Karl Malone Quotes

So much of what I create has been due to the influence of Miles Davis and Donald Byrd, and so many of those that have passed on. Their music, their legacy lives on with the rest of us because we are so highly influenced by their experience and what they have given us.

I was a jazz major in high school, in an all-jazz band. No matter what I do, it features my musical influences.

I didn't grow up during the time that Louis Armstrong or Miles Davis and all those people were playing. So it's not really my responsibility to keep it up, what they were doing.

As long as there are people trying to play music in a sincere way, there will be some jazz.

I got my love of jazz from my stepfather, who was a jazz musician.

I have always been a person who is concerned with the dignity of jazz music and the way jazz musicians have been treated and are treated, and the fact that the music has not been given the kind of due that it deserves.

I got a poster from Columbia Records, and there's Miles Davis, Charlie Mingus, Ellington, Count Basie - everybody in that poster has died, I'm the only one left. And great players like Paul Desmond and Gerry Mulligan, it's hard to believe they're gone because we were all so close. But I believe in the future and the tradition will go on.

My father is a jazz musician, so I grew up hearing jazz. My parents loved it, but I didn't like it. It went on for too long. Yes, I had certain teachers that really inspired me, like Danny Barker, and John Longo. And I had no idea that I would have any impact on jazz.

I cut myself off from the mainstream of jazz. It stood me in good stead later on, as a musician.

If he's a true symphony artist, he knows better than that because he knows that the only truly creative musician is the jazz musician.

The Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame will provide a center where the lives and the artistry of the greatest jazz musicians will be celebrated, and where people will come to learn about jazz, something to which my brother devoted his life's work.

If I had to look at 'Now He Sings'... from outside myself, I see it as a natural part of the growth of the jazz culture, which I've always been so happy - honored, really - to be a small part of.

We are serious about our music here in Philadelphia, and jazz has meant a lot to this city.

I've been around jazz and jazz musicians most of my life.

As a kid, I used to go see all the jazz players, Oscar Peterson, Stan Kenton, Dave Brubeck, Dizzy Gillespe.

Jazz is a constant theme in my life. My father is a jazz pianist, and from an early age I have been surrounded by it.

I went to jazz school. Not to say I'm a great jazz musician, but I studied under some great teachers. It was an important part of my life.

I'm a jazz musician, and I really wanted to not miss an opportunity to have the full connection to jazz.

Man, you'd be surprised how much I'm learning - not only about myself, but about the musicians who came before me. You don't realize at first when you listen to Armstrong's records how great this man was and how hard that Hot Five music was to play. After the experience of reading and playing those parts, I have an even greater respect for Louis Armstrong than before

After me there are no more jazz singers . . . It's a crime that no little singer is back there sockin' it to me in my field. To keep it going, to keep it alive, because I'm not going to live forever.

If you don't already know about jazz music, how would you be exposed? How would get an opportunity to find out if it spoke to you? If you get exposed to it enough, you might find a taste for it.

I have to plead basic ignorance of most new jazz artists here.

I always say that the problem with jazz accessibility is not the content of the music, it's people's ability to access it.

I believe deeply that jazz is still a very vital music that has much to say, not just to eggheads, or whatever the musical equivalent of an egghead is, but to ordinary people.

Jazz fans love Miles and I love him for a myriad of reasons, but the overviews are always too simplistic.