Rita Coolidge Quotes

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

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

I would love to make a real jazz album someday because I never have. But that's something I'm not in a rush to do.

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

I wanted to be a jazz musician.

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.

Jazz is an interesting music. It's one of the few forms of music where everyone that's performing the music has a creative stake in the music. In jazz, everyone's improvising, and everyone's creating at the same time.

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

One of the things that I loved about listening to Miles Davis is that Miles always had an instinct for which musicians were great for what situations. He could always pick a band, and that was the thing that separated him from everybody else.

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 put out a recording of me singing mostly jazz because I wanted people to know I'm coming from a jazz background.

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.

I grew up listening to John Coltrane and jazz, so they were subtle influences. I sometimes think about doing some kind of weird jazz record, but I don't know... It's on my list of things to do. I don't want to have to then go promote it.

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.

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

We don't live in a jazz world, unfortunately. I think if I had lived in a jazz world, I would have done OK. I'm not sure I would have done great. I'm a lover of jazz music, so I would have been happy, don't get me wrong. I go to jazz concerts like the biggest jazz fan in world. The drag is that I don't play jazz for a living.

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

I wanted to make a jazz record. I didn't want it to be a standards record.

I was spoiled by Monk's music because it was so good, so complete.

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

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.

I loved Art Tatum! And, through him, and other different jazz musicians, I actually found my technique.

I always wanted to sing a jazz record.

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