Jazz/Quotes

Jazz > Quotes

Abstract

This page is not as deadly serious as the other Jazz resources found on this wiki. In fact, this page is the Jazz relaxing section, where tired and busy Jazz editors come to read funny quotes, enlightening quotes, sad quotes, hilarious quotes...

While some of these quotes may be interesting in themselves for people without any jazz knowledge, it's probable that most of them can't be fully appreciated without at least an idea of who was what.

To enter this page, a quote must match the following:

• the author of the quote must be a Jazz artist present in MusicBrainz
• there shouldn't be too much doubts about the quote and/or its author
• the quote may talk about jazz, but other subjects are fine too: cats, life, stuff
• the quote may link to a maximum number of other stuff (be they other artists, releases, wiki pages, ...)
• there may be exceptions to any of the above points
• the quote must be somewhat exceptionally interesting (this page doesn't want to be exhaustive, but selective)

Note that there already are thousands of similar projects on the web (including the excellent page at All About Jazz). So, you may think: what's the point? To which I answer: we are the one-stop-all-about-music resource, hence we need *our* Jazz Quotes page :)

Quotes

• "Man, that cat is nuts"

• --- Thelonious Monk, the well known reactionary and straight minded musician, about Ornette Coleman

• "Sunny Murray is the only drummer who ever played the Theory of Relativity"

• --- Alan Silva, definitely better musician than space rocket engineer

• "Trane was the father. Pharoah was the son. I was the holy ghost."

• --- Albert Ayler, obviously sniffing too much the holy stuff again

• "Life is a lot like jazz... it’s best when you improvise..."

• --- George Gershwin

• "When I die, I want them to play The Black and Crazy Blues, I want to be cremated, put in a bag of pot and I want beautiful people to smoke me and hope they got something out of it."

• --- Rahsaan Roland Kirk, the smokable jazzman

• "There is no such thing as a wrong note."

• --- Art Tatum, not only blind, but apparently deaf also

• "I don't have a definition of jazz... You're just supposed to know it when you hear it."

• --- Thelonious Monk usual useful and enlightening conceptions

• "I made the tenor sax. Nobody plays like me and I don't play like anybody else."

• --- Coleman Hawkins, the modesty made jazzman

• "Wrong is right."

• --- Thelonious Monk. Yeah man. Sure.

• "We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out."

• --- Decca Records usual genius business ideas and prophetic conceptions (gentle response to The Beatles, 1962)

• "Hipness is not a state of mind, It's a fact of life!"

• --- Cannonball Adderley

• "Jazz isn't dead, it just smells funny."

• --- Frank Zappa

• "What's interesting about a person without problems?"

• --- Carla Bley a.k.a. Cruella Carla

• "Good jazz is when the leader jumps on the piano, waves his arms, and yells. Fine jazz is when a tenorman lifts his foot in the air. Great jazz is when he heaves a piercing note for 32 bars and collapses on his hands and knees. A pure genius of jazz is manifested when he and the rest of the orchestra runaround the room while the rhythm section grimaces and dances around their instruments."

• --- Charles Mingus definitive theoretical thesis about jazz

• "I never hurt nobody but myself, and that ain’t nobody business but my own."

• --- Billie Holiday usual positive ideas

• "As the Avant Garde movement tore down every wall of the old establishment, only one rule that had stood from the very inception of jazz remained: no accordions."

• --- The hilarious Genius Guide to Jazz

• "Retire to what?"

• --- Duke Ellington

• If I'd known I was going to live to be a hundred I'd have taken much better care of myself.

• --- Eubie Blake

• "By the Be-bop era, jazz drumming had become as technically demanding as trying to undo a four-hook bra strap while driving a stick-shift."

• --- The hilarious Genius Guide to Jazz again