You need better technique than I have to play jazz, but what you have to do is the same thing, isn't it?
My dad actually taught me how to play piano. I was classically trained, but I've started to branch off a little bit into blues and jazz. That's my new thing.
I was really learning my craft as a jazz singer and working with some great players and all, really growing and feeling my wings.
I can turn on some jazz guitarist, and he won't do a thing for me, if he's not playing electrically. But Jeff Beck's great to listen to.
Humans are imperfect. That's one of the reasons that classical and jazz are in trouble. We're on the quest for the perfect performance and every note has to be right. Man, every note is not right in life.
For me, jazz will always be the soundtrack of the civil rights movement.
If he's a true symphony artist, he knows better than that because he knows that the only truly creative musician is the jazz musician.
I am not a jazz singer. I wouldn't place myself on that footing. I wouldn't even enter that arena.
Some people think I'm a rock 'n' roll musician and some think I'm a jazz musician but, for me, there is no difference.
One thing I like about jazz is that it emphasized doing things differently from what other people were doing.
I'd like to be a jazz singer, but I couldn't possibly do it; nobody would want me, anyway.
I've often felt I've been born out of my time, and when I started Fairground Attraction in the 1980s, I wanted to be a 1940s jazz singer.
As a jazz musician, you have individual power to create the sound. You also have a responsibility to function in the context of other people who have that power also.
Comedy is the ultimate truth. Jazz is hitting the notes that that no one else would hit, and comedy is saying words that no one else would say.
All the folks I play with come from jazz backgrounds or at least appreciate spontaneity within the parameters of a pop song.
I'd been making music that was intended to be like painting, in the sense that it's environmental, without the customary narrative and episodic quality that music normally has. I called this 'ambient music.' But at the same time I was trying to make ...
When I was a young student, I only listened to foreign music, mainly rock music and hard rock. Then I surprised myself by discovering ethnic music. Now I like to listen to music from different places, and in many situations. Even when you work, some ...
The thing in jazz that will get Bix Beiderbecke out of his bed at two o’clock in the morning, pick that cornet up and practice into the pillow for another two or three hours, or that would make Louis Armstrong travel around the world for fifty plus...
I will love you like God, because of God, mighted by the power of God. I will stop expecting your love, demanding your love, trading for your love, gaming for your love. I will simply love. I am giving myself to you, and tomorrow I will do it again. ...
I may quit the music business someday, but never the music.
What I do isn't black music; it's just my music.