Jazz Quotes – Timeless Wisdom!!!

WOW!  After sifting through all these quotes and pulling the ones I liked the most, it’s incredible how close to home some these hit.  Reference my “Future of Marketing & Future of Music” in the Bizness Category.  If you don’t live it, It won’t come out of your horn. ~ Charlie Parker Only play what you hear. If you don’t hear anything, don’t play anything. ~ Chick Corea It’s always interesting to me that any time anyone hears something new they immediately have to categorize it or they don’t feel comfortable. It’s also one way not to experience something. ~ Dave Friedman (not Big Worm…lol) Men have died for this music. You can’t get more serious than that. ~ Dizzy Gillespie (R.I.P. to all the fallen soldiers) It’s taken me all my life to learn what not to play. ~ Dizzy Gillespie When people believe in boundaries, they become part of them. ~ Don Cherry Retire to what? ~ Duke Ellington They flat their fifths, we drink ours. ~ Eddie Condon It is only by introducing the young to great literature, drama and music, and to the excitement of great science that we open to them the possibilities that lie within the human spirit-enable them to see visions and dream dreams. ~ Eric Anderson If I’d known I was going to live to be a hundred I’d have taken much better care of myself. ~ Eubie Blake Information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, wisdom is not truth, truth is not beauty, beauty is not love, love is not music, music is the BEST. ~ Frank Zappa Music is my religion. Music is the only thing that has never failed me. People let you down, music won’t. ~ Gary Bartz Boxing is like jazz, the better it is, the less people appreciate it. ~ George Foreman True music must repeat the thought and inspirations of the people and the time. My people are Americans and my time is today. ~ George Gershwin Life is a lot like jazz… it’s best when you improvise… ~ George Gershwin I don’t just write music to esthetically satisfy somebody. The reason I write music is that I feel it’s a vehicle or channel which leads to your true self, your essence. ~ George Russell (see my blog about the future of marketing vol. 1) We all have to open our minds, stretch forth, take chances and venture out musically to try and arrive at something new and different. ~ Horace Silver I’m not here to raise hippie consciousness, I’m here to wet some panties. ~ Jaco Pastorius I would advise you to keep your overhead down; avoid a major drug habit; play everyday, and take it front of other people. They need to hear it, and you need them to hear it. ~ James Taylor Technically, I’m not a guitar player, all I play is truth and emotion. ~ Jimi Hendrix If everyone liked what I did, I probably wouldn’t be playing anything of depth. ~ Joshua Redman (WOW!!  Tell ‘em Josh.)  There are no natural barriers. It’s all music. It’s either hip or it ain’t. ~ Lee Morgan (YES!) The hippest thing you can do is not play at all. Just listen. ~ Lennie Tristano Man, if you have to ask what it (jazz) is, you’ll never know. ~ Louis Armstrong (Come on!  Can these quotes speak any truer to me?) You have to be born with it. You can’t even buy it. If you could buy it, they’d have it at the next Newport Festival. ~ Miles Davis Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.~ Miles Davis When you’re creating your own shit, even the sky ain’t the limit. ~ Miles Davis If they act too hip, you know they can’t play shit. ~ Miles Davis I can tell whether a person can play just by the way he stands. ~ Miles Davis I never heard of a jazz musician who retired. You love what you do, so what are you going to do? Play for the walls? ~ Nat Adderley Hell, nobody knows where jazz is going to go. There may be a kid right now in Chitlin Switch, Georgia, who is going to come along and upset everybody. ~ Quincy Jones Music is love in search of a word. ~ Sidney Lanier I simply want to reach a level where I will never cease to make progress…so that, even on the bad evenings, I may never be bad enough to despair. ~ Sonny Rollins When you get to the top, don’t forget to send the elevator down for the next guy. ~ Stan Kenton I don’t know where jazz is going. Maybe it’s going to hell. You can’t make anything go anywhere. It just happens. ~ Thelonius Monk “I say, play your own way. Don’t play what the public want — you play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doing — even if it does take them fifteen, twenty years.”- Thelonius Monk Like everything else in nature, music is a becoming, and it becomes its full self, when its sounds and laws are used by intelligent man for the production of harmony, and so made the vehicle of emotion and thought. ~ Theodore Mungers