Jazz has borrowed from other genres of music and also has lent itself to other genres of music.
The most important thing about Jazz at Lincoln Center is the fact that it’s the first time that perhaps the most important art form in American culture has a place to really exhibit itself and dedicated to its own particular conditions of performance.
If you have to ask what jazz is, you’ll never know.
Jazz is there and gone. It happens. You have to be present for it. That simple.
My roots and Victor’s are jazz, basically, but these two young fellows that we have with us come out of rock bands. And they’re tremendously exciting players.
My music is jazz.
Jazz, rock and roll, movies and comics are the culture of America.
I liked the more sophisticated urban style of blues like Ray Charles and B. B. King, Bobby Blue Bland, Lou Rawls; people like that with more of a tendency toward jazz.
Seriously though, my father was the first African American to sign a contract with the Metropolitan Opera so I grew up with classical music and jazz in the home all the time.
As far as playing jazz, no other art form, other than conversation, can give the satisfaction of spontaneous interaction.
Eclecticism is the word. Like a jazz musician who creates his own style out of the styles around him, I play by ear.
The memory of things gone is important to a jazz musician.
I came along in the ’60s having absorbed as much as I could up until then and added my own tastes and search into the equation. I guess that’s how I see ‘Now He Sings, Now He Sobs’ in relation to the development of jazz in general.
Lately I’ve been listening to some classical music again, some jazz.
I listen to and I play all kinds of music, and I’m interested in jazz and in bluegrass – I like it all – but Cuban music speaks to me in a certain way.
I have this theory that I hold on to, the theory that everything great in art and in life in general is jazz. It’s just like all these things that just kind of seem to fall into place. You know, like mistakes that somehow turn into something beautiful.
I don’t really have a favorite genre. I could listen to a rock song, a metal song, jazz, pop music, whatever. For me, whatever style it is, it always depends on the chord progression, the lyrics, and the melody used.
The only things that the United States has given to the world are skyscrapers, jazz, and cocktails. That is all. And in Cuba, in our America, they make much better cocktails.
What are the symbols of American strength, wealth, power and modernity? Certainly not jazz and rock and roll, not chewing-gum or hamburgers, Broadway or Hollywood. It’s their skyscrapers. Their Pentagon. Their science. Their technology.
I wasn’t into jazz so much – I preferred things raw.
Jazz told people about the special music that came out of America and about America in general and this kind of liberty and freedom that we have.
You’re not going to hear me do a rap song, you’re not going to hear me do a jazz song. We have to be true to our roots, do what we do, and try to do it a little better each time.
I think that people should learn about that. In most music, there’s one way that you do something, and that’s the only way. In jazz, it’s a lot different.
I think I was supposed to play jazz.
The whole world loves American movies, blue jeans, jazz and rock and roll. It is probably a better way to get to know our country than by what politicians or airline commercials represent.
Given the hipness of transsexualism with people like Caitlyn Jenner and Jazz Jennings, there might be a third category, especially among children, and that is fashion.
You not only have to know your own instrument, you must know the others and how to back them up at all times. That’s jazz.
There’s mediocre jazz, mediocre salesmen, mediocre golfers. If you want to be good, you have to really hone your skills.
At 3 A.M., I’m still up watching videos of jazz heroes I never saw live. It’s so thrilling. And not just the music. The Internet is changing the future of fund-raising. I’m thrilled by the potential.
I’m primarily thought of as a rocker, and certainly ‘Frankenstein’ had a very dramatic power rock image. It was almost a precursor of heavy metal and fusion. But I also love jazz and classical and if there’s one common thread that runs through all my music, it is blues.
Jazz to me is a living music. It’s a music that since its beginning has expressed the feelings, the dreams, hopes, of the people.
Boxing is like jazz. The better it is, the less people appreciate it.
Jazz has been such a force in music, that any musician, including classical composers, have been influenced, and obviously performers, also.
I’m not intelligent. I’m not arrogant. I’m just like the people who read my books. I used to have a jazz club, and I made the cocktails and I made the sandwiches. I didn’t want to become a writer – it just happened.
I don’t know how much more what I’ve done is any more important than what Ella Fitzgerald did. Ella crossed those lines, as did George Benson before me. There’ve been lots of people who brought a pop audience to jazz because they were able to link the two and give people easy access to the world of jazz.
I was lucky enough to grow up in an era when radio was less formatted. It was really special. You could hear a jazz song then a pop song then a show tune then some jazz. Basically, whatever the DJ felt like playing, he would play. He was educating you and exposing you to things you would never hear otherwise.
One of the things jazz has always excelled at is translating the reality of the times through its musical prism.
The beauty of jazz is that it’s malleable. People are addressing it to suit their own personalities.
With rock music, the amount of power that you can generate, the intensity behind the intentions of your lyrics that you can really reflect through rock music – you can’t do that in jazz. You can’t do that with classical.
In the ’60s, people were still very protective of each field that they belonged to. Avant-garde artists didn’t know about rock or pop or jazz. And the jazz people of course didn’t want to know about any other music. They were all just kind of protecting their territory.
I never wanted to sound clean and pretty. In jazz, I felt I could sing these deep, husky lows if I want and then these really tiny laser highs if I want as well.
My dad had two, sometimes three jobs. Besides running the Commodore Music Shop in Manhattan, he did jazz concerts, and he ran this great jazz label, Commodore.
Life is a lot like jazz… it’s best when you improvise.
Words are the children of reason and, therefore, can’t explain it. They really can’t translate feeling because they’re not part of it. That’s why it bugs me when people try to analyze jazz as an intellectual theorem. It’s not. It’s feeling.
My folks have played everything from rock, disco, pop, funk, and blues. My dad has always brought and played different genres like jazz, classical, and Latin. With all this in my pocket, I feel I have a taste of everything for my influences.
Jazz is like wine. When it is new, it is only for the experts, but when it gets older, everybody wants it.
Jazz, to me, is one of the inherent expressions of Negro life in America: the eternal tom-tom beating in the Negro soul – the tom-tom of revolt against weariness in a white world, a world of subway trains, and work, work, work; the tom-tom of joy and laughter, and pain swallowed in a smile.
Why can’t jazz musicians just leave a melody alone?
With rock music, the amount of power that you can generate, the intensity behind the intentions of your lyrics that you can really reflect through rock music – you can’t do that in jazz. You can’t do that with classical.
It’s not exclusive, but inclusive, which is the whole spirit of jazz.
I came along in the ’60s having absorbed as much as I could up until then and added my own tastes and search into the equation. I guess that’s how I see ‘Now He Sings, Now He Sobs’ in relation to the development of jazz in general.
Cicadas, buckling and unbuckling their stomach muscles, yield the sound of someone sharpening scissors. Fall field crickets, the thermometer hounds, add high-pitched tinkling chirps to the jazz, and their call quickens with warm weather, slows again with cool.
To my ears, jazz sounds better in warm weather and after the sun has gone down. While I will listen to some of my favorite jazz records in cooler weather, it’s the warmer nights that really make them come alive. Something about those sounds and the heat of the night really makes it happen for me.
Rock and roll is not an instrument. Rock and roll isn’t even a style of music. Rock and roll is a spirit that’s been going since the blues, jazz, bebop, soul, R&B, heavy metal, punk rock and, yes, hip-hop.
One chord is fine. Two chords are pushing it. Three chords and you’re into jazz.
The first job I ever had was singing in a jazz club when I was like 15 with my friend, and we earned like 70 bucks. We were like, ‘Oh my God!’
I think the singer/songwriter genre is going to be like bluegrass and jazz. You can make a living at it, but it’s not part of the musical mainstream anymore.
Once ‘A.N.T. Farm’ started, I was inspired by Chyna to jazz up my style. Now I paint my nails bright, fun colors and add a bunch of accessories and some cool shoes to jeans and a T-shirt.
