Jazz Artists Quotes

Kenny G is not real jazz. I don't even think Wynton Marsalis is real jazz. I don't think Harry Connick Jr. is real jazz. If there is such a thing as real jazz, The Lounge Lizards is real jazz, Henry Threadgill is real jazz, Bill Frisell is real jazz, you know?

Over time, I've loved jazz, Miles Davis and Chet Baker, then Janis and Jimi and Creedence, then classic rock.

I grew up in the Great Depression, and the jazz artists and Dixieland musicians were at the core of our communications and enjoyment. They were not passing fancies. They are something that is, and will be, listened to again and again. I have a space of reverence for some of those old jazz stars such as Sydney Bechet and Louis Armstrong.

Jazz doesn't have much to do with how I write songs, but I am a big fan. My favorites are Oscar Peterson, Ahmad Jamal, and Mose Allison.

I don't think we listened to any rock n' roll at all in the early days. It was Miles Davis and John Coltrane 95% of the time.

I've been YouTube surfing a lot lately so I'll Shazam a song that I find or some s - - and type that in on YouTube and just go through all the relateds for it. So it's been a lot of random jazz s - - lately. Like I found Lonnie Liston Smith, and Ahmad Jamal, s - - like that. So that's been very tight.

I have to plead basic ignorance of most new jazz artists here.

I have tons of jazz records: John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis. I could go on and on.

The enthusiasm, the adulation for us as jazz artists, in Kiev and Odessa was really heartwarming.

Part of what I like to do with Brainfeeder is to get the younger kids hearing jazz, because they don't know where to go to really hear it. Brainfeeder gives me a platform to put out people like Kamasi Washington or Austin Peralta.

Elvis might have compromised his musical style a bit towards the end, but that doesn't mean that artists from the rock n' roll/folk-roots culture - of which he was not really a part - shouldn't get better as they get older, like the great jazz or blues artists.

Many fail to realize this great recording industry was built by so-called jazz artists. And at the other end of the spectrum, a base in European classical music as well.

At 14 and 15, I used to listen to Tito Puente, Dave Valentine and everything that was happening with American jazz. I love it.