Jazz  Quotes

• Roy Eldridge - "I didn't know the right names for anything at first, but I knew what knocked me out. Changes... man I dug."
• George Eliot - "I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music."
• Kurt Elling - "Jazz singing is like pornography. You can't say what it is, but you know it when you see it."
• Kurt Elling - "The audience should feel they are hearing the future, that is arriving just on time."
• Duke Ellington - "It's all music."
• Duke Ellington - "A goal is a dream with a finish line."
• Duke Ellington - "There is no art without intention."
• Duke Ellington - "A problem is a chance for you to do your best."
• Duke Ellington - "What does music mean to you? What would you do without music?"
• Duke Ellington - "Music is my mistress & she plays second fiddle to no one."
• Duke Ellington - "I merely took the energy it takes to pout & wrote some blues."
• Duke Ellington - "To keep a band together you simply need a gimmick. The gimmick I use is to pay them money."
• Duke Ellington - "By & large Jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn't want your daughter to associate with."
• Duke Ellington - "The most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen."
• Duke Ellington - "Critics get a little carried away with what someone should have done, rather than what he did."
• Don Ellis - "I expect the audience to come up to my level."
• Don Ellis - "I am not interested in compromising my music to make it palatable to an assumed sub-standard mass."
• Don Ellis - "To be a true artist you have to play the way you feel not the way others think you should feel."
• Don Ellis - "I worked until I could play & do changes at any tempo in any key & said 'What else is there?' Now I'm finding out."
• Herb Ellis - "It was in tune when I bought it."
• John Erskine - "Music is the only language in which you cannot say anything sarcastic."
• Kevin Eubanks - "Let your life be your music & let your music be your life."
• Bill Evans - "Jazz is not a what, it is a how."
• Bill Evans - "You give up your own personality when you imitate somebody."
• Bill Evans - "Keep searching for that sound you hear in your head until it becomes a reality."
• Bill Evans - "It bugs me when people try to analyze Jazz as an intellectual theorem. It's not, it's feeling."
• Bill Evans - "I like people who have worked long & hard, developing through introspection & dedication."
• Bill Evans - "You can't explain Jazz to anyone without losing the experience because it's feeling, not words."
• Bill Evans - "I'm using the insides of sounds to move around in a very subtle way which, I think, ends up being inevitable."
• Bill Evans - "Despite the fact I'm a professional performer, it's true that I have always preferred playing without an audience."
• Bill Evans - "Art should teach spirituality by showing a person a portion of himself that he would not discover otherwise."
• Bill Evans - "Words are the children of reason & therefore can't translate the feeling of Jazz because they're not part of it."
• Maynard Ferguson - "The day of the great Jazz improviser who doesn't know how to read music is over."
• Maynard Ferguson - "Change is always happening. That's one of the wonderful things about Jazz music."
• Ella Fitzgerald - "Forgive me if I don't have the words. Maybe I can sing it & you'll understand."
• Ella Fitzgerald - "When we were at the Apollo, Holiday was a block away. I asked her for her autograph."
• Ella Fitzgerald - "The fabulous places I've been, wonderful things that've happened, great people I've met ought to make a story."
• Ella Fitzgerald - "Don't give up trying to do what you really want. Where there is love & inspiration, you can't go wrong."
• F. Scott Fitzgerald - "The Jazz Age became less & less an affair of youth. The sequel was like a children's party taken over by the elders."
• Bela Fleck - "It doesn't have to be happy music to be inspiring."
• Bill Frisell - "There's so much music out there & so many possibilities. I like anyone who plays any instrument."
• Robert Fripp - "What we hear is the quality of our listening."
• Robert Fripp - "If the audience doesn't hear what is going on, is it going on?"
• Bill Frisell - "There's always this sound out there that's just a little beyond my reach & that just sort of keeps me going."
• Pete Fountain - "If you're making money people don't think you're playing Jazz. When you're not making money they think you're a great Jazz musician."
• Erroll Garner - "Every day when I sit down to play, I learn something new."
• Kenny Garrett - "Rather than say I play Jazz, I simply say I play music."
• George Gershwin - "Life is a lot like Jazz... it's best when you improvise."
• George Gershwin - "Jazz is one of the best things that you can find in your life, it can always be your friend."
• George Gershwin - "True music must repeat the thought & inspirations of the people & the time. My people are Americans & my time is today."
• Ira Gershwin - "Love is sweeping the country."
• Ira Gershwin - "One can be very happy without demanding that others agree with them."
• Ira Gershwin - "Deep, unspeakable suffering may well be called a baptism, a regeneration, the initiation into a new state."