Jazz  Quotes

• Carla Bley - "I like chords that are very lush with all the lush parts taken out."
• Carla Bley - "When you are studying Jazz best thing to do is listen to records & live music as much you can & absorb everything."
• Carla Bley - "Listening is more important than anything because that's what music is. Somebody is playing something & you're receiving it."
• Todd Boyd - "If a Jazz musician plays someone else's song, he has a responsibility to make a distinct & original statement."
• Bob Brookmeyer - "A Jazz man should be saying what he feels: humor, sadness, joy... all the things that humans have."
• Les Brown - "If you take responsibility for yourself you will develop a hunger to accomplish your dreams."
• Ray Brown - "Jazz is something that you have to feel. It's something that you have to live."
• Ray Brown - "Jazz is a complete lifestyle, something that you feel, something that you live."
• Dave Brubeck - "You can be beyond yourself, better than your technique, better than most of your usual ideas."
• Dave Brubeck - "There is a time where you're beyond yourself, better than your technique, better than your usual ideas."
• Dave Brubeck - "There's a way of playing safe & then there's where you create something you haven't created before."
• Ken Burns - "By its very nature, no one person can ever be the center of Jazz."
• Ken Burns - "Jazz is a very accurate, curiously accurate accompaniment to 20th century America."
• Ken Burns - "Jazz is a spectacularly accurate model of democracy & a look into our redemptive future possibilities."
• Ken Burns - "The genius of our country is improvisation & Jazz reflects that. It's our great contribution to the arts."
• Gary Burton - "Always keep reaching."
• Gary Burton - "Improvising musicians are musical travelers, voyagers. There is a freedom to wander the musical landscape."
• Charlie Byrd - "The guitar chose me."
• Charlie Byrd - "A person should design the way he makes a living around how he wishes to make a life."
• Sammy Cahn - "The popular song is America's greatest ambassador."
• Cab Calloway - "Everybody came. Everybody came to the Cotton Club."
• Cab Calloway - "My audience was my life. What I did & how I did it was all for my audience."
• Cab Calloway - "Jazz was not only built in the minds of the great ones, but on the backs of the ordinary ones."
• George Carlin - "Jazz musicians are only workers who will put in a full shift for pay & then go somewhere else & continue to work for free."
• Betty Carter - "If it wasn't for hustlers, gangsters & gamblers there'd be no Jazz. Wasn't middle-class who said Let's go hear Bird tonight."
• Ron Carter - "I felt a responsibility to present a viable alternative to the popular electric sound."
• Ron Carter - "I felt a responsibility to present a viable alternative to the popular electric sound."
• Maxwell Chandler - "Jazz music is an aural souvenir of mankind's attempt to express the intangible, the heart, the soul, through art."
• Bill Charlap - "The Blues contain so much joy & sadness at the same time."
• Ray Charles - "I never wanted to be famous. I only wanted to be great."
• Ray Charles - "Learning to read music in Braille & play by ear helped me develop a damn good memory."
• Ray Charles - "I do Jazz, Blues, Country & so forth. I do them all like a good utility man."
• Don Cherry - "Music is one of the arts that make a person completely naked."
• Don Cherry - "When people believe in boundaries, they become part of them."
• Van Cliburn - "An artist can only be evaluated after he's dead. At the 11th hour he might do something that will eclipse everything else."
• Aaron Copland - "Is there a meaning to music? Yes. Can you state in so many words what the meaning is? No."
• Nat King Cole - "The people who know nothing about music are the ones always talking about it."
• Ornette Coleman - "Music is a verb."
• Ornette Coleman - "The idea is more important than the style you're playing in."
• Ornette Coleman - "The hidden things, the subconscious that lies in the body & lets you know: You feel this, you play this."
• Ornette Coleman - "The human being receives the pleasure from music, not from the argument over what it is."
• Ornette Coleman - "Jazz is the only music in which the same note can be played night after night but differently each time."
• John Coltrane - "All a musician can do is to get closer to the source."
• John Coltrane - "You can play a shoestring if you're sincere."
• John Coltrane - "I was first awakened to musical exploration by Dizzy & Bird."
• John Coltrane - "The first time I heard Bird play, it hit me right between the eyes."
• John Coltrane - "I start in the middle of a sentence & move both directions at once."
• John Coltrane - "My music is the spiritual expression of what I am: my faith, my knowledge, my being."
• John Coltrane - "Invest yourself in everything you do. There's fun in being serious."
• John Coltrane - "Sometimes I wish I could walk up to my music for the first time, as if I had never heard it before."
• John Coltrane - "I've found you've got to look back at the old things & see them in a new light."