Burton Cummings Quotes

I put out a recording of me singing mostly jazz because I wanted people to know I'm coming from a jazz background.

Why can't jazz musicians just leave a melody alone?

Bud Powell's probably the biggest influence on my piano playing.

I cut myself off from the mainstream of jazz. It stood me in good stead later on, as a musician.

What I believe to be jazz is constructed and improvised music which is in the air right now. But I don't think that's most people's definition of jazz, you know? We don't know what we're talking about, because we don't know the definition.

Just figure out what you think jazz is, and then if it fits into that category, it's jazz, and if it doesn't, it isn't. It's no big deal.

I always leaned toward free jazz... experimental jazz and progressive jazz. I feel like jazz is just part of the flavor and palette that you have as a musician to experiment with.

I try to make my flow sound like a John Coltrane solo.

Jazz musicians have always taken the standards of their time and performed them with a jazz sensibility.

I hear many extra-musical things somehow in Coltrane.

When I heard Charlie Parker, I knew that that was going to be the new wave, the new way to play jazz. From that point on, I was sold with... the idea of bebop.

I am not a jazz singer. I wouldn't place myself on that footing. I wouldn't even enter that arena.

I sounded like myself. People be saying I sound like Miles or Clifford Brown.

I started off with the really funky stuff like Ramsey Lewis, Milt Jackson, Kenny Burrell.

To most jazz critics I was basically Kenny G.

Maybe a part of me recognized how right the improvising spirit of jazz is. Not the sounds, but the freedom to work with musicians who work that way. It felt very natural to me, but I think there's a way to do it without it being a jazz record.

Whenever I open a book about jazz, I turn to the index and look for Lennie Tristano, the incredible pianist; Lee Konitz, the luminous alto sax player; and Warne Marsh, the tenor player who captured some of the most beautiful sounds in the world.

As long as there are musicians who have a passion for spontaneity, for creating something that's never been before, the art form of jazz will flourish.

I don't want to do free jazz! Because free jazz - which is the musical equivalent of free marketeering - isn't actually free at all. It's just constrained by what your muscles can do.

I don't play the traditional Charlie Parker songs. But I do improvise and I do create with my instrument, and that to me is jazz. But there are people who use the word 'jazz' only in a traditional sense, and they would be offended by that, and that's fine.

In my view a jazz musician is a great musician.

If he's a true symphony artist, he knows better than that because he knows that the only truly creative musician is the jazz musician.

Coltrane would do what you'd get a Roland Pro Tools module to do but with a group of jazz musicians.

The most common misconception about me is that I'm basically a jazz singer.

Bill Evans is a real serious jazz pianist who, in my book, crossed over boundaries in terms of color. He used the piano as his canvas.