I do after-school ballet and also hip-hop and jazz.

There are editing procedures for talks just as there are editing procedures in jazz improvisation.

Well, I think writing is basically about time and rhythm. Like with jazz. You have your basic melody and then you just riff off of it. And the riffs are about timing.

The law don’t like jazz clubs. No one wants anything to do with that kind of trouble.

There are only two things: love, all sorts of love, with pretty girls, and the music of New Orleans or Duke Ellington. Everything else ought to go, because everything else is ugly.

Jazz presumes that it would be nice if the four of us–simpatico dudes that we are–while playing this complicated song together, might somehow be free and autonomous as well. Tragically, this never quite works out....

I steal one glance over my shoulder as soon as we are far from the foreboding luminance of the neon glow, and it is there that my stomach leaps into my throat. Squatting just shy...

I never liked blues and I really didn’t like jazz. I liked Chuck Berry.

Jazz is the music of the body. The breath comes through brass. It is the body’s breath, and the strings’ wails and moans are echoes of the body’s music. It is the body’s vibrations which...

I like to listen to classical music… I like mainline jazz.

The jazz boom was goin’ on then so there was a lot happenin’ in New York at that time.

Jazz is people’s music, a collectivity.

And more than anything, I like the improvisation of jazz. That’s the same thing with DJ-ing. There’s so much improvisation you can do with cuttin’ and scratchin’ that’s reminiscent of jazz music, because it’s all...

There’s something beautifully friendly and elevating about a bunch of guys playing music together. This wonderful little world that is unassailable. It’s really teamwork, one guy supporting the others, and it’s all for one purpose,...

Gospel music rhythms are not African in origin, although I know that’s what the jazz experts say.

Brother Jimmy, said Joey the Lips. – I’m worried. – About Dean. – Wha’ abou’ Dean? – He told me he’s been listening to jazz. – What’s wrong with tha’? Jimmy wanted to know. –...

Sans le jazz, la vie serait une erreur

If my name were Nubby Blues, I wouldn’t be a jazz musician, I’d be a disabled Vietnam vet on welfare.

I rouse Emily to our guests, as she finishes off our fifteenth snowman by setting the head atop its torso. She stands limp at my direction, pointing out the coming shadows and I cannot help...

Are you kidding? That’s the music of the spheres, commissar. It’s beautiful. Like old jazz.

Now listen for your song. Everybody’s got a song. When I used to chase the Trane— John Coltrane that is— he used to tell me, ‘If I know a man’s sound, I know the man.’...

Some people think I’m a rock ‘n’ roll musician and some think I’m a jazz musician but, for me, there is no difference.

All the classic jazz players all sang and a lot of ’em sang blues.

The rest of y’all are lost because you don’t have a personal relationship with God—our God.” But art engages you in the world, not just the world around you but the big world, and not...

Kelsey plays the piano, and he’s also a tremendous singer. I’m classically trained, and he’s more of a jazz improvisatory pianist. So, we don’t usually sit down and play together.

I love good rock’n’roll, blues and jazz, gospel, and a little reggae.

One thing about playing the real jazz is that you can’t count it.

I couldn’t get my album played over the so-called smooth jazz stations. Jazz stations would not play it. You don’t always know who you’re making that soul connection with.

I’m this strange kind of fusion of jazz, pop, and R&B.

emotion recollected in tranquility.” . . .As he played, his mind’s eye became the fisher’s bobber, guided by a line of sound around the driftwood of thought, the residue of his life, which materialized from...

That’s a stupid name! Whirly-gig is much better, I think. Who in their rightmind would point at this thing and say, ‘I’m going to fly in my Model-A1’.People would much rather say, ‘Get in my...

Jazz changes and all. But I don’t know the names of what it is I’m doing.

You hear lots of notes, don’t you? Some have a major sound. Some have a minor sound. But there’s not one blue note among all these black and white keys. The real blues, the soul...

Well, actually, I don’t consider myself a jazz legend or anything.

There was no control except the “mood of his power… and it is for this reason it is good you never heard him play someplace where the weather for instance could change the next series...

Jazz is not just ‘Well, man, this is what I feel like playing.’ It’s a very structured thing that comes down from a tradition and requires a lot of thought and study.

If I’m going to be a jazz player, I need to understand Miles Davis.

It was the first 36 (in all-around) for Jazz. She had a really good meet.

It’s got strong roots. I don’t know if we’ve quite established ourselves in the Jazz mold yet, but we’re hopeful.

If Music is a Place — then Jazz is the City, Folk is the Wilderness, Rock is the Road, Classical is a Temple.

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...

They call it music, but it’s just this side of magic.

Do you?

On the radio I listen to the easy-listening stations, the jazz stations.

It is rare that even a jazz musician finds an individual voice.

I was a weird kid. I should’ve been gay because I listened to a lot of Broadway musicals. I don’t know why I’m not gay. I listen to a lot of jazz and world music,...

But his own mind was helpless against every moment’s headline. He did nothing but leap into the mass of changes and explore them and all the tiny facets so eventually he was completely governed by...

it ain’t as hard as picking cotton

…I have sometimes thought that the mere hearing of those songs would do more to impress some minds with the horrible character of slavery, than the reading of whole volumes of philosophy on the subject...

I’m really glad today for Karl Malone. But (the current Jazz players) weren’t involved in (the celebration) that much. They weren’t out there on the street (during the statue unveiling).