Jazz  Quotes

• Bobby Short - "Life is tough & if you're creative, it's tougher."
• Wayne Shorter - "Music is interior decoration."

• Horace Silver - "We open our minds, stretch forth, take chances & venture out musically to arrive at something new & different."
• Horace Silver - "Jazz is not background music. You must concentrate in order to get the most out of it. You must absorb it."
• Carly Simon - "You usually can't tell what's inspiring until you look back on it."
• Nina Simone - "Music is a gift and a burden I've had since I can remember who I was."
• Nina Simone - "Jazz is not just music, it's a way of life, it's a way of being, a way of thinking."
• Zoot Sims - "As long as you've got your horn in your mouth, you're developing."

• Homer Simpson - "Ahhh - those Jazz guys are just makin' that stuff up!"
• Frank Sinatra - "I'm gonna live till I die."
• Frank Sinatra - "You gotta love livin', baby, 'cause dyin' is a pain in the ass."
• Frank Sinatra - "May you live to be 100 & may the last voice you hear be mine."
• Frank Sinatra - "Whatever else has been said about me personally is unimportant. When I sing, I believe I'm honest."
• Willie "the Lion" Smith - "Get around, be on the scene, play it clean, be seen, be keen & be over eighteen."

• John Philip Sousa - "Anybody can write music of a sort. But touching the public heart is quite another thing."
• John Philip Sousa - "Jazz will endure just as long people hear it through their feet instead of their brains."
• Esperanza Spalding - "Jazz music just resonates with the frequency of me."
• James Spaulding - "I have no elitist concepts about Jazz. I would not be the musician I am today without experiencing invaluable music styles that are at the roots of African American black life & culture."
• Jo Stafford - "When rock music came in, I wasn't bitter about it. I was puzzled."
• Billy Strayhorn - "All music is beautiful."
• Tierney Sutton - "I just fell in love with the integrity of the music & that was it."
• Steve Swallow - "I don't meditate before I play or compose, but I see playing & composing as meditative acts.
• Art Tatum - "There is no such thing as a wrong note."
• Art Tatum - "You have to practice improvisation, let no one kid you about it!"
• Billy Taylor - "Jazz is America's classical music."
• Billy Taylor - "Players are coming from other backgrounds: rock, folk, ethnic music. It's changing Jazz for the better."
• Cecil Taylor - "Improvisation is the ability to talk to oneself."
• Cecil Taylor - "I discovered very early that it wasn't quite enough for me to imitate people."
• Cecil Taylor - "You must surrender whatever preconceptions you have about music if you're really interested in it."

• Jack Teagarden - "All that I've played, all that I've sung, I couldn't have done any other way."
• Clark Terry - "Imitate, assimilate & innovate."
• Clarke Terry - "Your sound is you & what you really feel inside."
• Toots Thielemans - "Jazz is very much alive. Everywhere I go there's a new generation of musicians playing Jazz music."
• Ed Thigpen - "Musicians should never forget we're blessed. We have a special gift that people enjoy through us."
• Mel Torme - "Jazz & love are the hardest things to describe from rationale."
• Lennie Tristano - "The hippest thing you can do is not play at all. Just listen."
• Hsun Tzu - "Music is the great arbiter of the world, the key to central harmony & a necessary requirement of human emotion."
• Sarah Vaughan - "There are notes between notes, you know."
• Sarah Vaughan - "When I sing, trouble can sit right on my shoulder & I don't even notice."
• Bennie Wallace - "Art is self expression. If you are expressing someone else's personality, that is not art."

• Fats Waller - "If you don't know what it is, don't mess with it."
• Fats Waller - "You get that right tickin' rhythm, man & its ON!"
• George Wein - "I got more publicity for not doing a festival than for doing the festival."
• Paul Whiteman - "Jazz came to America three hundred years ago in chains."
• Jessica Williams - "If you must listen to bad music, please use headphones."
• Joe Williams - "It's not that you want to sing, it's that you have to sing."
• Joe Williams - "Musicians have the intimacy of bringing two people together & the aesthetic, romantic transference."

• Mary Lou Williams - "I heard someone say 'What's that kid doing here? Call your piano player & let's get started.'"
• Mary Lou Williams - "For most dates I was paid the sum of $1 per hr & they always tipped me at the end of the night."
• Tony Williams - "Composing makes me feel like I've finally gotten all the way up the ladder as a musician."
• Tony Williams - "I've studied all my musical life, but learning is only good if you do something constructive with it."
• Anthony Wilson - "Writing is allowing the musical idea to speak for itself."
• Cassandra Wilson - "I'm always looking for ways to develop as a Jazz artist, to find different ways of using my voice."
• Cassandra Wilson - "I cringed when I heard myself described as a Jazz singer. I've always thought of myself as a Jazz vocalist."
• Cassandra Wilson - "I was never interested in singing in the church or school. I was more interested in becoming a musician."
• Nancy Wilson - "I wanted to do the music, but not at the expense of being happy."
• Steve Winwood - "It could be my British need for discipline that makes me admire the American appetite for freedom & passion."
• Stevie Wonder - "Just because a man lacks the use of his eyes doesn't mean he lacks vision."
• Victor Wooten - "Never lose the groove to find a note."
• Lester Young - "You can have tone & technique but without originality you ain't really nowhere. Gotta be original."
• Mike Zwerin - "Jazz musicians have some outlaw in them somewhere."