Jazz And Blues Quotes

In 1908 Handy didn't know anything about the blues and he doesn't know anything about jazz and stomps to this day. I myself figured out the peculiar form of mathematics and harmonies that was strange to all the world but me. ~ Jelly Roll Morton

The jazz and blues clubs are like the jazz and blues musicians - they're disappearing. ~ Buddy Guy

I use rock and jazz and blues rhythms because I love that music. I hope my poetry has a relationship with good-time rock'n roll. ~ Adrian Mitchell

The world I live in is benefiting from things like satellite radio. Jazz and blues fests are everywhere now, and Americana is going strong on college radio. What I'm hearing is an appreciation of real music. ~ Bonnie Raitt

Being materialistic is part of the hip-hop community's nature, because jazz and blues and rock 'n' roll, when they started out in the urban communities, were about the American Dream, and the lack of opportunity in that structure. So they talked about everything - uplifting and getting what is perceived as success in America. ~ Russell Simmons

When I discovered Mose Allison I felt I had discovered the missing link between jazz and blues ~ Ray Davies

My grandfather was Bob Shad, one of those legendary jazz and blues producers - he worked with Charlie Parker and Dinah Washington, and he produced Janis Joplin's album [1967's Big Brother & the Holding Company]. He always owned small labels as well - he had a label called Mainstream Records in the 70s. ~ Judd Apatow

Once you start collecting records you learn more and more about jazz and blues. ~ John Mayall

Growing up, I listened to a lot of jazz and blues records - John Coltrane and Etta James. I was also really into Radiohead and the BeeGees. ~ Alex Clare

I loved music from the age of eight. Jazz and blues. But also Little Richard and Elvis Presley. ~ Bryan Ferry

We hit every jazz and blues club on and off Bourbon Street, dancing and drinking until we girls were drunk enough to go with the boys to the strip clubs which outnumbered all other businesses in the French Quarter. Here is where my solution unfolded. ~ Darwun St. James

Words are the children of reason and, therefore, can't explain it. They really can't translate feeling because they're not part of it. That's why it bugs me when people try to analyze jazz as an intellectual theorem. It's not. It's feeling. ~ Bill Evans

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. ~ Steve Lacy

People think it is all about country music, and I know a lot of country music has come out of there, but like Blonde on Blonde by Bob Dillon was recorded there. A lot of great records; R&B records, jazz records. It's a lot of great players and great studios. ~ Elvis Costello

Everything comes out in blues music: joy, pain, struggle. Blues is affirmation with absolute elegance. It's about a man and a woman. So the pain and the struggle in the blues is that universal pain that comes from having your heart broken. Most blues songs are not about social statements. ~ Wynton Marsalis

It's the new me," I explained, waving my hands jazz-style in greeting. "Matthew Swift, Midnight fucking Mayor - I've got multicoloured highlighters and everything. ~ Kate Griffin

John [Coltrane] was like a visitor to this planet. He came in peace and he left in peace; but during his time here, he kept trying to reach new levels of awareness, of peace, of spirituality. That's why I regard the music he played as spiritual music
John's way of getting closer and closer to the Creator. ~ Albert Ayler

Jazz is improvisation and syncopation, with resilience and flow, with earthy elegance, nuance and subtlety, with the integrity of individual expression within (usually) a group context, with true democracy in action. ~ Greg Thomas

I tried practicing for a few weeks and ended up playing too fast. ~ Paul Desmond

I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve. But I was outside the Bagdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he never opened his eyes.
After that I liked jazz music.
Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way.
I used to not like God because God didn't resolve. But that was before any of this happened. ~ Donald Miller

Even though we get a lot of people into the shop, only a small percentage of them buy anything. The best customers are the ones who just have to buy a record on a Saturday, even if there's nothing they really want; unless they go home clutching a flat, square carrier bag they feel uncomfortable. You can spot the vinyl addicts because after a while they get fed up with the rack they are flicking through, march over to a completely different section of the shop, pull a sleeve out from the middle somewhere, and come over to the counter; this is because they have been making a list of possible purchases in their head ('If I don't find anything in the next five minutes, that blues compilation I saw half an hour ago will have to do'), and suddenly sicken themselves with the amount of time they have wasted looking for something that they don't really want. I know that feeling well (these are my people, and I understand them better than I understand anybody in the world): it is a prickly, clammy, panicky sensation, and you go out of the shop reeling. You walk much more quickly afterwards, trying to recapture the part of the day that has escaped, and quite often you have the urge to read the international section of a newspaper, or go to see a Peter Greenaway film, to consume something solid and meaty which will lie on top of the candyfloss worthlessness clogging up your head. ~ Nick Hornby

My years of ballet and jazz dance lessons didn't make me any more graceful - they just helped keep me from bumping into the furniture on stage. ~ Toni Tennille

You see, there's some blues for folks ain't never had a thing, and that's a sad blues ... but the saddest kind of blues is for them that's had everything they ever wanted and has lost it, and knows it won't come back no more. Ain't no sufferin' in this world worse than that; and that's the blue we call 'I Had It But It's All Gone Now. ~ Ken Grimwood

It came from my mother. She was a singer, and literally every day of the week she sang at a different club in a different genre of music: country, R&B clubs, jazz clubs, church on Sunday morning where she was the music director, pop hits, soft rock. I grew up listening to all this music, so it was never one thing for me. ~ Robert Glasper

Maybe it was just the after glow talking. Maybe it was the glow giving me my River blues..but it felt real. And my feeling, pure or not, were the only thing I had to go on. River had manipulated people. And Murdered people. He was wicked. Not as wicked as Brodie, but.. Still wicked. It was better that he was gone. Better he was out of my life. I knew that, logically. What I felt though, deep, deep down in the darkest of my heart, was that I didn't give a damn if River was Evil. I still liked him. Maybe i even kind of love him. And Maybe that made me Wicked too. ~ April Genevieve Tucholke

There was nobody at the time who was playing slide guitar like Johnny, and nobody, or no white guys at least, that was playing country blues like that on the acoustic guitar. And it was at that point that I realized what Johnny had to offer. ~ Rick Derringer

I was blessed to work with The Jazz Messengers when the two piano players were Keith Jarrett and Chick Corea. ~ Chuck Mangione

I loved you, I did. I believe I even sold myself a bit: on your love, my lust, your hair and just the way we stood there. How the air smelled of you, the way your shirt was cursed with blues. The way we danced by the ocean in front your mini-garden. The white fence, your loveliness and the heavenly kisses. It'll always be the sheets, lying beside, holding your arm and kissing your hair in a loving stride. ~ Dominic Riccitello

I should've probably warned you:
once you end a relationship with an artist,
you are perpetually reminded of them.
They have now ruined classical music and jazz for you.
They have ruined books and poetry.
You should just forget about galleries and museums.
But you know what the worst part is?
It's how they witnessed and observed you,
making you feel like the only person in the room.
And you secretly loved being looked at,
being worshipped.
So now you avoid mirrors.
Because when you look at yourself,
you remember me. ~ Kamand Kojouri

I apply the warrior energy to the blues by tapping into the ancient job of the griot class.That wasn't a job you did because someone said you had to do it;you did it because that's what you did.
It was your right as a person.In terms of warriorship,you had to stand up and do what was right,what you were born to do……
In warriorship you have to be very present,very aware of where you are,where you've been and where you're going.
Part of what a warrior does,the compassion and generosity of warriorship,is to get the door open and hold it open for other people to come through.That means the warrior is often out there alone.
Sometimes the door closes behind you and you don't know it happened.Then you have to stop,put the guitar down,go back and get a wedge,and get the door open again,so..people can hear the music. You can't be afraid,no matter what's going on."
Taj Mahal

Autobiography of A Bluesman ~ Taj Mahal

Milton, of all people, gave the most perfect definition of the state of mind required to play jazz: ' with wanton heed and giddy cunning.' That's how you play jazz. ~ Paul Desmond

I started playing violin because I was fascinated by how violin players could play so fast. I would buy their cassettes, and learn different concertos, but then I started rounding out my collection. My dad was a big jazz fan, so I just started hearing a lot more soul music. I loved Little Stevie Wonder, and I got really into him as a singer and a writer as I got older. ~ Toby Lightman

I did everything I could to not bring in any of the - any of the technical things I got from classical into jazz. And I did everything to really base it on my speaking voice and to just not try to make it sound pretty. ~ Cecile McLorin Salvant

My days could be described as an ever changing palette of blues, greens, browns, and golds. Mostly because of surfing and garden-gazing. On tour, the colors are desaturated by florescent lights and dull grey carpets. ~ Jason Mraz

There were fat cats and skinny cats. The long-tailed and the bobbed. The daring young leapers, and the old windowsill sleepers. Balls of waddling fluff, smooth-coated prowlers, and hairless ones that looked fragile and wise. The tiger-striped, the ring-tailed, and the ones with matching coloured socks and mittens. There were tabbies and calicos. Manx and Persians. Siamese and Bombay. Ragdolls and Birmans. Maine Coons and Russian Blues. There were Snowshoes and Somalis, Tonkinese and Turkish, and many, many more. Brown and beige and orange and grey and black and white and silver cats, each with gleaming eyes of emerald, or sapphire, or amber. A rainbow of precious stones. ~ Brooke Burgess

Want and need were words that got eaten smaller and smaller: Freedom, autonomy, a perennial bank balance, a stainless-steel condo in a dustless city, a silky black car, to make out with Blue, eight hours of sleep, a cell phone, a bed, to kiss Blue just once, a blister-less heel, bacon for breakfast, to hold Blue's hand, one hour of sleep, toilet paper, deodorant, a soda, a minute to close his eyes.
What do you want, Adam?
To feel awake when my eyes are open. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

From folk to tribal to Cab Calloway, Cole Porter, Gershwin to the Rolling Stones, whose first record was all covers, to country-western, bebop, blues, and even the referencing in classic hip hop to cliched love ballads of the '80s or whatever - that is kinda gone, and that's just terrifying to me. ~ Cat Power

I've always thought Blues Point Tower is one of my best buildings and I stand by that. ~ Harry Seidler

What is the world? What is it for?
It is an art. It is the best of all possible art, a finite picture of the infinite. Assess it like prose, like poetry, like architecture, sculpture, painting, dance, delta blues, opera, tragedy, comedy, romance, epic. Assess it like you would a Faberge egg, like a gunfight, like a musical, like a snowflake, like a death, a birth, a triumph, a love story, a tornado, a smile, a heartbreak, a sweater, a hunger pain, a desire, a fufillment, a desert, a waterfall, a song, a race, a frog, a play, a song, a marriage, a consummation, a thirst quenched.
Assess it like that. And when you're done, find an ant and have him assess the cathedrals of Europe. ~ N.D. Wilson

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. ~ Billy Higgins

And they burned up the diner where I always used to find her
Licking young boys' blood from her claws
And I learned about the blues from this kitten I knew
Her hair was raven and her heart was like a tomb ~ The Gaslight Anthem