I haven't a great jazz band, and I don't want one.
My main influences have always been the classic jazz players who sang, like Louis Armstrong and Nat King Cole and Jack Teagarden.
The history of all big jazz bands shows was, first they played for dancing, and then they played for singing.
I would love to make a real jazz album someday because I never have. But that's something I'm not in a rush to do.
All of the most popular music of the '30s and '40s were deeply informed by jazz.
There are singers that I have enjoyed, from Nina Simone and Ray Charles onward. But the music that made music the number one thing for me as a youth was jazz.
I don't want to sound as if I'm doing something tremendously special. But I am a jazz fan.
I once tried to sing jazz for real. But jazz didn't do it for me. You can't have jazz without a jazz world, which doesn't exist anymore.
I've been around jazz and jazz musicians most of my life.
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.
Just figure out what you think jazz is, and then if it fits into that category, it's jazz, and if it doesn't, it isn't. It's no big deal.
I've been a massive obsessive about jazz singers all my life.
Jazz musicians have always taken the standards of their time and performed them with a jazz sensibility.
I don't enjoy jazz guitar in general. I don't enjoy listening to a lot of it. I don't enjoy the tone. In general I've found its role in jazz to be kind of difficult.
Now, the instrumentation in the jazz band and the jazz dance band has gone through many evolutions. For instance, in the 'twenties the tradition was two or three saxophones.
In my view a jazz musician is a great musician.
'Kind of Blue' is one of the best records of all time. Miles' use of space is something rap fans can definitely appreciate. Sometimes you have to let the track breathe and throw a melody in here and there. He never did too much on 'Kind of Blue.' It's the perfect vibe.
Jazz fans love Miles and I love him for a myriad of reasons, but the overviews are always too simplistic.
Well, I guess my unease with that is... I'm always a little uneasy with that phrase - smooth jazz, as opposed to what?
