Jazz  Quotes

• Jelly Roll Morton - "Jazz music is a style, not compositions; any kind of music may be played in Jazz if one has the knowledge."
• Jelly Roll Morton - "It is evidently known, beyond contradiction, that New Orleans is the cradle of Jazz and I, myself, happened to be the creator in the year 1902."
• Gerry Mulligan - "Jazz is a music to be played & not to be intellectualized on."
• Gerry Mullligan - "Life on the road is murder. It's as though life begins & ends with your horn in your mouth."
• Jack Nicholson - "The Blues & Jazz will live forever. So will the Delta & the Big Easy."
• Friedrich Nietzsche - "In music the passions enjoy themselves."
• Richard M. Nixon - "If you want to make beautiful music, you must play the black & the white notes together."

• Charlie Parker - "The time is now."
• Charlie Parker - "I can play all I know in eight bars."
• Charlie Parker - "Don't play the saxophone. Let it play you."
• Charlie Parker - "Once I could play what I heard inside me, that's when I was born."
• Charlie Parker - "Master your instrument, master the music & then forget all that & just play."
• Charlie Parker - "I kept thinking there's bound to be something else? I could hear it sometimes, but I couldn't play it."
• Charlie Parker - "They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art."
• Charlie Parker - "Music is your experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn."
• Charlie Parker - "In Kansas City joints ran 9pm-5am. Pay was a $1.25 a night but somebody special like Count Basie could command $1.50."
• Joe Pass - "If you hit a wrong note, then make it right by what you play afterward."
• Jaco Pastorius - "I'm not a star. I'm just backing up the cats."
• Jaco Pastorius - "A chimpanzee could learn what I do physically, but it goes way beyond that. When you play, you play life."
• Les Paul - "We go in there & we work on altering those ideas & in many cases go in different directions."
• Les Paul - "I have younger friends who don't work & they aren't doing so well. My secret is to keep going, keep working."
• Luciano Pavarotti - "Music making is the most joyful activity possible, the most perfect expression of any emotion."
• Madeleine Peyroux - "The wonderful thing about Jazz is its willingness to take chances."
• Oscar Peterson - "Some players get very philosophical & cerebral about Jazz. You don't need any prologues, you just play."
• Oscar Peterson - "It's the group sound that's important. You have to know the instruments & how to back them up. That's Jazz."
• Oscar Peterson - "I believe in using the entire piano as a single instrument capable of expressing every possible musical idea."
• Michel Petrucciani - "I don't believe in geniuses, I believe in hard work."
• Plato - "Music gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination & charm & gaiety to life."
• Herb Pomeroy - "Jazz is the most fun you can have with your clothes on."
• Lou Rawls - "Music is the greatest communication in the world."
• Lou Rawls - "Even if people don't understand the language that you're singing in, they still know good music when they hear it."
• Joshua Redman - "If everyone liked what I did, I probably wouldn't be playing anything of depth."
• Buddy Rich - "You only get better by playing."
• Buddy Rich - "A musician starting out today should get a great teacher & learn all there is to know about the instrument."
• Buddy Rich - "As far as music school goes, I walked through Berkelee one time."
• Buddy Rich - "I never believed in a set routine. It should depend on how you feel, because you play what you feel."
• Don Rickles - "When you enter a room you have to kiss Sinatra's ring. I don't mind but it's in his back pocket."

• Max Roach - "Monk encouraged me to emancipate the drums from their subservient role as timekeepers."
• Max Roach - "The people who really got me off were dealing with the musical potential of their instrument."
• Max Roach - "Jazz is a democratic musical form. We take our respective instruments & collectively create a thing of beauty."
• Shorty Rogers - "When Bird came on the scene, it was shocking as in the Bible: everything was dark & then there was light."

• Sonny Rollins - "I'm now a legend, whether I want to be or not."
• Sonny Rollins - "Jazz is the type of music that can absorb so many things & still be Jazz."
• Sonny Rollins - "One very important thing I learned from Monk was his complete dedication to music."
• Sonny Rollins - "Improvisation is the ability to create something very spiritual, something of one's own."
• Sonny Rollins - "I feel that Jazz improvisation is the ultimate. You have to create on the spot, the essence of this music."
• George Russell - "The reason I write music is that I feel it's a vehicle or channel which leads to your true self, your essence."
• Jackie Ryan - "All art inspires me. Life inspires me. The art of life, thus my own art."
• David Sanborn - "Instrumental music is increasingly marginalized."
• David Sanborn - "Its all about finding the right note at the right place & knowing when to leave it alone."
• Arturo Sandoval - "Blow your life through your horn."
• Arturo Sandoval - "I am only a mixture of countless influences & thanks to that I am able to find my own style of playing."
• Robert Schumann - "To compose music, all you need to do is remember a tune that no one else has thought of."
• Artie Shaw - "Shoot for the moon. If you miss you'll still end up in the stars."
• Artie Shaw - "I did all you can do with a clarinet. Any more would have been less.
• Artie Shaw - "An entertainer pleases others while an artist only has to please himself."
• Artie Shaw - "I like the music. I love it & live it in fact. But for me the business part of music just plain stinks."
• Artie Shaw - "An artist should write for himself & not for an audience. If the audience likes it, great. If not, they can keep away."
• Artie Shaw - "I can't understand guys who just have to have your autograph. What do you do when you get home, take it out & look at it?"
• George Bernard Shaw - "Hell is full of musical amateurs."
• George Shearing - "Can anybody be given creativity? No. Only equipment to develop it if it's in them in the first place."