Gary Lucas Quotes

I just don't know anything about jazz, really. I've never really listened to it, but I'd definitely like to discover more about it.

I've met a lot of jazz musicians in my day, and they're all funny.

People who don't do jazz think it's black magic. But really, it's just a matter of getting used to it. It's fun to gamble. The trick is not to fall back on the things you've done before.

I never studied jazz technically; I just know and love the music.

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

I'm thrilled when I hear the greatest jazz musicians. They continue to search in ways other musicians do not.

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

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

Jazz is not the kind of music you are going to learn to play in three or four years or that you can just get because you have some talent for music.

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

I don't worry too much about the fundamentalist principles that are in almost any discussion about jazz.

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.

Kenny G is not real jazz. I don't even think Wynton Marsalis is real jazz. I don't think Harry Connick Jr. is real jazz. If there is such a thing as real jazz, The Lounge Lizards is real jazz, Henry Threadgill is real jazz, Bill Frisell is real jazz, you know?

My dad is a big jazz fan, and that was the reason I first got into jazz.

Jazz is the last refuge of the untalented. Jazz musicians enjoy themselves more than anyone listening to them does.

I have a large collection of biographies about jazz musicians.

I always tell people that, just to be a bad jazz musician, you have to be better than most musicians. The worst jazz musicians are normally better than most musicians, because you have to know so much.

Part of what I like to do with Brainfeeder is to get the younger kids hearing jazz, because they don't know where to go to really hear it. Brainfeeder gives me a platform to put out people like Kamasi Washington or Austin Peralta.

I love, you know, a lot of jazz, John Coltrane.

Thelonious Monk was one of the musicians I most connected with early on. I'm a huge Betty Carter fan, and the way that Abbey Lincoln and Shirley Horn grew immensely from the time they were young is so inspirational.

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

When I started music, I started out in Puerto Rico with classical music. But what really made me want to be a musician was jazz, and because I didn't grow up with jazz, I had to learn it from a very basic level. I had to go into the history and learn everything about the development of the music, all the players and all that stuff.

The people at Jazz at Lincoln Center are an amazing group and have done a phenomenal job teaching kids and audiences of all ages about jazz.

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

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.