Walter Becker Quotes

Blues and jazz are such a root to music.

That's the exact concept behind the music: to take that kind of, I guess whatever you want to call it, jazz sensibility - but not have it be about solos.

We may play in a contemporary rock vein, use standard bebop themes, and many other things besides.

A jazz beat is a dynamic changing rhythm.

If I have to be considered any type of jazz artist, it would be New Orleans jazz because New Orleans jazz never forgot that jazz is dance music and jazz is fun. I'm more influenced by that style of jazz than anything else.

Jazz was the pop music of its day, and all American popular music has stemmed from it one way or another.

People comment on the way that I phrase. And in my 20s, I realized, my phrasing is jazz phrasing. I don't comply strictly with musical theater phrasing. Musical theater tends to be very one and three, and jazz is definitely two and four.

Jazz is the music of the body.

They said Bird played bebop, but Bird could still swing. I've heard a lot of guys play bebop, but they wasn't swinging.

I just think swing is a matter of some good things put together that you can really pat your foot by. I can't define it beyond that.

'Swing' is an adjective or a verb, not a noun. All jazz musicians should swing. There is no such thing as a 'swing band' in music.

In fact, jazz has such a great feeling and great emotional content that it really doesn't require you to have technical understanding of it. I think you just have to allow your feelings to go with the music and you will find yourself carried along by it fairly quickly.

Jazz music is to be played sweet, soft, plenty rhythm.

Even back when I played 'straight-ahead,' I mixed it up. I played some free-form, classical adaptations, solo flute stuff. It was New Age in its own way.

You get this really cool groove when you're playing just piano, bass, and drums where everyone's sort of feeling each other's space, which is the only way to put it, but it really is true, and everyone's sort of sitting in their own pocket. It's kind of jazz-like.

Some songs are just going to be acoustic with just maybe some light background stuff going on and maybe violin or something like that. Or sax - I mean, I'm definitely having some sax. That's just what I love. It's going to be jazz-rock stuff. That's what I'm aiming for.

All the folks I play with come from jazz backgrounds or at least appreciate spontaneity within the parameters of a pop song.

The Meters are, I think, the most influential group in our time to come out of New Orleans, to have changed and introduced us all to a way of playing, and to a groove and a level of feel in playing funk-jazz.

I feel pretty comfortable in a lot of different musical styles. I like rhythm, and I like melody and so forth.

I sounded like myself. People be saying I sound like Miles or Clifford Brown.

When I started playing the bass, I became kind of fascinated by it and started investigating various styles of bass playing, and I was really struck with funk music, mainly American funk music - Stanley Clarke, Funkadelic and that kind of stuff. That comes out in a couple of songs like 'Barbarism Begins at Home.'

To me, Bill's musical heart is in Earthworks, in the jazz they are playing, in the acoustic kit.

I find early jazz to be the most revolutionary music of its time.

My roots and Victor's are jazz, basically, but these two young fellows that we have with us come out of rock bands. And they're tremendously exciting players.

There's not much music I'll listen to if it doesn't have pretty heavy swing. Rhythm is so important. Punk rock would have more power and feeling if it had swing.