Michael Nutter Quotes

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Coltrane came to New Orleans one day and he was talking about the jazz scene. And Coltrane mentions that the problem with jazz was that there were too few groups.

I'm not a big jazz fan.

I didn't grow up during the time that Louis Armstrong or Miles Davis and all those people were playing. So it's not really my responsibility to keep it up, what they were doing.

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 grew up around jazz. I love jazz.

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

Lars Ulrich is not a jazz drummer, but he grew up listening to jazz. Why? Because his father, Torben - an incredible tennis player - loved jazz. Jazz musicians used to stay at their house.

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.

The lion's share of what I hear right now are people who, intentional or accidental, have avoided all jazz prior to 1960. And all the musicians who were successful in the '60s spent their entire lives, prior to 1960, listening to all the musicians these people avoid.

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

I got a poster from Columbia Records, and there's Miles Davis, Charlie Mingus, Ellington, Count Basie - everybody in that poster has died, I'm the only one left. And great players like Paul Desmond and Gerry Mulligan, it's hard to believe they're gone because we were all so close. But I believe in the future and the tradition will go on.

The people in Japan know more about the history of jazz and the musicians than the people in the United States do.

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.

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.

I just don't know anything about jazz, really. I've never really listened to it, but I'd definitely like to discover more about it.

I think everybody has to kind of decide what the word 'jazz' means to them, and that's fine.

I think you have to have a jazz pedigree to be on jazz radio.

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