Jazz/Quotes

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, ...)

Note that there already are thousands of similar projects on the web. 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 :)

List

"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

"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 theoretical conception of jazz

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

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