Dianne Reeves Quotes

Kenny G is not real jazz. I don't even think Wynton Marsalis is real jazz. I don't think Harry Connick Jr. is real jazz. If there is such a thing as real jazz, The Lounge Lizards is real jazz, Henry Threadgill is real jazz, Bill Frisell is real jazz, you know?

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

When I started music, I started out in Puerto Rico with classical music. But what really made me want to be a musician was jazz, and because I didn't grow up with jazz, I had to learn it from a very basic level. I had to go into the history and learn everything about the development of the music, all the players and all that stuff.

Yeah, I grew up playing lots of jazz music in school.

I was a jazz major in high school, in an all-jazz band. No matter what I do, it features my musical influences.

The only element of jazz that I keep is improvisation.

My father is a jazz musician, so I grew up hearing jazz. My parents loved it, but I didn't like it. It went on for too long. Yes, I had certain teachers that really inspired me, like Danny Barker, and John Longo. And I had no idea that I would have any impact on jazz.

I've been around jazz and jazz musicians most of my life.

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

I always tell people that, just to be a bad jazz musician, you have to be better than most musicians. The worst jazz musicians are normally better than most musicians, because you have to know so much.

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.

I have to plead basic ignorance of most new jazz artists here.

I listen to jazz mainly. Mainstream jazz.

By its very nature, no one person can ever be the center of jazz.

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.

I've played with all of the heavyweights in the modern jazz, progressive jazz movement. I've been fortunate enough to play with them, a who's who. All of those guys, I've been fortunate enough to have performed with.

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.

Jazz is not the kind of music you are going to learn to play in three or four years or that you can just get because you have some talent for music.

The first thing is, jazz is one of the few things to let you know that there is a God and there is a creation.

I think jazz is a wonderful learning tool.

After I exhausted the blues thing, I got into jazz.

I don't want to do free jazz! Because free jazz - which is the musical equivalent of free marketeering - isn't actually free at all. It's just constrained by what your muscles can do.

I've met a lot of jazz musicians in my day, and they're all funny.

I'm not a jazz singer.