Jazz Musicians Quotes

I'm a great jazz fan.

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?

As a very small girl, I listened to Charlie Parker and loved him and Max Roach and people like that.

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.

In the Bay Area, there was a resurgence of Dixieland jazz in the '40s - there was the Frisco Jazz Band, and Lu Watters and the Yerba Buena Jazz Band.

From a small child to right now - I mean, when I was five years old, Red Norville, Tal Farlow, Charles Mingus, Les Paul, Mary Ford, people like that were coming over to my house. So I was around professional adult mature musicians who had had big careers.

I don't like heroin, unless you're a jazz musician and then you have to be on it because jazz is the sound of heroin.

When I came to New York after high school in 1959 and started to meet musicians, 'Hot House' was like a standard jam session tune.

I've met a lot of jazz musicians in my day, and they're all funny.

Given a choice between Charlie Mingus and Eric Dolphy or Joe Strummer and Lou Reed, there was no choice. I like Reed and Strummer, but it's kiddie music.

Jazz music creates so many phenomenal figures.

I saw Al Foster with Miles Davis the other week. It was beautiful. But, the whole thing was, Al Foster played as well as everybody else, but all of them were quite brilliant under Miles Davis' direction.

When I was 12, I began listening to John Coltrane and I developed a love for jazz, which I still have more and more each year.

You don't rehearse jazz to death to get the camera angles.

There's been this perception that Europeans still hold on to, that they discover the real talented ones in American culture and give them proper credit and that's not true anymore - it used to be. A lot of jazz musicians would get respect in Europe.

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

I love music, and a lot of it. Jazz is probably on the top with guys like Miles Davis. But I even enjoy music from the '60s and '70s.

I am not comparing myself to great artists, but when you see conceptual artists at work, on some level it's reassuring to know they can paint figuratively. Likewise, when you listen to the '50s jazz people who do these vast solos, you buy into it more if they open by playing a tune.

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.

The people at Jazz at Lincoln Center are an amazing group and have done a phenomenal job teaching kids and audiences of all ages about jazz.

The first records I heard were from Dizzy Gillespie and people like that.

Jazz musicians are the coolest people on the planet. Can I have some cool?

The first thing is, jazz is one of the few things to let you know that there is a God and there is a creation.

I haven't a great jazz band, and I don't want one.

Now is a good time, 10 years ago would have been a good time, and 10 years from now it will still be a good time to see a dynamic, entertaining movie that's wall-to-wall Miles Davis where the music will hopefully spark some desire to know more about the man.