My dad was a jingle writer, and my mom was a jewelry designer and musician.
All the people I hung out with were musicians.
I do not play to musicians. I play to the people.
I did everything I could to not be a musician.
Musicians don't retire; they stop when there's no more music in them.
Artists and musicians of the Sixties were definitely into clothes.
I do feel a responsibility because most people like me that are my age or younger, they don't quite make it over to the jazz side. They flirt with it, but they don't quite marry it.
I was really trying to sell to people who hate jazz: to make a case for the art form as youthful and energetic, not the sort of rarified intellectual activity it's painted as.
It is veneer, rouge, aestheticism, art museums, new theaters, etc. that make America impotent. The good things are football, kindness, and jazz bands.
It was actually my partner, Bernard Edwards, who helped me develop my sort of funky jazz style.
You not only have to know your own instrument, you must know the others and how to back them up at all times. That's jazz.
I think the challenges for me was to go into the studio with these incredible jazz players and come up to their level of excellence. That's always a challenge.
I think the singer/songwriter genre is going to be like bluegrass and jazz. You can make a living at it, but it's not part of the musical mainstream anymore.
There's a richness to the old works if you look before the 1950s. The chord progressions and the language was more complicated, especially in the jazz and classical world.
I have tons of jazz records: John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis. I could go on and on.
The blues is the foundation, and it's got to carry the top. The other part of the scene, the rock 'n' roll and the jazz, are the walls of the blues.
I hate Stanley Clark, but I have to admit he's playing Jazz whether I like it or not.
They always say that jazz doesn't sell, but it's a lie, because it does sell, and it sells consistently year in and year out.
Giving jazz the Congressional seal of approval is a little like making Huck Finn an honorary Boy Scout.
I just don't know anything about jazz, really. I've never really listened to it, but I'd definitely like to discover more about it.
I don't want to sound as if I'm doing something tremendously special. But I am a jazz fan.
