George Shearing Quotes

I've been invited to do a trio with a fantastic jazz guitarist and a harmonica player.

Bobby Troup and I have been working together for about a year in clubs. We work in the same club.

It was probably when I met Jeff Hamilton, the drummer I've been working with for the last 20 years. He's the one who brought Ray Brown to hear me sing at a restaurant in my hometown.

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.

Diana Krall knocks me out. I like jazz and I like her simple approach.

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.

I've been saying for almost 20 years that I need to do a jazz project and it ought to be either big band or I should do some jazz songs with a trio or quartet.

Coltrane would do what you'd get a Roland Pro Tools module to do but with a group of jazz musicians.

I skipped school one day to see Dizzy Gillespie, and that's where I met Coltrane. Coltrane and Jimmy Heath just joined the band, and I brought my trumpet, and he was sitting at the piano downstairs waiting to join Dizzy's band. He had his saxophone across his lap, and he looked at me and he said, 'You want to play?'

There's the tradition in jazz of having the Battle of the Bands, and you do not want to get your head cut when you're playing.

I've always wanted to record a jazz record. I did one in the '70s with Barbara Carroll. It's been a journey.

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

It's pretty rare in jazz to have a full-on steady band.

I've worked with a number of big bands, but there's nothing in life like the Basie band.

It's true I've always been attracted to the jazz band in an orchestral way, rather than a band way.

I like to listed to the adventurous guys - the Coltranes, Miles Davis, the guys who just let it loose.

And, well of course, Count Basie, and I think all of the black bands of the late thirties and early forties, bands with real players. They had an influence on everybody, not just drummers.

Today jazz is still very much alive. Everywhere I go there's a new generation of musicians.

I haven't a great jazz band, and I don't want one.

What I'm doing, I prefer to call that jazz, because it is a beautiful word - I love it.

If we are going to list guitar influences, the biggest one by far is Wes Montgomery. Also, Gary Burton was obviously huge for me in a number of ways. But beyond that, Clifford Brown, Miles Davis and Freddie Hubbard.

I don't want to sound as if I'm doing something tremendously special. But I am a jazz fan.

If I am playing any music at all it is jazz music.

One performer whose band played my music better than I could myself was Art Farmer. He recorded 'Sing Me Softly of the Blues' and 'Ad Infinitum'.

No. Maceo played sax, didn't he, well they used to sit in.