Jazz Quotes

On Bebop:

• You can’t sing it. You can’t dance it. May be you can’t even stand it. It’s Bebop”                                                        — Colliers Magazine
• “All them weird chords which don’t mean a thing…you got no melody to remember, and no beat to dance to”

                                                                                        Louis Armstrong 

On Jazz musicians:

•  What separates great jazz musicians from average ones is Taste. Those who have taste consistently choose notes, tempos, timbres and voicings that seduce and satisfy attentive listeners.
     — Marc Myers

• A jazz musician is a juggler who uses harmonies instead of oranges.                                                        — Benny Green

• Mogie, what have I done?”              

                         Helen More, on shooting dead her boyfriend, Lee Morgan

On baloney:

• The outer space beings are my brothers. They sent me here. They already know my music.”                                                  —  Sun Ra

On the Avant Garde:

• Contrary to general belief, an artist is never ahead of his time, but most people are far behind theirs.                                         —  Edgard Varèse

(Hat-tip The Blues Poodle for the  following)

On music and self- expression:

• Art is self expression. If you are expressing someone else’s personality, that is not art.

                                                                                    — Bennie Wallace

• Blues is to jazz what yeast is to bread–without it, it’s flat.

                                                                               — Carmen McRae

• In the midst of creating, a person is raised to another level of consciousness that doesn’t have that much to do with everyday thinking. It’s as if you could imagine life before there were words.

                                                                                   — Charlie Haden

On being Miles Davis:

• I’ll play it first and tell you what it is later.

                                                                                        — Miles Davis