Tony Bennett Quotes

I do love singing. I wouldn't say I'm any good, but I definitely love it - especially jazz singing.

Call me the Scatman. I do quite a bit of scattin'.

One doesn't have to scat to be a jazz singer.

The way I was singing the songs was jazz

Every good gospel singer you can hear is a scat singer; they're just using different syllables. There are a lot of jazz singers out there, and more coming out of the churches.

Jazz is rhythm and meaning.

No one in the world can beat Ella Fitzgerald as a riff singer.

Yes, I've been down the pike and back. And through the years, I've heard different songs with scatting in it, and it was - always cracked me up as kind of a funny style of music, you know? When I did it, it kind of cracked me up as a comedy kind of routine.

I consider myself a jazz singer. I think I stick to the roots of improvisation, singing in front of the beat, behind the beat, playing with notes and harmonies.

I like to use my voice as an instrument and just play along with the music. That's really how I tend to my voice. The content usually comes after or during that process of just trying to be an instrument.

Jazz music is the power of now.

I ... started out to become a jazz pianist; in the meantime I started singing and I sang the way I felt and that's just the way it came out.

I am a moderately good singer. I am not a great singer but I can interpret a song, which I don't think is quite the same as singing it.

I don't think I'm singing. I feel like I'm playing a horn...What comes out is what I feel.

There are wonderful things in Jazz, the improvisation, the liveliness, the being at one with the audience.

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

Among the guitarists, Wes Montgomery is fantastic. He's always good to let you know what the art form is all about. It's the same still life that everybody is painting, but in comes Wes Montgomery, and it's right there!

They say that Jazz is back, and I don't think it's gone anywhere. But they say it's back.

What I came back to is that jazz is a music to be played and not to be intellectualized on.

Jazz is an octopus. It will take whatever it can use and it will work with it.

The one radio voice that I listened to above others belonged to Ella Fitzgerald. There was a quality to her voice that fascinated me, and I'd sing along with her, trying to catch the subtle ways she shaded her voice, the casual yet clean way she sang the words.

Jazz music is the power of now. There is no script. It's conversation. The emotion is given to you by musicians as they make split-second decisions to fulfill what they feel the moment requires.

Jazz was born out of the whiskey bottle, was raised on marijiana, and will expire on cocaine.

Jazz demands that you bring to it things that are valuable to you, that are personal to you.