks and ended up playing too fast. — Paul Desmond

When I joined the band I didn't know any of the tunes, and when I left the band I didn't know any of the tunes! — Keith Jarrett

Blues and soul and jazz music has so much pain, so much beauty of raw emotion and passion. — Christina Aguilera

So easy, when you know how. — Fats Waller

I'm concerned with trend. I don't know where jazz fans will come from 20 years from now. — Norman Granz

I love to hear the note sing. — Joe Sample

If you don't know what to play, play nothing. — Miles Davis

That's the wonder of jazz, Mary," Johnny explained. "There's no right way and there's no order. — James Runcie

I never sing a song the same way twice. — Billie Holiday

In blues, classical and jazz, you get more revered with age. — Bonnie Raitt

You have to look good. — Benny Goodman

There's so much around, you don't know what to listen to. All I've got at home is Bo Diddley, some Stones and Beatles stuff, and old jazz records. — Syd Barrett

I would say that jazz is my own language. — Amy Winehouse

I was in punk rock bands, heavy metal bands, world music bands, jazz groups, any type of music that would take me. I just love music. — Reggie Watts

Jazz is really 20th-century fusion music. You take West African harmony and rhythm, mix with European harmony, and boom! — Christian Scott

Jazz changes and all. But I don't know the names of what it is I'm doing. — Stevie Ray Vaughan

Boxing is like jazz. The better it is, the less people appreciate it. — George Foreman

Sometimes you need to stand with your nose to the window and have a good look at jazz. And I've done that on many occasions. — J.J. Johnson

I used to be a jazz snob, believe it or not. I sort of turned my nose up at anything more commercial. — Norah Jones

Jazz is not gonna be a dinosaur and stay around in one form. — McCoy Tyner

Flexibility is an essential part of Jazz. It's what gives Jazz music the ability to combine with all other types of music and not lose its identity. — Wynton Marsalis

[David] Bowie went on to make best-selling music - funk, dance music, electronic music, while also being influenced by cabaret and jazz. — David Bowie

He has only heard what I felt. — Zora Neale Hurston

[On Lisa Kudrow:] She's like the best kind of jazz there is. You don't know what note she's going to hit and it's always a surprise. — Meg Ryan

Jazz is an idea that is more powerful than the details of its history. — Pat Metheny

I don't think that jazz, as any kind of an art form, has any permanence attached to it, apart from the practitioners of it. — Norman Granz

Maybe that's why the Westmores never allowed any pets. Hard to keep them off the menu. — Jazz Feylynn

Well, I'm too old to pimp, and too young to die, so I'm just gonna keep playin' — Clark Terry

I listen to jazz mainly. Mainstream jazz. — Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

People know what they want because they know what other people want. — Theodor W. Adorno

I like to go hear jazz late-night up in Harlem. — Daniel Boulud

A gripper of a read ... Silence revives the cliff's-edge drama of those Jazz age climbs and drives home the tragedy of Mallory's death. — Bruce Barcott

In my music, I'm trying to play the truth of what I am. — Charles Mingus

And that's the soulful thing about playing: you offer something to somebody. You don't know if they'll like it, but you offer it. — Wynton Marsalis

I missed jazz, kind of. And by the time I came to it in life, it was too intimidating to enjoy thoroughly. — Warren Zevon

Jazz demands that you bring to it things that are valuable to you, that are personal to you. — Pat Metheny

Nothing else will ever capture the democratic process in sound as perfectly as Jazz. — Wynton Marsalis

There are editing procedures for talks just as there are editing procedures in jazz improvisation. — David Antin

Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. — Charlie Parker

I always say it's not my Arkestra, it belongs to some other force which wants certain things, to reach people. — Sun Ra

She was cool -
the whole world
seemed
to spin around her
in smooth jazz. — Atticus Poetry

My D'Angelico is a jazz archtop guitar. That guitar was made for Glenn Miller's guitar player in 1939. It's a '39 D'Angelico New Yorker. — Brian Setzer

I fell in love with jazz when I was 12 years old from listening to Duke Ellington and hearing a lot of jazz in New York on the radio. — Steve Lacy

I know of musicians who have played together for decades who hate each other. The Modern Jazz Quartet for one. — Gary Burton

Change is always happening. That's one of the wonderful things about jazz music. — Maynard Ferguson

Hopefully, we learn to appreciate hip-hop here so that it doesn't go the way of jazz. — Talib Kweli

Krupa's drums went through us like a triple bourbon. — Eddie Condon

Any live venue where there is alcohol served and it's past midnight there is gonna be fights. It doesn't matter if it's Hip-Hop, Rock or Jazz. — Slaine

As any jazz musician knows, it takes flexibility and adaptability for improvisation to create beauty. — Doc Childre

Taxi drivers used to ask me what kind of music I did, and I'd say, 'Well, it's kind of jazz, soul, classical' - but that makes no sense to anyone. — Laura Mvula

When we stopped in front of it and turned off the engine, we heard music coming from inside - jazz. It sounded sophisticated and lonely. We — Denis Johnson

Jazz is the music of unemployment. — Frank Zappa

[If] you don't have any soul and you don't have any talent, jazz is what you should do ... any fool can do it; all you gotta do is practice. — Stewart Copeland

I'm really not this jazz traditionalist guy you've been making me out to be all of these years. — Christian McBride

Jazz was more of a tool for me to use to enhance my musicality. — John Otto

Jazz has always been a melting pot of influences and I plan to incorporate them all. — Esperanza Spalding

I listen to Neil Young and jazz and classical stations and, if my girlfriend's driving, it tends to be Hall & Oates. — Frank Black

Jazz has borrowed from other genres of music and also has lent itself to other genres of music. — Herbie Hancock

One chord is fine. Two chords are pushing it. Three chords and you're into jazz. — Lou Reed

If America has a future, Jazz has a future. The two are inseparable. — George Russell

I'm a great jazz fan. — Vidal Sassoon

When I was a little kid I thought I would grow up to be black and sing jazz in nightclubs. — Molly Ringwald

Pain can be washed out with a song. / Pain can become jazz digested and transformed. — Alexis De Veaux

And will I like being called a jazz baby?
You will love it. — F Scott Fitzgerald

This is so nice, it must be illegal. — Fats Waller

The kid come in at a strange angle, made the notes glitter like crystal. — Esi Edugyan

This assignment could damn well project all the words across my face and the ink stain my hands a gory mess before I finished it. — Jazz Feylynn

I am famous because I am an African American jazz artist. — Nat King Cole

Rather than say I play Jazz, I simply say I play music. — Kenny Garrett

I had my jazz club and I had enough money. So I didn't have to write for my living. — Haruki Murakami

The chief trouble with jazz is that there is not enough of it; some of it we have to listen to twice. — Don Herold

Jazz music just resonates with the frequency of me. — Esperanza Spalding

All them weird chords which don't mean a thing ... you got no melody to remember, and no beat to dance to — Louis Armstrong

I'm sure there are people who say like, "I was wearing weird emo eyeliner," but there's something pretty embarrassing about the jazz phase. — Nick Kroll

I think jazz is actually quite unforgiving in its disdain for nostalgia. It demands creativity and change at its highest level. — Pat Metheny