Jazz 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

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

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

[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

Jazz is the music of unemployment. — Frank Zappa

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm a great jazz fan. — Vidal Sassoon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You have to look good. — Benny Goodman