Jelly Roll Morton 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 started in New Orleans music and played all through the history of jazz.

I love music, I love all kinds of music, particularly jazz. Jazz is an extension of America. There's no other country in the world that could have produced jazz.

Certainly, jazz has become more of a niche, which is surprising, because it's our music. It's the national music of America.

There are guitars everywhere around all of our houses. Pianos. Guitars. It's kind of just in our blood. It's in our nature.

Jazz isn't dead. It just smells funny.

People sometimes forget that jazz was built not only in the minds of the great ones but on the backs of the ordinary ones — ordinary musicians.

I invented rock & roll. Jimi Hendrix was my guitar player. James Brown was my vocalist.

Rock and roll doesn't necessarily mean a band. It doesn't mean a singer, and it doesn't mean a lyric, really. It's that question of trying to be immortal.

Even though I left for a year, I grew here as a Jazz man. If I'm fortunate enough to go into the Hall of Fame, I will go as a Jazz man.

Rock n' roll means so much more to people; it enriches the culture. Also, it inspires people; there's no half-feeling. When I first got into it, I was inspired by people who had come before me, and I found myself in the position of handing that on.

Rock n' roll really belongs to all America. It really doesn't belong to one city.

Growing up, we had folk records.

If New Orleans is allowed to die, a crucial part of the world's music heritage will disappear.

I think we as a band, as individuals, understand that all popular music stems from blues and jazz and even pop, but rock 'n' roll especially comes from blues.

I always felt rock and roll was very, very wholesome music.

My upbringing made me think that real legitimate music is written, not heard.

My mom was a folk singer and Celtic harpist. My dad was in a barbershop quartet and my great grandma was an opera singer. As I grew up, I discovered pop music and Top 40 radio, but it was in the '90s, so music was very different then - it was really lyrical.

I hope that country music embraces me because I grew up on it and have a love for the music.

I get a wave of pride in America when I look back at what we've accomplished in the field of music.

My mother was an opera singer and my grandmother a concert pianist, and they only liked classical music. If I put on a pop record, they would tell me to turn it off, so I only listen to classical.

All roads for me lead back to Mozart. In his tragically short life, he breathed new life, fire and meaning into every form of music that existed in his time.

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

In a way, the history of jazz's development is a small mirror of classical music's development through the centuries. Now jazz is a living form of original music, while classical music has gotten to the end of its cycle in terms of exploring its form.

Pop changes week to week, month to month. But great music is like literature.