Jazz is the Big Brother of revolution. Revolution follows it around. Miles Davis
Do not fear mistakes: there are none. Miles Davis
When you’re creating your own shit, man, even the sky ain’t the limit. Miles Davis
I’ll play it and tell you what it is later. Miles Davis
The thing to judge in any jazz artist is, does the man project and does he have ideas. Miles Davis
The music has gotten thick. Guys give me tunes and they’re full of chords. I can’t play them ... I think a movement in jazz is beginning away from the conventional string of chords, and a return to emphasis on melodic rather than harmonic variation. There will be fewer chords but infinite possibilities as to what to do with them. Miles Davis
Music has always been like a curse with me … The first thing in my life … It’s always there. Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool, BBC 2020
I was born in Alton, Illinois, in a little river town upon the Mississippi River, and my father moved the family to east Saint Louis. ibid.
It was hard for me to come back to the bullshit white people put a black person through in this country. I lost my sense of discipline. I lost my sense of control. My life had started to drift. And before I knew it I had a heroin habit … that’s all I lived for. ibid.
Miles Davis was the personification of cool. That mythological hero. He becomes our black superman. ibid. lady
There is no such thing as a wrong note. Art Tatum
You have to practice improvisation, let no one kid you about it! Art Tatum
Look, you come in here tomorrow, and anything you do with your right hand I’ll do with my left. Art Tatum to Bud Powell
The greatest soloist in jazz history regardless of instrument. Leonard Feather to Art Tatum
When I finally met him and got a chance to hear him play in person, it seemed as if he wasn’t really exerting much effort, he had an effortless way of playing. It was deceptive. You’d watch him and you couldn’t believe what was coming out, what was reaching your ears. He didn’t have that much motion at the piano. He didn’t make a big show of moving around and waving his hands and going through all sorts of physical gyrations to produce the music that he produced, so that in itself is amazing. There had to be intense concentration there, but you couldn’t tell by just looking at him play. Hank Jones, re Art Tatum
I don’t think there’s any more chance of another Tatum turning up than another Mozart. Dave Brubeck
Jazz stands for freedom. It’s supposed to be the voice of freedom: Get out there and improvise, and take chances, and don’t be a perfectionist – leave that to the classical musicians. Dave Brubeck
Jazz is the only music in which the same note can be played night after night but differently each time. Ornette Coleman
Bird would have understood us. He would have approved of our aspiring to something beyond what we inherited. Ornette Coleman
It’s the group sound that’s important, even when you’re playing a solo. You not only have to know your own instrument, you must know the others and how to back them up at all times. That’s jazz. Oscar Peterson
Some people try to get very philosophical and cerebral about what they’re trying to say with jazz. You don’t need any prologues, you just play. If you have something to say of any worth then people will listen to you. Oscar Peterson
I am the world’s laziest writer. Oscar Peterson
I’d go to Hell to hear a good band. Bix Spiderbeck
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 run around the room while the rhythm section grimaces and dances around their instruments. Charles Mingus
Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity. Charles Mingus
In my music, I’m trying to play the truth of what I am. The reason it’s difficult is because I’m changing all the time. Charles Mingus
Music is, or was, a language of the emotions. If someone has been escaping reality, I don’t expect him to dig my music, and I would begin to worry about my writing if such a person began to really like it. My music is alive and it’s about the living and the dead, about good and evil. It’s angry, yet it’s real because it knows it’s angry. Charles Mingus, letter to Miles Davis cited Downbeat 1955
I, myself, came to enjoy the players who didn’t only just swing but who invented new rhythmic patterns, along with new melodic concepts ... I always wanted to be a spontaneous composer. I thought I was, although no one’s mentioned that. I mean critics or musicians. Now, what I’m getting at is that I know I’m a composer. I marvel at composition, at people who are able to take diatonic scales, chromatics, 12-tone scales, or even quarter-tone scales. I admire anyone who can come up with something original. But not originality alone, because there can be originality in stupidity, with no musical description of any emotion or any beauty the man has seen, or any kind of life he has lived. Charles Mingus
Mingus was always a disaster to have around. I loved him, but he was worse than a child. He didn’t know how to clean up behind himself. He could cook, but there would be eggs on the floor and the ceiling. Couldn’t find his shoes when he had to go to work, didn’t have a white shirt, couldn’t write a check. All he could really do was play the bass and write. Buddy Collette, cited Central Avenue Sounds 1998
Taste, courage, individuality and irreverence. There are the qualities I want to retain in my music. Stan Getz
My life is music, and in some vague, mysterious and subconscious way, I have always been driven by a taut inner spring which has propelled me to almost compulsively reach for perfection in music, often – in fact, mostly – at the expense of everything else in my life. Stan Getz
Well if you find a note tonight that sounds good, play the same damn note every night. Count Basie
I can never get tired of playing the blues. Count Basie
Q) How do you want to be remembered?
A) Two words: a nice guy. Count Basie, televised interview
The be-boppers are good but they close more clubs than they open. Roy Eldridge
I was unfashionable before anyone knew who I was. Paul Desmond
I have won several prizes as the world’s slowest alto player, as well as a special award in 1961 for quietness. Paul Desmond
Our basic audience begins with creaking elderly types of twenty-three and above. Paul Desmond
Music washes away the dust of everyday life. Art Blakey
Jazz is known all over the world as an American musical art form and that’s it. No America, no jazz. I’ve seen people try to connect it to other countries, for instance to Africa, but it doesn’t have a damn thing to do with Africa. Art Blakey
Jazz is existence music. Courtney Pine
Bop musicians have more to say than any other musicians playing today. Ella Fitzgerald
I’ve had some wonderful love affairs and some that didn’t work out. I don’t want to dwell on that and I don’t want to put people down, but I think all the fabulous places I’ve been, the wonderful things that have happened for me, the great people I’ve met – that ought to make a story. Ella Fitzgerald
A lot of singers think all they have to do is exercise their tonsils to get ahead. They refuse to look for new ideas and new outlets, so they fall by the wayside ... I’m going to try to find out the new ideas before the others do. Ella Fitzgerald