Jazz Identity Quotes

I've often cringed when I heard myself described as a jazz singer. I've always thought of myself as a jazz vocalist.

Presley is country music, white music. Jazz is black music - it was invented by the blacks in New Orleans. And I'm really a jazz singer. I was impressed with Elvis - he was the handsomest guy I ever met in my life, and a very nice person, too. But the music doesn't impress me.

Louis Armstrong is jazz. He represents what the music is all about.

For me, let's keep jazz as folk music. Let's not make jazz classical music. Let's keep it as street music, as people's everyday-life music. Let's see jazz musicians continue to use the materials, the tools, the spirit of the actual time that they're living in, as what they build their lives as musicians around.

Jazz changes and all. But I don't know the names of what it is I'm doing.

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

This is what really makes real jazz musicians: people coming out with their own voice.

People think jazz music is all standards and the Great American Songbook. But it's really about the sensibility, the feel you bring to the music.

Blues is like the roux in a gumbo. People ask me if jazz always has the blues in it. I say, if it sounds good it does.

What happens when an art form becomes ambiguous, I think, is that the standards are lowered. You can say anything is jazz. So I think it's important to reflect on what made jazz so special.

But sometimes that title 'jazz' can vex people who think they know exactly what jazz always is and will be.

We're having a hard time understanding where jazz is going. What happened to jazz?