Billy Higgins Quotes

Jazz is like a big secret club. The mainstream media doesn't pay any attention to it; it's, like, 1 percent of the music market - no one cares. Why? Because the majority of jazz is old.

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

I believe deeply that jazz is still a very vital music that has much to say, not just to eggheads, or whatever the musical equivalent of an egghead is, but to ordinary people.

I have always been a person who is concerned with the dignity of jazz music and the way jazz musicians have been treated and are treated, and the fact that the music has not been given the kind of due that it deserves.

When I have to compete with John Coltrane and Miles Davis and Louie Armstrong on iTunes, which I'm doing now, that's a problem. That means that jazz is not being heard by younger audiences.

I don't know how much more what I've done is any more important than what Ella Fitzgerald did. Ella crossed those lines, as did George Benson before me. There've been lots of people who brought a pop audience to jazz because they were able to link the two and give people easy access to the world of jazz.

If you don't already know about jazz music, how would you be exposed? How would get an opportunity to find out if it spoke to you? If you get exposed to it enough, you might find a taste for it.

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

I always say that the problem with jazz accessibility is not the content of the music, it's people's ability to access it.

Now is a good time, 10 years ago would have been a good time, and 10 years from now it will still be a good time to see a dynamic, entertaining movie that's wall-to-wall Miles Davis where the music will hopefully spark some desire to know more about the man.

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.

Pop is actually my least favorite kind of music, because it lacks real depth.

Jazz is not the popular culture. Jazz is in the same position in our culture as classical music. A very small minority of people really love it.

In America, for a brief time, people who followed Coltrane were studied and considered important, but it didn't last long. The result is that the kind of music I played in the '60's is completely dismissed in this country as a wrong turn, a suicidal effort.

At a certain point, I became a kind of musician that has tunnel vision about jazz. I only listened to jazz and classical music.

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.

Growing up, I was very much interested in jazz music.

Today jazz is still very much alive. Everywhere I go there's a new generation of musicians.

I think 'Horace Silver' was actually the first live jazz group I ever heard back when I was a kid in St. Louis. So along with most players of my generation, I have a real affection for the music of 'Horace Silver.'

A respectable-sized audience hasn't really been able to follow developments in jazz since the free jazz movement in the '60s. Some of them can't even get with John Coltrane. Audiences are diminishing more and more rapidly. Some of the top young musicians with something new to say can't get record companies to put out their stuff.

I grew up around jazz. I love jazz.

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

I got into music when I was a little boy. My dad was always into jazz. I got my education from him. The first time I listened to jazz, he gave me a Thelonious Monk record. It was so different from anything I had ever heard. It took me a while to understand it, and I liked that. I liked the fact that it wasn't immediately palatable.

Jazz is a constant theme in my life. My father is a jazz pianist, and from an early age I have been surrounded by it.

I love New Orleans. I love jazz. I grew up practicing jazz piano, and that's just been such a cool genre to me. There's a lot of talent there.