Louis Armstrong Quotes

It's always difficult to define what jazz is or what jazz isn't. To me, the only definition that I can think of is it's music where a lot of different elements are played at the same time. The harmonic, the melodic... You're pushing the boundaries on every level. That could be true of rhythm and blues as well. I'm a musician.

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.

Jazz music creates so many phenomenal figures.

But I don't really listen to much be-bop at all at the moment.

One performer whose band played my music better than I could myself was Art Farmer. He recorded 'Sing Me Softly of the Blues' and 'Ad Infinitum'.

I'm a trumpet player, and I sing jazz.

See, we started out with a foundation of blues. But then we added people like Miles Davis and John Coltrane to the mix and gave rock n' roll a much more complex structure. It made it possible to play more than three chords.

I got into trad jazz, then modern jazz, then avant-garde jazz, between the ages of 16 to 18.

That's the exact concept behind the music: to take that kind of, I guess whatever you want to call it, jazz sensibility - but not have it be about solos.

Miles Davis is one who writes songs when he plays.

When I heard Charlie Parker, I knew that that was going to be the new wave, the new way to play jazz. From that point on, I was sold with... the idea of bebop.

Jazz took too much discipline. You have to come in at the right place, which is different than me singing the blues, where I can sing, 'Oh, baby,' if there's a pause in the melody. With jazz, you better leave that space open, or put in something real cool.

As long as there are musicians who have a passion for spontaneity, for creating something that's never been before, the art form of jazz will flourish.

The point of jazz is, you do something and then you go on.

I do find modern jazz quite tricky.

To me, Bill's musical heart is in Earthworks, in the jazz they are playing, in the acoustic kit.

What is jazz? It, It's almost like asking, What is French? Jazz is a musical language. It's a musical dialect that actually embodies the spirit of America.

If it has more than three chords, it's jazz.

I like to listed to the adventurous guys - the Coltranes, Miles Davis, the guys who just let it loose.

Jazz, for me, is a closed circuit, like the term baroque in the world of classical music.

I don't think I've ever been true to jazz. There's always a kind of jazz element to what I do. There are a very few genres that I haven't tried out, really, in what I've been doing. As a jazz musician, you can kind of mess about with things with a certain level of musicianship, which helps.

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

I don't know any jazz stuff. I don't know how to jam in that way. So jamming, for me, is writing a tune.

I always leaned toward free jazz... experimental jazz and progressive jazz. I feel like jazz is just part of the flavor and palette that you have as a musician to experiment with.

I just wanted to experiment with the bass, and my main influence from Jaco Pastorius inspired me to write music in a certain way.