Roy Haynes Quotes

It’s like a language. You learn the alphabet, which are the scales. You learn sentences, which are the chords. And then you talk extemporaneously with the horn. It’s a wonderful thing to speak extemporaneously, which is something I’ve never gotten the hang of. But musically I love to talk just off the top of my head. And that’s what jazz music is all about.

When I found the music of Monk I finally found music that fit that horn. Every one of his tunes fit it perfectly.

I have been training since 8th grade, but it has to do with listening, more than practice.

I started in New Orleans music and played all through the history of jazz.

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

The only element of jazz that I keep is improvisation.

A good quartet is like a good conversation among friends interacting to each other's ideas.

I think I came across Cecil Taylor a bit later, in 65 or 66. That really impressed me - Cecil Taylor is an amazing character... Both his music and the way he approaches the instrument are astonishing.

Bernstein grew up in my building in New York. He's a very, very fine player. When he was a kid, he came by to find out what was going on in the world of jazz.

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.

Jazz is not the kind of music you are going to learn to play in three or four years or that you can just get because you have some talent for music.

As far as other instrumentalists, I used to love mellow sax players like Paul Desmond. I love piano.

At a certain point, I became a kind of musician that has tunnel vision about jazz. I only listened to jazz and classical music.

We don't live in a jazz world, unfortunately. I think if I had lived in a jazz world, I would have done OK. I'm not sure I would have done great. I'm a lover of jazz music, so I would have been happy, don't get me wrong. I go to jazz concerts like the biggest jazz fan in world. The drag is that I don't play jazz for a living.

If you play the very subtle jazz tunes with acoustic pianos, acoustic bass and it's a dead standard, you are going to play very differently. It depends on the music.

If it has more than three chords, it's jazz.

I just try to do as good job with the material as I can and play some jazz as well, some improvised music, and do that every night. Just see where it goes.

So the whole basis for jazz music is based on the fact that the bass player could not play his instrument.

If I am playing any music at all it is jazz music.

I started off with classical music, and I got into jazz when I was about 14 years old. And I've been playing jazz ever since.

One performer whose band played my music better than I could myself was Art Farmer. He recorded 'Sing Me Softly of the Blues' and 'Ad Infinitum'.

In some ways, jazz is the most precise of art forms and the loosest in the sense that it's all about improvisation, but the musicianship required is kind of insane. To actually play with real jazz musicians is a different level of musicianship that almost has no equal in any other form of music in the world.

For some reason at 12 or 13, I just heard Gerry Milligan and fell in love with that, whatever it was called.

And I used to listen to a lot of jazz.

I am famous because I am an African American jazz artist.