Jazz Legacy Quotes

Jazz is like a big secret club. The mainstream media doesn't pay any attention to it; it's, like, 1 percent of the music market - no one cares. Why? Because the majority of jazz is old.

Gershwin inspired me very much. The concept of 'That Lucky Old Sun' was inspired by 'Rhapsody in Blue' - not influenced, but inspired.

I got a poster from Columbia Records, and there's Miles Davis, Charlie Mingus, Ellington, Count Basie - everybody in that poster has died, I'm the only one left. And great players like Paul Desmond and Gerry Mulligan, it's hard to believe they're gone because we were all so close. But I believe in the future and the tradition will go on.

Everybody I know in England was raised on Mose Allison.

I was a jazz major in high school, in an all-jazz band. No matter what I do, it features my musical influences.

I've always wanted to record a jazz record. I did one in the '70s with Barbara Carroll. It's been a journey.

I heard Sidney Bechet play a Duke Ellington piece and fell in love with the soprano saxophone.

I grew up with all these old jazz guys in the '70s in L.A., and they grew up idolizing Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus, Lester Young - all of these incredible musicians.

Jazz has been such a force in music, that any musician, including classical composers, have been influenced, and obviously performers, also.

I've always thought that jazz needs to be heard by a wider audience in Puerto Rico. I want to put together a series of free concerts in the small towns - one with Miles Davis music, another with bebop, maybe Duke Ellington. I want younger people to see what is possible.

If you don't have any Coltrane, 'A Love Supreme' will do it for you. It will explain everything. Even if you don't get it, it will still explain everything. That's how deep it is.

I was spoiled by Monk's music because it was so good, so complete.

Jazz was the pop music of its day, and all American popular music has stemmed from it one way or another.

Thelonious Sphere Monk: there's not a more perfect name to fit his compositions than that name.

Louis Armstrong is jazz. He represents what the music is all about.

No one sits in front of a drum set and thinks they invented it all out of whole cloth. The fact that the set is there means that you've got some dues to pay to Baby Dodds.

I've been listening to jazzmen, especially saxophonists, since the time of the early Count Basie records, which featured Lester Young. Pres was my first real influence, but the first horn I got was an alto, not a tenor.

What does New York sound like? For me, the Charlie Parker at the Royal Roost recordings on the Savoy label are the total embodiment of the New York music experience.

If you listen to Louis Armstrong from 1929, you will never hear anything better than that really, and you will never hear anything more free than that.

Certainly, jazz has become more of a niche, which is surprising, because it's our music. It's the national music of America.

As long as there are people trying to play music in a sincere way, there will be some jazz.

Jazz isn't dead yet. It's the underpinning of everything in this country. Whether it's a Broadway show, or fusion, or right on through classical music, if it's coming out of the U.S., it's not going to survive unless it's got some jazz influence.

I loved Art Tatum! And, through him, and other different jazz musicians, I actually found my technique.

That.s what Jazz music is all about.We started the Messengers because somebody had to mind the store for jazz.No America--no Jazz. It is the only culture that America has brought forth.

Jazz in itself is not struggling. That is, the music itself is not struggling... It's the attitude that's in trouble. My plays insist that we should not forget or toss away our history.