I have a difficult relationship with jazz. My parents really love it, and I went to a school where jazz was considered the best thing ever, so I had to leave it be for a long time. But now I'm rediscovering it. I'm approaching jazz in a different way...
Jazz came out of New Orleans, and that was the forerunner of everything. You mix jazz with European rhythms, and that's rock n' roll, really. You can make the argument that it all started on the streets of New Orleans with the jazz funerals.
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 ...
I always hated jazz guitar. I loved jazz saxophone but I hated jazz guitar. If I would buy an organ trio record I would make sure I'd buy one that did not have a guitar player on it. The sound was awful!
I recorded my first jazz record in the '70s.
My dad is a big jazz fan, and that was the reason I first got into jazz.
I've met a lot of jazz musicians in my day, and they're all funny.
The French - they like jazz, they've been on jazz a long time.
If I'm not a jazz player all the time, I've at least been cued in to what I do by jazz.
The month of September is Women in Jazz, so I'm doing jazz there in September. I'm in for the duration.
The memory of things gone is important to a jazz musician.
Jazz music is an intensified feeling of nonchalance.
If I am playing any music at all it is jazz music.
Growing up, I was very much interested in jazz music.
The most common misconception about me is that I'm basically a jazz singer.
I grew up around jazz. I love jazz.
We're having a hard time understanding where jazz is going. What happened to jazz?
Jazz needs the help. It's the more sophisticated music. All the other music is on the TV, but jazz isn't.
I remember the first time I was booked into a jazz club. I was scared to death. I'm not a jazz artist. So I got to the club and spotted this big poster saying, 'Richie Havens, folk jazz artist.' Then I'd go to a rock club and I'm billed as a 'folk ro...
So, we went from being an Athens band to being a Georgia band to being a Southern band to being an American band from the East Coast to being an American band and now we're kind of an international phenomenon.
Possibly, I should have been a jazz singer from the beginning.
