Louis Armstrong playing trumpet on the Judgment Day.
I feel very honored to be playing with Bill Pierce. He's such a great musician.
I got a chance to listen to and watch Thelonious Monk and his quartet play two shows a night, for six weeks. It was a great education. There was my university, man.
Billie Holiday I never met, but I love her music.
He [Benny Carter] is all that every jazz musician the world over wants to be. He's performed 20,000 nights. How many shoes have been shined? How much mascara put on? Rouge? How many of those impossible bowties have been tied? How many love songs have been sung? How many dances have been danced? How many have passed to the sound of his music? It's been said that a man should not be forced to live up to his art. Benny Carter is one of the rare instances when we wonder whether the great art that a man has created can live up to him.
Charlie Parker stuck out in my mind.
Joe Sample was one of my heroes. I met him at the Curacao Jazz festival, and I fanned out like he was the Beatles!
I personally think Miles Davis is a lot funnier than me. And he's working more.
If Charlie Parker were a Gunslinger, There'd be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats
Sarah Vaughan was the Charlie Parker of the vocalists during the 1950s.
My dream as a child was to play with a bass player like Ray Brown, who played with the Oscar Peterson Trio. The feeling I had listening to his work was almost carnal, so to actually play for him was earth-shattering for me.
Now is a good time, 10 years ago would have been a good time, and 10 years from now it will still be a good time to see a dynamic, entertaining movie that's wall-to-wall Miles Davis where the music will hopefully spark some desire to know more about the man.
Miles Davis was a master. In every phase of his career, he understood that this music was a tribute to the African muse.
[Louis Armstrong] was the only musician who ever lived, who can't be replaced by someone.
Art Tatum was a genius.
I decided that I would be one of the biggest new names; and I actually had some little fancy business cards printed up to announce it, 'Count Basie. Beware, the Count is Here.'
Thelonious Sphere Monk: there's not a more perfect name to fit his compositions than that name.
Since about 1980 Kenny Werner has been one of jazz’s unsung heroes
The first time I heard Jack Teagarden on the trombone, I had goose pimples all over.
Chet Faker's a reference to the late Chet Baker. I'm a big fan of his vocal style; it's quite fragile and soft, and that was a style I wanted to take on.
Kenny Burrell is the grand master of jazz guitar.
If anybody was Mr. Jazz it was Louis Armstrong. He was the epitome of jazz and always will be. He is what I call an American standard, an American original.
Everybody ought to listen to Benny [Carter]. He's a whole musical education.
As for my band, well, my mentors were Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Jimmie Lunceford, and no one had a band more smartly dressed than Duke.
There is no finer guitarist than Kenny Burrell
