Don Cheadle Quotes

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

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

Dilla was a John Coltrane-type dude. He was always on a higher level. He inspired my music to become looser and more soulful.

Ornette Coleman is a real musician. He takes all of the things he's thinking about in the world - which is a whole universe upon universe - and translates this into music.

I wanted to make somebody feel like Coltrane made me feel, listening to it.

Jazz is the only music in which the same note can be played night after night but differently each time.

'Black Radio' was pretty much a jam session.

I used to be just a total jazz freak. People used to say, 'Where's the melody? Is there a melody in there anywhere?' Now I let the music follow the song.

Jazz has a tradition that has enriched the culture in America. The intellectualism of it does nothing but make you think on a higher level and make you a better person if you engage in the music and let it do what it does when it is played at its highest level.

I just really liked those trumpets and horns - Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie - and I honed in on that. I always looked for those big horn lines.

Jazz is an interesting music. It's one of the few forms of music where everyone that's performing the music has a creative stake in the music. In jazz, everyone's improvising, and everyone's creating at the same time.

I think myself, Jose James, and Robert Glasper are expanding the language - really reminding people that the umbrella of jazz is large and all-encompassing.

Jazz is something that's constantly changing. Its sole purpose is to let people improvise, to let them solo differently each time they play. And that's always been what I like best.

If you don't have any Coltrane, 'A Love Supreme' will do it for you. It will explain everything. Even if you don't get it, it will still explain everything. That's how deep it is.

That.s what Jazz music is all about.We started the Messengers because somebody had to mind the store for jazz.No America--no Jazz. It is the only culture that America has brought forth.

That's the thing about jazz: it's free flowing, it comes from your soul.

One of the things that I loved about listening to Miles Davis is that Miles always had an instinct for which musicians were great for what situations. He could always pick a band, and that was the thing that separated him from everybody else.

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.

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

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

Jazz was more of a tool for me to use to enhance my musicality.

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.

I think I came across Cecil Taylor a bit later, in 65 or 66. That really impressed me - Cecil Taylor is an amazing character... Both his music and the way he approaches the instrument are astonishing.