Jazz Quotes

Excerpted from Basic Musicianship

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John Coltrane - "The emotional reaction is all that matters." [P]
John Coltrane - "You can play a shoestring if you're sincere" [P]
John Coltrane - "All a musician can do is to get closer to the source." [P]
John Coltrane - "Invest yourself in everything you do. There's fun in being serious." [P]
John Coltrane - "All of the technique doesn't matter... only if the feeling is right." [P]
John Coltrane - "The first time I heard Bird play, it hit me right between the eyes."
John Coltrane - "I was first awakened to musical exploration by Dizzy and Bird."
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 - "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 and see them in a new light."
John Coltrane - "Sometimes I think I was making music through the wrong end of a magnifying glass."
John Coltrane - "Through Dizzy & Bird I began to learn about musical structures & the more theoretical aspects of music."
John Coltrane - "When you begin to see the possibilities of music, you desire to do something really good for people."
John Coltrane - "Being so inescapably a part of it, I'll never know what the listener gets, what the listener feels & that's too bad." [P]
Ravi Coltrane - "Know you're moving forward and have intentions of growing and trying to find yourself musically." [P]

Eddie Condon - "The boppers flat their fifths. We consume ours." [P]
Eddie Condon - "Louis Armstrong played trumpet like nobody else, put it down & sang a song like no one else."
Eddie Condon - "Beiderbecke took out a silver cornet, put it to his lips & blew a phrase. The sound came out like a girl saying 'yes.'"
Harry Connick Jr - "I just like the feeling of being on stage." [P]
Harry Connick Jr - "My parents weren't pushing me, they didn't have to... I was obsessed."
Ray Conniff - "If you believe in your art & you love what you do, that energy will go out & people will respond." [P]
Chris Connor - "If you're a singer, there's nothing better than tapping into your own experiences. I feel every note, every phrase." [P]
Chick Corea - "It's difficult for me to dislike an artist, no matter what he's creating." [P]
Chick Corea - "Only play what you hear. If you don't hear anything, don't play anything." [P]
Chick Corea - "I developed my own music by getting continually inspired by great musicians." [P]
Chick Corea - "Art is a subject that is inundated with opinions. In fact, that's all it is about is opinions."
Chick Corea - "The sound of the orchestra is one of the most magnificent musical sounds that has ever existed."
Chick Corea - "The fact that an artist is experiencing the joy of creation makes me feel like we're in it together."
Jack Costanzo - "Sometimes people didn't understand we were playing the future." [P]
Norman Cousins - "If something comes to life in others because of you, then you have made an approach to immortality." [P]
Stanley Cowell - "Discover your musical personality. Play from your heart and soul." [P]
Jiminy Cricket - "Follow your heart and fulfill your dreams, for the dream itself shall seek the dreamer and a dream is a wish your heart makes." [P]
Marilyn Crispell - "People who are meant to be drawn to your music will find you." [P]
Jim Croce - "If you dig it, do it. If you dig it a lot, do it again." [P]

Bing Crosby - "I'll keep singing 'till I die." [P]
Bing Crosby - "I think pop music is one of the few things in the 20th century that have made giant strides in reverse."
Connie Crothers - "I always had a deep feeling to be one with the very minute I'm in." [P]
Connie Crothers - "When I decided that I wanted to be a Jazz musician, I knew that it was about improvising."
Salvador Dali - "There is only one difference between a madman and me. I am not mad." [P]
Salvador Dali - "Have no fear of perfection. You'll never reach it." [P]
Tadd Dameron - "End phrases where you feel they should end. Don't look for resolutions you don't feel because the books call for them." [P]
Eddie Daniels - "Great players have the ability to move the listener every time they play." [P]
Bobby Darin - "It isn't true that you live only once. You only die once. You live lots of times if you know how."
Debbie Davies - "When you are so strongly drawn to music, you can't "not" be a musician." [P]
Miles Davis - "Stop before you're done." [P]
Miles Davis - "If you're trying to be hip... be hip!" [P]
Miles Davis - "Music & life are all about style."
Miles Davis - "Do not fear mistakes, there are none." [P]
Miles Davis - "Always look ahead, but never look back."
Miles Davis - "I'll play it first & tell you what it is later." [P]
Miles Davis - "Play what you know & then play above that." [P]
Miles Davis - "Don't play what's there, play what's not there." [P]
Miles Davis - "To keep creating you have to be about change."
Miles Davis - "If you understood everything I say, you'd be me!"
Miles Davis - "It's not the notes you play, it's the notes you don't play."
Miles Davis - "I can tell whether a person can play just by the way he stands." [P]
Miles Davis - "You know why I quit playing ballads? Cause I love playing ballads." [P]
Miles Davis - "Don't worry about playing a lot of notes. Just find one pretty one." [P]
Miles Davis - "Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself." [P]
Miles Davis - "I don't care if a dude is purple with green breath as long as he can swing."
Miles Davis - "I really liked Wynton when I first met him. He's still a nice young man, only confused."
Miles Davis - "You should never be comfortable, man. Being comfortable fouled up a lot of musicians." [P]
Miles Davis - "Bebop was about change, about evolution. It wasn't about standing still & being safe."
Miles Davis - "If you got up on the bandstand at Minton's & couldn't play, you might get your ass kicked."

Miles Davis - "So What or Kind of Blue were done in that era, the right hour, the right day. It's over; it's on the record."
Miles Davis - "I never thought Jazz was meant to be a museum piece like other dead things once considered artistic." [P]
Miles Davis - "I'm always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up in the morning & see the light. Then I'm grateful."
Sammy Davis, Jr. - "I have to be a star like another man has to breathe." [P]
Sammy Davis, Jr. - "What have I got? No looks, no money, no education... just talent."

Blossom Dearie - "If you don't like my peaches baby, why do you shake my tree?" [P]
Buddy DeFranco - "The thing about music, it helps you feel better. Many times when I'm not well and I begin playing I forget that I'm ill." [P]
Jack DeJohnette - "There really is no past, present or future... everything happens right now. You have to be in the moment and be conscious of that to play improvised music and to live your life in a way that can dance and is flexible." [P]
Barbara Dennerlein - "I just listened and got inspired." [P]
Dena DeRose - "The most important quality for a singer to present in concert or on a recording is a feeling of sincerity." [P]
Paul Desmond - "I was unfashionable before anyone knew who I was."
Paul Desmond - "I think I had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to sound like a dry martini."
Paul Desmond - "I would like to thank my father who discouraged me from playing the violin at an early age."
Paul Desmond - "I have won several prizes as the world's slowest alto player & a special award in 1961 for quietness."
Paul Desmond - "The qualities in music I consider most important are beauty, simplicity, originality, discrimination and sincerity." [P]
Bo Diddley - "I thank you in advance for the great round of applause I'm about to get."

Niels Lan Doky - "The best Jazz improvisations happen when people let completely go of their self-control. It requires that they trust themselves and their fellow musicians. You must be sure they'll catch you if you fall." [P]
Eric Dolphy - "Trying to play the new concept with a outward bound feeling." [P]
Eric Dolphy - "After the music is over it's gone in the air. You can never capture it again." [P]
Placido Domingo - "The high note is not the only thing." [P]
Kenny Dorham - "However it goes, I'll just keep playing. That's where the basic satisfaction is at." [P]
Bob Dorough- "I became a singer to sing my songs. They're so hip who else is going to sing them?" [P]
Dave Douglas - "Improvisation is the most widespread of all musical activities. Why did so many people spend so long pretending it never happened?" [P]
D C DowDell - "Music is what feelings sound like."
D C DowDell - "Play the music not the instrument."
D C DowDell - "Play what you feel, feel what you play." [P]
D C DowDell - "It is better to be felt than to be heard." [P]
D C DowDell - "Jazz improvisation is an elusive genius."
D C DowDell - "The more you listen, the more your hear."
D C DowDell - "Jazz - it takes passion to make it happen!"
D C DowDell - "Ideologies separate us. Art brings us together."
D C DowDell - "One shouldn't be in the habit of quoting oneself." [P]
D C DowDell - "You don't chose your inspirations, they chose you."
D C DowDell - "If your dreams don't scare you they're not big enough!"
D C DowDell - "Jazz improvisation is the art of drawing without an eraser."
D C DowDell - "Practice as if you are the worst, play as if you are the best!"
D C DowDell - "Hipness is what it is. But sometimes hipness is what it ain't." [P]

D C DowDell - "Jazz goes into my coffee in the morning, in my wine at night." [P]
D C DowDell - "If you are not doing what you love, you are wasting your time!" [P]
D C DowDell - "Jazz improvisation is the art of collective negotiated expression."
D C DowDell - "Play the way you'd like to be & soon you'll be the way you play." [P]
D C DowDell - "Listening to Jazz is self-improvement disguised as entertainment." [P]
D C DowDell - "The true musician plays what he/she hears. That cannot be a mistake."
D C DowDell - "Live music is best! Make plans to get out & support your local Jazz scene." [P]
D C DowDell - "My neighbors always listen to very hip Jazz... whether they like it or not." [P]
D C DowDell - "Jazz has evolved with an inner necessity characteristic of any true art form."
D C DowDell - "The jazziest American contribution to the vocabulary of English is Jazz itself."
D C DowDell - "Learn the tunes by playing the masters, learn expression by playing yourself."
D C DowDell - "It's spontaneity that has always characterized Jazz music's finest improvisers."
D C DowDell - "Music is a calling that you must bring your best to, whether listening, practicing or performing." [P]
D C DowDell - "Miles Davis & John Coltrane were so cool, if alive today global warming wouldn't be an issue."
D C DowDell - "Jazz music has always made powerful statements about freedom, creativity & personal identity."
D C DowDell - "Jazz affirms the noblest aspirations of character, individual discipline, perseverance & innovation."
D C DowDell - "A Jazz Diet will make you hipper, thinner, taller, smarter, richer, happier & more attractive to members of both sexes." [P]
D C DowDell - "The true value of this music lies in an artist's individual creativity & that unique process of expression which is Jazz."
D C DowDell - "While many attempts have been made to define Jazz, what's the point really. Jazz is to be experienced - period."
D C DowDell - "10% of musicians make 90% of the money, while the remaining 90% of musicians make the 10% that's left."
D C DowDell - "Spontaneously composed music is a counterpoint that has its own rules based on a natural order and intuitive logic."
D C DowDell - "Why do I play Jazz? The spontaneity of improvisation offers a glimpse into authenticity and an opportunity of understanding who I am."
D C DowDell - "What's tied Jazz together is its foundation in the Blues, a reliance on group interplay & the unique phenomenon of spontaneous improvisation." [P]
D C DowDell - "While many forms of music may use the dynamic of improvisation, Jazz exemplifies the unique characteristic of collective improvisation."
D C DowDell - "From hard rhythms of Be-bop, the mellow harmonies of Cool, to atonal forays of Free & the Straight Ahead delivery of Modern, it's all Jazz."
Andy Dufresne - "That's the beauty of music. They can't take it from you." [P]
Vernon Duke - "Glittering crowds & shimmering clouds in canyons of steel."

More Jazz quotes & quotations:

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