Julie London Quotes

I can't really say enough about Chris Potter. He is one of the greatest musicians I have ever known, and every second I have been on the band stand with him has been an absolute pleasure.

I've been invited to do a trio with a fantastic jazz guitarist and a harmonica player.

I had the house rhythm section at a club called the Sundown in Hartford. Stan Getz came up and played with us.

When Hank Jones had his night off, I would get somebody to take my place as intermission pianist and I'd play the show with Ella, so I would get a chance to play with Ray Brown and Charlie Smith as well.

So I went into jazz and performed in jazz clubs all over the country.

Jazz is an interesting music. It's one of the few forms of music where everyone that's performing the music has a creative stake in the music. In jazz, everyone's improvising, and everyone's creating at the same time.

I wasn't a trained Mickey Mouse club performer. I played in jazz clubs and restaurants.

One of the things that I loved about listening to Miles Davis is that Miles always had an instinct for which musicians were great for what situations. He could always pick a band, and that was the thing that separated him from everybody else.

By its very nature, no one person can ever be the center of jazz.

So our ears got used to listening to jazz in the place that it was that the bass player could not play. No one really realized it and really addressed it until the bass players who could play their instrument came along and started doing something with it.

Well I guess I like variety pretty much, but I do enjoy this work very much. Particularly with Buddy on the gig, we get a chance to knock each other out It'just wonderful.

I like jazz, but I could never play it. You just sit there with a guitar the size of a Chevy on your chest, wearing a stupid hat, playing the same solo for an hour.

I skipped school one day to see Dizzy Gillespie, and that's where I met Coltrane. Coltrane and Jimmy Heath just joined the band, and I brought my trumpet, and he was sitting at the piano downstairs waiting to join Dizzy's band. He had his saxophone across his lap, and he looked at me and he said, 'You want to play?'

I've always wanted to record a jazz record. I did one in the '70s with Barbara Carroll. It's been a journey.

It was probably when I met Jeff Hamilton, the drummer I've been working with for the last 20 years. He's the one who brought Ray Brown to hear me sing at a restaurant in my hometown.

You don't rehearse jazz to death to get the camera angles.

In some ways, jazz is the most precise of art forms and the loosest in the sense that it's all about improvisation, but the musicianship required is kind of insane. To actually play with real jazz musicians is a different level of musicianship that almost has no equal in any other form of music in the world.

I saw Al Foster with Miles Davis the other week. It was beautiful. But, the whole thing was, Al Foster played as well as everybody else, but all of them were quite brilliant under Miles Davis' direction.

'Black Radio' was pretty much a jam session.

Playing jazz in restaurants is too stereotypical.

My foundation is jazz. I do all the things jazz musicians do.

I really enjoy going out with my jazz group. That's something that I don't ever want to stop doing.

Joseph Zawinul and Toots Thielmans, in my opinion, are the only Europeans who can play rhythm-and-blues.

I once tried to sing jazz for real. But jazz didn't do it for me. You can't have jazz without a jazz world, which doesn't exist anymore.

I always wanted to sing a jazz record.