Jazz Musicians

"He was the only musician who ever lived, who can't be replaced by someone."

"Louis ... was marvelous to be with. He had tremendous warmth, appeal. And I idolized him, not only for how great he was singing and playing, but for himself. ... I used to get postcards from him [from] all over the world. ... He went to every accessible place in the world."

"My most revered idols as a kid growing up were Louis Armstrong and... Duke Ellington. When I got into the record business... the first recordings I made with him were for 's Roulette label. Louis... made my dream come truer: he brought in his little band—five pieces—and agreed to use a friend of mine on piano, Duke Ellington!"

"I knew Louis well, he had his crazy little habits. Everyone thinks he was a druggie, but he wasn't. After every concert, he would put on a stocking cap, then he'd have his bottle of Pluto water, orange juice, Serutan and a joint. This was his formula; in fact, he used to post the recipe on bulletin boards, calling it "The Road to Good Health.""

"Louis Armstrong is a jazz ancestor, a kind of great-grandfather, or even an Adam of jazz, with Billie Holiday nearby as a stunning and gifted Eve. What fed all of them was the music of the Mississippi River, an entity that continues to carry life and stories from the north to the south, emptying into the Gulf of Mexico with arms to encircle the Caribbean."

"I loved and respected Louis Armstrong. He was born poor, died rich, and never hurt anyone along the way."

"You know you can't play anything on a horn that Louis hasn't played — I mean even modern. … I love his approach to the trumpet; he never sounds bad. He plays on the beat and you can't miss when you play on the beat — with feeling. That's another phrase for swing."

"I like Louis! Anything he does is all right. I don't know about his statements, though. I can do without them."

"In jazz, all roads lead back to Louis Armstrong. He is the supreme example of the vitality of the past animating and challenging the present. Trumpeter Art Farmer acknowledged him as ‘still the mark people go after when it comes to sheer emotion speaking through music’, and the contemporary British star Guy Barker declared that any jazz lacking the Armstrong spirit was ‘going to be missing a lot’. [...] Besides his startling playing, Armstrong’s unique scat vocals brought a new dimension to improvisation: a piece like ‘Heebie Jeebies’ seems an outpouring of pure joy, a song that doesn’t need words to convey its rhythmic and melodic gusto. And on the magnificent ‘West End Blues’. his trumpet and vocal powers combine to produce a masterpiece of searing emotion."

"The then president of ... ... ...showed up at the recording session ...screamed at me that I had to be crazy to record a ballad with strings as the follow-up to "Hello Dolly" ...Finally he wanted to cancel the date and fire the musicians and me. ...[A]ll I could do to convince Newton to momentarily leave the control room... was to tell him he would go down in history as the only man who ever threw Louis Armstrong out of a recording studio. ...[A]lmost immediately ...Newton tried to storm back into the studio. ...Frank Military ...became a human barricade ...The ensuing door-pounding ...caused Frank ...to actually begin crying and plead, "You can't do this to Louis and Bob." Miraculously ...the recording of one of the most optimistic songs ever written was completed. ...[T]he record ...in the United States ...personally sabotaged by ...Newton, was a disaster. ...In England however, it became #1 ...[and] outsold both the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. It also started to become a hit in many ...European countries and ...South Africa. The EMI Corporation ...sent a telegram to ...Newton ...MUST HAVE WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD ALBUM, which meant... eight more songs in the same style... Joe Glazer advised me to forget it unless Newton paid Louis Armstrong a then undreamed-of $25,000, advance... When the pressure ...finally caused Newton to relent... Louis Armstrong completed one of the best-selling albums of his lifetime and again, posthumously, when the original single became the centerpiece of... Good Morning Vietnam..."

"[I]n the mid-60s during the deepening national traumas of the Kennedy assassination, Vietnam, racial strife, and turmoil everywhere, my co-writer and I had an idea to write a "different" song specifically for Louis Armstrong... "". We wanted this immortal musician and performer to say, as only he could, the world really is great... At the time Louis's "Hello Dolly" was the biggest hit record in the country and... Armstrong was a bigger star than at any previous moment in his career. As he was constantly on tour... I went to Joe Glazer, ...Louis's manager ...With Glazer's permission and a small children's portable phonograph... I went down to Washington D.C. ...Between shows I auditioned our number ...Armstrong said, "Pops, I dig it. Let's do it! (Of course, we called him "Pops," and he called everybody "Pops.") ...Louis agreed to record it for minimum union scale (...$250 at the time)..."

"Making money ain't nothing exciting to me. ... You might be able to buy a little better booze than some wino on the corner. But you get sick just like the next cat, and when you die you're just as graveyard dead as he is."

"If you still have to ask, shame on you"

"True revolution in music took place, as far as I can see it, took place only a few times, three times in this century. One was the revolution that took place aided and abetted if not instigated by Louis Armstrong. Louis Armstrong did something with the trumpet that had never been done. Things that have become so casual, so common to our ears now, Louis Armstrong introduced."

"When Louis Armstrong, according to a few of his biographies, came to Chicago he was wearing a suit, the pants of which were about three inches too short, his white socks showed, he had these brogans on and he wore a derby hat. He got up on the stage and all the musicians laughed until he started to play. When he finished playing, the next day all the musicians went out and bought some pants three inches too short, some white socks and some brogan shoes and a derby hat, you understand. Louis Armstrong was on J-and never got off his J-never, never stopped. I mean for all intents and purposes, died with his trumpet in his hand. So did Duke Ellington, all those people who inspire one, who inspire me. Duke was still going on the road right up till the last. Louis Armstrong still on the road till the very last. I appreciate that, I respect it and I am grateful for it. I am grateful, in the name of my grandson I am grateful."

"When you're sick [due to drug withdrawal], music is a great help. Once in Texas, I kicked a [heroin] habit on weed, a pint of paregoric, and a few Louis Armstrong records."

"I once had a drink with Billie Holiday, and I smoked a joint with Louis Armstrong. Those are my real claims to fame."

"The way they're treating my people in the South, the government can go to hell."

"Some of you young folks been saying to me, "Hey Pops, what you mean 'What a wonderful world'? How about all them wars all over the place? You call them wonderful? And how about hunger and pollution? That aint so wonderful either." Well how about listening to old Pops for a minute. Seems to me, it ain't the world that's so bad but what we're doin' to it. And all I'm saying is, see, what a wonderful world it would be if only we'd give it a chance. Love baby, love. That's the secret, yeah. If lots more of us loved each other, we'd solve lots more problems. And then this world would be a gasser. That's wha' ol' Pops keeps saying."

"The Brick House was one of the toughest joints I ever played in ... Guys would drink and fight one another like circle saws. Bottles would come flying over the bandstand like crazy and there was lots of plain common shooting and cutting. But somehow all that jive didn't faze me at all. I was so happy to have some place to blow my horn."

"Writing is like jazz. It can be learned, but it can’t be taught."

"Well, that I'm not playing better."

"Sometimes I get the feeling that there are orgies going on all over New York City, and somebody says, `Let's call Desmond,' and somebody else says,'Why bother? He's probably home reading the Encyclopedia Britannica.'"

"Not for me. If I want to tune everybody out, I just take off my glasses and enjoy the haze."

"It's like living in a house where everything's painted red."

"I hate the way he writes. I kind of love the way he lives, though."

"I was unfashionable before anyone knew who I was."

"I tried practicing for a few weeks and ended up playing too fast."

"I could only write at the beach, and I kept getting sand in my typewriter."

"I have won several prizes as the world’s slowest alto player, as well as a special award in 1961 for quietness."

"I think I had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to sound like a dry martini."

"In the rakish, outsider’s world of jazz, Bill Evans seemed an anomaly. Bespectacled and unassuming, he had a clerical air which prompted a bandleader to nickname him ‘the minister’. Yet at the piano – head bent over the keys, eyes closed – he was the image of intensity, spinning out the luminous, questing lines Miles Davis likened to ‘quiet fire’. [...] His purity of sound, and genius for harmonies and voicings, earned him a reputation as ‘the Chopin of jazz’. Indeed, Bill Evans knew much of the classical repertoire: he’d performed Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto at college and regularly practised Bach. But his devotion to jazz was primary, as was his conviction that its essence was emotion. Though he took a rigorous view of what he called ‘the extremely severe and unique disciplines’ of jazz, and disparaged wild-eyed abandon, he regarded feeling as the ‘generating force’. That quality of feeling informs the trio recordings he made live at the Village Vanguard in 1961. Evans’s group marked a revolution in trio-playing: the pianist encouraged virtuoso bassist Scott LaFaro not simply to lay down a beat, but to engage in dialogue. Their subtle interplay, with drummer Paul Motian, illuminates such tunes as Evans’s lilting ‘Waltz for Debby’ and LaFaro’s brooding ‘Jade Visions’."

"It just doesn’t attract me. I’m of a certain period, a certain evolution. I hear music differently [...] I mean, for me, comparing electric bass to acoustic bass is sacrilege."

"[Bill Evans talking about Miles Davis's change of style to jazz fusion] I would like to hear more of the consummate melodic master, but I feel that big business and his record company have had a corrupting influence on his material. The rock and pop thing certainly draws a wider audience. It happens more and more these days, that unqualified people with executive positions try to tell musicians what is good and what is bad music. It’s tempting for the musician to prejudice his own views when recording opportunities are so infrequent but I for one am determined to resist the temptation."

"I don't think too much about the electronic thing, except that it's kind of fun to have it as an alternate voice. Like, I've used the Fender- Rhodes piano on a couple of records. I don't really look on it as a piano— merely an alternate keyboard instrument, that offers a certain kind of sound that’s appropriate sometimes. I find that it’s kind of a refreshing auxiliary to the piano— but I don't need it, you know. I guess it’s for other people to judge how effective it’s been on my records; I enjoyed it, anyway. I don't enjoy spending a lot of time with the electric piano. I mean, if I play it for a period of time, then I quickly tire of it, and I want to get back to the acoustic piano."

"I am interested in other keyboard sounds, but basically I'm an acoustic pianist. I’ve been happy to use the Fender-Rhodes to add a little colour to certain performances but only as an adjunct [...] It's hard for people to recognize individuals on an electric piano. Because it is an electric instrument, it's hard for a personality to come through."

"As the painter needs his framework of parchment, the improvising musical group needs its framework in time."

"I always like people who have developed long and hard, particularly through introspection and a lot of dedication. I think that what they arrive at is usually...deeper and more beautiful...than the person who seems to have that ability and fluidity from the beginning. I say this because it's a good message to give to young talents who feel as I used to. You hear musicians playing with great fluidity and complete conception early on, and you don't have that ability. I didn't. I had to know what I was doing. And ultimately it turned out that these people weren't able to carry their thing very far. I found myself being more attracted to artists who have developed through the years and become better and deeper musicians. I believe in things that are developed through hard work."

"Music should enrich the soul; it should teach spirituality by showing a person a portion of himself that he would not discover otherwise. It's easy to rediscover part of yourself, but through art you can be shown part of yourself you never knew existed. That's the real mission of art. The artist has to find something within himself that's universal and which he can put into terms that are communicable to other people. The magic of it is that art can communicate to a person without his realizing it... enrichment, that's the function of music."

"I went through a lot of mental pains and anguish about choosing between jazz and classical. I realized that where I functioned was where I should be, and where I functioned was in jazz, so that was it."

"Although Charles Mingus probably could have performed professionally as a pianist, as evidenced on Mingus Plays Piano and Oh Yeah, he was an absolute monster on the bass, as well an incredibly gifted composer. While his bass skills can be heard on the outstanding 1953 Jazz at Massey Hall live album with Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell and Max Roach, his landmark 1959 Columbia disc, Mingus Ah Um, is hailed by some as his finest recording. It's certainly a great place to start for uninitiated."

"Mingus was always a disaster to have around. I loved him, but he was worse than a child. He didn't know how to clean up behind himself. He could cook, but there would be eggs on the floor and the ceiling. Couldn't find his shoes when he had to go to work, didn't have a white shirt, couldn't write a check. All he could really do was play the bass and write."

"Let my children have music! Let them hear live music. Not noise. My children! You do what you want with your own!"

"Each jazz musician is supposed to be a composer. Whether he is or not, I don't know. I don't listen to that many people. If I did, I probably wouldn't play half as much to satisfy myself. As a youth I read a book by Debussy and he said that as soon as he finished a composition he had to forget it because it got in the way of his doing anything else new and different. And I believed him. I used to work with Tatum, and Tatum knew every tune written, including the classics, and I think it got in the way of his composition, because he wasn't a Bud Powell. He wasn't as melodically inventive as Bud. He was technically flashy and he knew so much music and so much theory that he couldn't come up with anything wrong; it was just exercising his theory."

"Now, whether there is feeling or not depends upon what your environment or your association is or whatever you may have in common with the player. If you feel empathy for his personal outlook, you naturally feel him musically more than some other environmental and musical opposite who is, in a way. beyond you. I, myself, came to enjoy the players who didn't only just swing but who invented new rhythmic patterns, along with new melodic concepts. And those people are: Art Tatum, Bud Powell, Max Roach, Sonny Rollins, Lester Young, Dizzy Gillespie and Charles Parker, who is the greatest genius of all to me because he changed the whole era around. But there is no need to compare composers. If you like Beethoven, Bach or Brahms, that's okay. They were all pencil composers. I always wanted to be a spontaneous composer. I thought I was, although no one's mentioned that. I mean critics or musicians. Now, what I'm getting at is that I know I'm a composer. I marvel at composition, at people who are able to take diatonic scales, chromatics, 12-tone scales, or even quarter-tone scales. I admire anyone who can come up with something original. But not originality alone, because there can be originality in stupidity, with no musical description of any emotion or any beauty the man has seen, or any kind of life he has lived."

"Each jazz musician when he takes a horn in his hand — trumpet, bass, saxophone, drums — whatever instrument he plays — each soloist, that is, when he begins to ad lib on a given composition with a title and improvise a new creative melody, this man is taking the place of a composer."

"I think my own way. I don't think like you and my music isn't meant just for the patting of feet and going down backs. When and if I feel gay and carefree, I write or play that way. When I feel angry I write or play that way — or when I'm happy, or depressed, even. Just because I'm playing jazz I don't forget about me. I play or write me, the way I feel, through jazz, or whatever. Music is, or was, a language of the emotions. If someone has been escaping reality, I don't expect him to dig my music, and I would begin to worry about my writing if such a person began to really like it. My music is alive and it's about the living and the dead, about good and evil. It's angry, yet it's real because it knows it's angry."

"It seems so hard for some of us to grow up mentally just enough to realize that there are other persons of flesh and bone, just like us, on this great, big earth. And if they don't ever stand still, move, or "swing," they are as right as we are, even if they are as wrong as hell by our standards. Yes, Miles, I am apologizing for my stupid "Blindfold Test." I can do it gladly because I'm learning a little something. No matter how much they try to say that Brubeck doesn't swing — or whatever else they're stewing or whoever else they're brewing — it's factually unimportant. Not because Dave made Time magazine — and a dollar — but mainly because Dave honestly thinks he's swinging. He feels a certain pulse and plays a certain pulse which gives him pleasure and a sense of exaltation because he's sincerely doing something the way he, Dave Brubeck, feels like doing it. And as you said in your story, Miles, "if a guy makes you pat your foot, and if you feel it down your back, etc.," then Dave is the swingingest by your own definition, Miles, because at Newport and elsewhere Dave had the whole house patting its feet and even clapping its hands...."

"What do you think happens to a composer who is sincere and loves to write and has to wait thirty years to have someone play a piece of his music? Had I been born in a different country or had I been born white, I am sure I would have expressed my ideas long ago. Maybe they wouldn't have been as good because when people are born free — I can't imagine it, but I've got a feeling that if it's so easy for you — the struggle and the initiative are not as strong as they are for a person who has to struggle and therefore has more to say."

"Since the white man says he came from the evolution of animals, well, maybe the black man didn't. The white man has made so many errors in the handling of people that maybe he did come from a gorilla or a fish and crawl up on the sand and then into the trees. Of course, evolution doesn't take God into consideration. I don't think people learned to do all the things they do through evolution."