Jazz Quotes

Excerpted from Basic Musicianship

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Barry Harris - "The minute you make a mistake - that's improvisation!" [P]
Barry Harris - "Endings must come naturally, you're supposed to let it happen, not just to make it happen." [P]
Eddie Harris - "If you believe, you will. If you don't, you won't."
Eddie Harris - "It takes a dream to get started, desire to keep going and determination to finish." [P]
Coleman Hawkins - "Music should always be an adventure." [P]
Coleman Hawkins - "There's nobody plays like me & I don't play like anybody else." [P]
Helen Hayes - "I cry out for order and find it only in art." [P]
Isaac Hayes - "Have you ever wondered why young people take to music like fish to water? Maybe it's because music is fun, plain & simple."
Isaac Hayes - "Music opens up minds to dream great dreams about where you can go & what you can do."
Roy Haynes - "You must own it to play it." [P]
Percy Heath - "Jazz is letting everybody do his thing with the music." [P]
Hugh Hefner - "I've had a lot of things to be proud of in my life, but none more than the Jazz festival." [P]
Julius Hemphill - "I think music as we know it is autobiographical." [P]
Joe Henderson - "Give it a good go, try to have fun at it, try to pass on some good notes and some good sounds to your fans, and I don't think you will have wasted your time." [P]
Skitch Henderson - "I listen to everything, I listen to all artists that come along." [P]
Jon Hendricks - "Trouble follows me wherever I go. Thing I'm in is just a sack o'woe." [P]
Jon Hendricks - "Bird said he worked as dishwasher at Onyx Club on 52nd St. in the early 1940s just to hear Art Tatum play."
Jon Hendricks - "Jazz is an art form that depends on its antecedents. There must be respect for the people that have gone before."
Jimi Hendrix - "Knowledge speaks, wisdom listens."
Jimi Hendrix - "All I play is truth & emotion." [P]
Nat Hentoff - "Jazzmen are our surrogates for the unpredictable, our paladins of constant change." [P]
Fred Hersch - "The most important thing when writing tunes is to understand they have their own world." [P]
Woody Herman - "I'm going to be on the road for the rest of my life." [P]
Woody Herman - "We might as well swing boys, because Stravinsky cuts us all."
Conrad Herwig - "We limit ourselves if we just use influences on our own instrument." [P]
Hiromi - "Trios offer simple instrumentation, but the orchestral possibilities are so profound." [P]
DuBose Heyward - "Your daddy's rich & your ma is good lookin' So hush little baby don't you cry." [P]
Earl Hines - "If you see me up there on the stand smiling, I'm lost!" [P]

Billy Higgins - "A drummer has to be kind-hearted." [P]
Andrew Hill - "I'm trying to make music a sensual expression, not and academic experiment." [P]
Milt Hinton - "There's only one bass player in a band. I'm the best bass player of any band I'm in." [P]
Dave Holland - "I think music needs to be of its time & speak to that time." [P]
Dave Holland - "Just allow your feelings to go with the music & you'll find yourself carried along by it fairly quickly."
Dave Holland - "I think that what is important is that the music be honest & direct & that it is relevant to today."
Dave Holland - "Jazz has such great feeling & emotional content it really doesn't require technical understanding."

Billie Holiday - "When you sing, always tell the truth." [P]
Billie Holiday - "A kiss that is never tasted, is forever & ever wasted."
Billie Holiday - "I've been told that nobody sings the word 'hunger' like I do." [P]
Billie Holiday - "Don't threaten me with love, baby. Let's just go walking in the rain."
Billie Holiday - "If I'm going to sing like someone else, then I don't need to sing at all."
Billie Holiday - "I never had a chance to play with dolls like other kids. I started working when I was 6 years old."
Billie Holliday - "I hate straight singing. I have to change a tune to my own way of doing it. That's all I know." [P]
Billie Holiday - "You can't copy anybody and end up with anything. If you copy, you're working without any real feeling." [P]
Billie Holiday - "I don't think I ever sing the same way twice. The blues is sort of a mixed-up thing. You just have to feel it. Anything I do sing is part of my life."
Billie Holiday - "I'm always making a comeback but nobody ever tells me where I've been."
Oliver Wendell Holmes - "Music is to the soul what water is to the body."
Lena Horne - "Always be smarter than the people who hire you." [P]
Shirley Horn - "Let me whisper it. Let me sigh it. Let me sing it, my dear or I will cry it." [P]
Elbert Hubbard - "Art is not a thing; it is a way." [P]
Freddie Hubbard - "Dizzy used to tell me I'm playing too hard. He'd say to not give everything. Miles told me that too." [P]
Freddie Hubbard - "When I got started in New York, if you were different from Miles & Dizzy it was very difficult."
Freddie Hubbard - "They always want to sell me as a hard bopper."
Victor Hugo - "Music expresses that which cannot be said & on which it is impossible to be silent."
Charlie Hunter - "The trio is the biggest sound you can have with the smallest unit."
Charlie Hunter - "Play what you think is appropriate for the moment, not forcing any particular style." [P]

Bobby Hutcherson - "The whole thing of being in music is not to control it but to be swept away by it." [P]
Chuck Israels - "Nothing is so well-prepared as a great spontaneous performance." [P]
Chuck Israels - "Excessive reverence for the romantic illusion of original thought is the most fraudulent & destructive element in Jazz education." [P]
Chubby Jackson - "Influence is necessary, but from then on begin to find and discover one's own creative direction" [P]
Milt Jackson - "If I'm not saying it in four choruses or less, then I'm not saying it." [P]
Samuel L Jackson - "What kills me is that everybody thinks I like Jazz." [P]

Illinois Jacquet - "The patterns of big-band music are smooth and classical. It's got to be fresh. The brass section should crackle, like the sound of eggs being dropped into hot grease." [P]
Ahmad Jamal - "The quickest way to become troubled is to be concerned with what people say about your work." [P]
Ahmad Jamal - "Jazz Improvisation means that practice is not as straightforward as it would be when you simply have a score to play."
Henry James - "It's time to start living the life you've imagined." [P]
Al Jarreau - "Once you discover that you can, then you must." [P]
Al Jarreau - "You have to make a decided effort to not get seduced by the Blues."

Keith Jarrett - "Jazz is one of the least learnable art forms."
Keith Jarrett - "You have to be present for Jazz - that simple." [P]
Keith Jarrett - "I cannot say what I think is right about Music. I only know the rightness of it." [P]
Keith Jarrett - "Jazz is there & gone. It happens. You have to be present for it. That simple."
Keith Jarrett - "If music is sound & came from silence, then silence is potentially greater than sound." [P]
Eddie Jefferson - "You could still improvise but do it with lyrics." [P]
Florence Foster Jenkins - "People may say I can't sing, but no one can ever say I didn't sing." [P]
Antonio Carlos Jobim - "I learned my songs from the birds of the Brazilian forest." [P]
Bruce Johnson - "There has always been a tension between Jazz as a commercial music & as an art form."
Ellen Johnson - "I love Jazz because it has the perfect balance of discipline and freedom." [P]
Ellen Johnson - "I am attracted to Jazz music for the idea of being in the moment and communicating to people spontaneously."
J J Johnson - "Jazz is restless. It won't stay put & it never will." [P]
J J Johnson - "Sometimes you need to stand with your nose to the window & have a good look at Jazz."
Marc Johnson - "I don't want to necessarily label it but to me if it's improvised music, it's Jazz." [P]
Elvin Jones - "It's the honesty you apply to your playing that makes music enjoyable." [P]
Hank Jones - "I am the sum total of everything that I have experienced musically." [P]
Jo Jones - "The hardest thing for a musician to learn is how to play with people." [P]
John Paul Jones - "Jazz has always been a man telling the truth about himself."
Philly Joe Jones - "Man, you tell a story." [P]
Oliver Jones - "I should play until that feeling is gone but the feeling is still there." [P]
Quincy Jones - "You gotta do what you love & really believe in it because that is your truth." [P]
Quincy Jones - "Imagine what a harmonious world it could be if every single person, young & old shared just a little of what he is good at doing." [P]
Thad Jones - "I believe that when you write something that you should write fully wherever the line takes you." [P]
Scott Joplin - "Jazz probably got its start when saloon pianists who could not read music began improvising rags they had heard." [P]
Sheila Jordan - "I support the music that I love, until the music that I love can support me." [P]
Stanley Jordan - "Art and life work together mutually. I've always tried to approach my life as an artist, trying to create beauty." [P]
Carol Kaye - "When you hear somebody with balls, that's me." [P]

Wynton Kelly - "Music has to be accessible." [P]
John F. Kennedy - The arts are at the center of a nation's purpose & a test of civilization."
Stacey Kent - "The spaces between the notes are as powerful as the notes themselves." [P]
Stan Kenton - "Nostalgia ain't what it used to be."
Stan Kenton - "When you get to the top, don't forget to send the elevator down for the next guy." [P]
Jack Kerouac - "Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends, fads and popular opinion." [P]
Barney Kessel - "The important things for a musician to be concerned with are whether you are able to play what you sincerely think, and to have what you think be worth the playing." [P]
Alicia Keys - "I first fell in love with the piano, I knew it was me. I was dying to play."
Dave Kikoski - "To get the music the way you want it, there's a lot of work involved."
Dave Kikoski - "For me, the main thing is spontaneity & taking chances." [P]

B.B. King - "The beautiful thing about learning is nobody can take it away from you." [P]
Carol King - "You're just as beautiful as you feel." [P]
Martin Luther King, Jr - "We must use time creatively."
Martin Luther King, Jr - "Jazz speaks for life. This is triumphant music." [P]
Morgana King - "The only thing I believe in is music." [P]
Mary Kingsley - "Nobody has ever been able to define Jazz satisfactorily. This is probably because anyone who was capable of doing so never really wanted to, knowing how much you would have to leave out of the definition."
Maxine Hong Kingston - "In a time of destruction... create something." [P]
Roland Kirk - "When I die I want to be cremated, put in a bag of pot & have beautiful people to smoke me." [P]
Kenny Kirkland - "I'm not into show business, I'm into music." [P]
Roland Kirk - "So until we see you again, bright moments & keep searchin' for your mystery note on the universal piano of life."
Lee Konitz - "Sound is the first thing that we tune into." [P]
Lee Konitz - "I'd like to feel that whatever I play is a result of whatever I've heard."
Lee Konitz - "As long as there are people trying to play music in a sincere way, there will be Jazz."
Lee Konitz - "Benny Goodman was one of the big influences as a clarinet player. That's why I wanted the clarinet."
Lee Konitz - "Most jazz players work out their solos, at least to the extent that they have a very specific vocabulary."

More Jazz quotes & quotations:

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