Jazz Style Quotes

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

I prefer her [Nina Simone's] jazz period much more so than her folk period.

It was actually my partner, Bernard Edwards, who helped me develop my sort of funky jazz style.

Many critics always saw and heard that my style comes from Roy Eldridge, which is true. But for many things, not only how to play the trumpet but the way to choose the notes, how to play them and how to phrase all of them, I took that from Sweets [Edison]. He really brought something new to the trumpet.

If I have to be considered any type of jazz artist, it would be New Orleans jazz because New Orleans jazz never forgot that jazz is dance music and jazz is fun. I'm more influenced by that style of jazz than anything else.

Oh yeah, that was the thing to do at that time. This was before the new wave of bebop started.

There is an awful lot of what I call recreational jazz going on, where people go out and learn a particular language or style and become real sharks on somebody else's language.

With my little band, I did everything they did with a big band. I made the blues jump.

I love classical jazz.

Jazz music is to be played sweet, soft, plenty rhythm.

Jazz music is a style, not compositions; any kind of music may be played in Jazz if one has the knowledge.

I guess certain kinds of jazz music could be Crunk. But the average jazz song, no, it's not Crunk.

There's a jazz influence in my music in general.

Improvisation was the blood and bone of jazz, and in the classic, New Orleans jazz it was collective improvisation in which each performer, seemingly going his own melodic way, played in harmony, dissonance, or counterpoint with the improvisations of his colleagues. Quite unlike ragtime, which was written down in many cases by its composers and could be repeated note for note (if not expression for expression) by others, jazz was a performer's not a composer's art.

I love that [ late-50s Verve recordings] - to me, that's the epitome of vocal jazz. It's my favorite style and era of it.

The great jazz and jazz-influenced singers carry themselves with a certain panache and a certain elegance and, for lack of a better word, self-confidence.

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

Best trumpet: Mike Vax, an alumnus of the Kenton Band, who plays every style with a bright cutting edge, throwing in bop riffs here and there.

My foundation is jazz. I do all the things jazz musicians do.

My style is a little quirky. I can't play as fast as most professional jazz players.

English banjo players really were a law unto themselves - you don't find that kind of brisk banjo playing on the original Louis Armstrong or Bix Beiderbecke records.

Symphony musicians are not trained in improvising, certainly not in a jazz style.

Sweets [Edison] can say more with one note than any other Jazz player alive... an approach that stresses simplicity, glorious tone, natural potency and an unmatched affinity. He is a unique stylist in our music.

Jazz musicians have always tended to have cult followings, which is pretty wonderful.

I feel like certain people think that certain styles of music will taint their jazz style.