Jazz music is the real deal.
The expression of freedom that is Jazz improvisation mirrors the ethos of the best parts of society.
There’s a spiritual satisfaction that one gets from listening and playing good Jazz.
People who like Jazz feel the depth and soul and intelligence that the music expresses.
Jazz music is our original American culture.
Jazz standards are our contribution to music history.
Jazz is not to be sliced into bites by mass marketing geniuses who assume we are mindless cattle.
I thought of nothing else but rock ‘n’ roll; apart from sex and food and money–but that’s all the same thing, really.
Once you have been bitten by the Jazz bug, it is not a choice anymore.
I always play what I feel. I always feel like me, but I’m a different me every day. I get ideas from everything. A big color, the sound of water and wind, or a flash of something cool. Playing is like life. Either you feel it or you don’t.
Musicians need enough experience to develop a vocabulary.
You can play a shoestring if you’re sincere.
He’s not a performer, he’s not a composer, he’s not even a musician, but Norman Granz is Mr. Jazz.
Jazz is America’s classical music.
Jazz music just resonates with the frequency of me.
Being a singer is a natural gift. It means I’m using to the highest degree possible the gift that God gave me to use. I’m happy with that.
I have won several prizes as the world’s slowest alto player and a special award in 1961 for quietness.
I hate straight singing. I have to change a tune to my own way of doing it. That’s all I know
Jazz never ends… it just continues.
People will hire you and then tell you not to do what you were doing when they heard you.
The way I think about the practicing, it is my undercover work.
Don’t threaten me with love, baby. Let’s just go walking in the rain.
