Cassandra Wilson Quotes

My musical influences are from the '50s: Bill Evans, Miles Davis and Ahmad Jamal.

It's called 'Miles Davis, Prince of Darkness,' and it's about Miles Davis, the genius, and why he was the way he was, and how he changed music so many times. He changed music six times. So, I'm excited about that movie.

Miles Davis was doing something inherently African, something that has to do with all forms of American music, not just jazz.

My music is jazz.

Miles Davis was a part of my life from 1947 on. I was born in 1941 and I first heard him in 1947 on a 78 rpm. And then I followed his career, starting with his first solo album in 1951. He was an icon and inspiration and a mentor to me.

Miles Davis is a major influence of mine in terms of the way that I am as a bandleader.

I know what I've done for music, but don't call me a legend. Just call me Miles Davis.

I had the fortunate experience to play with people from different schools of music. Sam Rivers is from the fundamentalist school of music.

You know, jazz is the mother of all American music. R&B and pop and rap and everything are the branches on the main tree of the life of music, American music, which is jazz.

As far as I'm concerned, blues and jazz are the great American contributions to music.

I was listening to a lot of bebop. And to Miles Davis. Everyone thinks I was just in the folk world in 1966, but in 1963 and 1964, I was absorbing enormous amounts of music, from baroque to jazz to blues to Indian music.

Miles Davis is my go-to for music. There's something so relaxing and ambient about it, and it can be a little manic in a good way.

Jazz to me is a living music.

Jazz is people's music, a collectivity.

Music is my only guide. I don't care if people pigeonhole me. Miles Davis is my hero. He covered Cindy Lauper and Michael Jackson, and he didn't give a hoot about what the purists said.

My playing started to develop through the Miles Davis stuff I was listening to.

Miles Davis is one who writes songs when he plays.

My dad was a huge big band and jazz fan, and we both sort of enjoyed be-bop, but man, it required so much skill to play it. And then there was cool jazz, the era that Miles, Coltrane, and Ornette ushered in, and that found a home in me. It turns out that that music was just really where I breathed.

I think I was first awakened to musical exploration by Dizzy Gillespie and Bird. It was through their work that I began to learn about musical structures and the more theoretical aspects of music.

I listened to King Oliver and I listened to Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, Archie Shepp... I listened to everything I could that came from that place that they call the blues but, in formality, isn't necessarily the blues.

Louis Armstrong playing trumpet on the Judgment Day.

Jazz should be recognized as music of the people, based in a lot of accents and melodies. What is jazz but music that people danced to? Jazz has the dynamic thing. I don't think you have to be playing only Charlie Parker licks on your horn or whatever the new version of that is.

Jazz is a very accurate, curiously accurate accompaniment to 20th century America.

It is from the blues that all that may be called American music derives its most distinctive character.

Jazz told people about the special music that came out of America and about America in general and this kind of liberty and freedom that we have.