Jazz washes away the dust of every day life.
— Art Blakey
Jazz is... One of life's greatest gifts: fun found within surprise.
— Author Unknown
Jazz is... An open-ended music designed for open minds.
— Author Unknown
Anyone can learn what Louis Armstrong knows about music in a few weeks. Nobody could learn to play like him in a thousand years.
— Benny Green
Jazz is a mental attitude rather than a style. It uses a certain process of the mind expressed spontaneously through some musical instrument. I'm concerned with retaining that process.
— Bill Evans
...it bugs me when people try to analyze jazz as an intellectual theorem. It's not. It's feeling.
— Bill Evans
One thing I like about jazz, kid, is that I don't know what's going to happen next. Do you?
— Bix Beiderbecke
Blues is to jazz what yeast is to bread--without it, it's flat.
— Carmen McRae
"Not too slow, not too fast. Kind of half-fast." -- Louis Armstrong
"We all do 'do, re, mi', but you have to find the other notes yourself." -- Louis Armstrong
"If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know." -- Louis Armstrong
Jazz is like a great void, it waits patiently until a brave musician takes control of space and time.
— Chris Griffin "When I was young and very green, I wrote that tune, Sister Kate, and someone said that's fine, let me publish it for you. I'll give you fifty dollars. I didn't know nothing about papers, and business, and I sold it outright." -- Louis Armstrong
"Armstrong: a high note or series of high notes played on a trumpet, especially in jazz." -- Dictionary of American Slang
"I prefer no one to teach me. I prefer to swing on my own." -- Dave Brubeck
"Jazz is musical humor. The noun jazz describes a modern American technique for the playing of any music, accompanied by noise called harmony, and interpolated instrumental effects. It also describes music exhibiting influence of that technique which has as its traditional object to secure the effects of surprise, or in the broadest sense, humor." -- Bix Beiderbecke
"Jazz is the only music in which the same note can be played night after night but differently each time." -- Ornette Coleman
"It's the hidden things, the subconscious that lies in the body and lets you know: you feel this, you play this." -- Ornette Coleman
"Listen to her voice, don't look at her." -- Chick Webb on Ella Fitzgerald
"I don’t mind being classified as a jazz artist, but I do mind being restricted to being a jazz artist. My foundation has been in jazz, though I didn’t really start out that way. I started in classical music, but my formative years were in jazz, and it makes a great foundation." -- Herbie Hancock
"You can practice to learn a technique, but I'm more interested in conceiving of something in the moment." -- Herbie Hancock
"I feel a lot more secure about the directions I take, than I might have, had I not practiced Buddhism." -- Herbie Hancock
"It's not the style that motivates me, as much as an attitude of openness that I have when I go into a project." -- Herbie Hancock
"Jazz is about being in the moment." -- Herbie Hancock
"I hate straight singing. I have to change a tune to my own way of doing it. That's all I know." -- Billie Holiday
"Don't threaten me with love, baby; let's just go walking in the rain." -- Billie Holiday
"The only reason they're out there is to see me fall into the damn orchestra pit." -- Billie Holiday
"I joined Count Basie's band to make a little money and to see the world. For two years I didn't see anything but the inside of a Blue Goose bus, and I never got to send home a quarter." -- Billie Holiday
"In this country kings or dukes don't amount to nothing. The greatest man around then was Franklin D. Roosevelt, and he was the President; so I started calling Lester the President. It got shortened to Pres." -- Billie Holiday (speaking of Lester Young)
“Don t play this piece fast. It is never right to play ragtime fast.” -- Scott Joplin
"When I'm dead twenty-five years, people are going to begin to recognize me." -- Scott Joplin
“Let me see you do the 'rag time dance'... Turn left and do the 'Cake walk prance'... Turn the other way and do the 'Slow drag'... Now take your lady to the world's fair (...) And do the 'rag time dance.' ” -- Scott Joplin
“Because it has such a ragged movement. It suggests something like that.” -- Scott Joplin on the derivation of the word "ragtime"
“Syncopations are no indication of light or trashy music, and to shy bricks at 'hateful ragtime' no longer passes for musical culture.” -- Scott Joplin
"Marching onward, marching onward Marching to that lovely tune Marching onward, marching onward Happy as a bird in June
Sliding onward, sliding onward Listen to that rag Hop and skip now do that slow, oh Do that slow drag
Dance slowly, prance slowly Now you hear that pretty rag Dance slowly, prance slowly Now you do the real slow drag
Waltz slowly, waltz slowly Listen to the ragtime Hop and skip Now do the slow, oh, do the slow drag" -- Verses from the opera, Treemonisha (1911) by Scott Joplin
"No doubt Joplin could play "ragged time," as it was first called because of its bouncing bass and syncopated right hand, as bumptiously as the next man. But by the time he began writing his rags down in the late 1890s, they had obviously become objects of care, even personal meaning for him." -- "Scott Joplin: From Rags to Opera", by William Bender, in: Time (magazine) (15 Sep. 1975)
"A typical Joplin rag has a disciplined arrangement of repeats and returns not unlike that of the march, and a similar duple tune signature. Jazz probably got its start, Schuller believes, when saloon pianists who could not read music began improvising rags they had heard." -- "Scott Joplin: From Rags to Opera", by William Bender, in: Time (magazine) (15 Sep. 1975)
"Small clear chords hung in the air like flowers. The melodies were like bouquets. There seemed to be no other possibilities for life than those delineated by the music." -- Description of Coalhouse Porter, Jr., the main character in E. L. Doctorow's novel, Ragtime, sitting down to play Joplin's "Wall Street Rag"
“Jazz music is to be played sweet, soft, plenty rhythm.” -- Jelly Roll Morton
“Get up from that piano. You hurtin' its feelings.” -- Jelly Roll Morton
"I have been robbed of three million dollars all told. Everyone today is playing my stuff and I don't even get credit. Kansas City style, Chicago style, New Orleans style hell, they're all Jelly Roll style.” -- Jelly Roll Morton
"I do not claim any of the creation of the blues, although I have written many of them even before Mr. Handy had any blues published. I heard them when I was knee-high to a duck." -- Jelly Roll Morton on W. C. Handy
“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 on W. C. Handy
"It is evidently known, beyond contradiction, that New Orleans is the cradle of jazz, and I, myself, happened to be creator in theyear 1902, many years before the Dixieland Band organized." -- Jelly Roll Morton
"I first met Jelly Roll in Chicago. He was livin' high then. You know, Jelly was a travelin' cat, sharp and good lookin' and always about he wrote this and that and the other thing -- in fact, everything!" -- Zutty Singleton on Jelly Roll Morton
"I always called him the Dizzy Dean of music, he was so belligerent and braggadocio... But one thing I always noticed about Jelly, he would back everything he said by what he could do." -- Omer Simeon on Jelly Roll Morton
“My contributions were many: First clown director, with witty sayings and flashily dressed, now called master of ceremonies.” -- Jelly Roll Morton
"Rejoice at the death and cry at the birth: New Orleans sticks close to the Scriptures." -- Jelly Roll Morton
D C DowDell - "Jazz improvisation is an elusive genius."
Bill Evans - "Jazz is not a what, it is a how."
Bill Evans - "You can't explain Jazz to anyone without losing the experience because it's feeling, not words."
Stan Getz - "Other than conversation, no other art form can give the satisfaction of spontaneous interaction like Jazz."
Benny Green - "Jazz music is a special skill that has brought pleasure to millions throughout the world.