Jose James Quotes

Blues is easy to play, but hard to feel.

That's the thing about jazz: it's free flowing, it comes from your soul.

The chief trouble with jazz is that there is not enough of it; some of it we have to listen to twice.

Jazz music is a language of the emotions.

Jazz is not something that can be defined through blunt instruments. It is much more poetic than that.

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

My playing started to develop through the Miles Davis stuff I was listening to.

In fact, jazz has such a great feeling and great emotional content that it really doesn't require you to have technical understanding of it. I think you just have to allow your feelings to go with the music and you will find yourself carried along by it fairly quickly.

Blues and soul and jazz music has so much pain, so much beauty of raw emotion and passion.

I like to listen to classical music... I like mainline jazz.

Jazz is there and gone. It happens. You have to be present for it. That simple.

In jazz, there is a lot of European influence harmonically.

I do find modern jazz quite tricky.

I wanted to make somebody feel like Coltrane made me feel, listening to it.

Sounds like the blues are composed of feeling, finesse, and fear.

Jazz to me is a living music. It's a music that since its beginning has expressed the feelings, the dreams, hopes, of the people.

Yes, there's a lot of the blues in my playing.

Jazz is the art of thinking out loud.

Truth of the matter is, jazz is American music. And that doesn't mean bebop. Jazz is really about improvising. All the music that's been created in America has been pretty much improvised... Whether it's hillbilly or rock n' roll for blues, it's basically jazz music... It's basically about another way of hearing what comes out of America.

What I love about jazz is the improvisation, the fact that you never know what's going to happen next.

People think jazz music is all standards and the Great American Songbook. But it's really about the sensibility, the feel you bring to the music.

Playing the sax and then enjoying jazz music, man - it's like I learned how to find words inside of the beat.

It was never so much the heavy metal thunder that got me. I was into players who played with taste and did these walking bass parts. If you can play like that, it really opens up the music. You can't just pound away. After a while it's like, 'So what? What else you got?'

If you don't have any Coltrane, 'A Love Supreme' will do it for you. It will explain everything. Even if you don't get it, it will still explain everything. That's how deep it is.

If you're a lay person listening to jazz, you don't necessarily understand everything that's happening within the form. But you get the sense of it, the feel of it, because you're getting to hear something that develops right in front of your face.