Norah Jones Quotes

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

I've been saying for almost 20 years that I need to do a jazz project and it ought to be either big band or I should do some jazz songs with a trio or quartet.

I recorded my first jazz record in the '70s.

The history of all big jazz bands shows was, first they played for dancing, and then they played for singing.

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 wanted to be a jazz musician.

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

If you really dissect hip-hop you will find a whole lot of Charles Mingus, Ron Carter, Ahmad Jamal, a lot of classic jazz samples in there.

The only element of jazz that I keep is improvisation.

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.

I don't know if I have enough guts to do a whole standard jazz record.

My main influences have always been the classic jazz players who sang, like Louis Armstrong and Nat King Cole and Jack Teagarden.

As far as other instrumentalists, I used to love mellow sax players like Paul Desmond. I love piano.

Coltrane would do what you'd get a Roland Pro Tools module to do but with a group of jazz musicians.

I think that's what I love about jazz is that you can do what you want, and you're allowed to mess up.

I haven't a great jazz band, and I don't want one.

Just figure out what you think jazz is, and then if it fits into that category, it's jazz, and if it doesn't, it isn't. It's no big deal.

What I'm doing, I prefer to call that jazz, because it is a beautiful word - I love it.

I don't want to sound as if I'm doing something tremendously special. But I am a jazz fan.

If I am playing any music at all it is jazz music.

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

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.

For some reason at 12 or 13, I just heard Gerry Milligan and fell in love with that, whatever it was called.

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

At 14 and 15, I used to listen to Tito Puente, Dave Valentine and everything that was happening with American jazz. I love it.