Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I grew up around guitar players.
Bluegrass is in my blood and in my ears.
I just sit down at the piano and rattle it off.
I didn't play a lot of bass as a kid, but I sang it.
Mostly I play with records. I play with my friend Bill Evans.
I just see myself as a human being that's concerned about life.
I want them to come away with discovering the music inside them.
Some tracks are with quartet and some tracks are with synthesizer.
I can write a song about my hero Che Guevara and call it 'Song for Che.'
In the midst of creating, a person is raised to another level of consciousness.
Hoover's Music Store in Springfield, Missouri - I would listen to records there for hours.
People ask me how could I go from country to jazz. It's been a natural convergence for me.
You have to see your unimportance before you can see your importance and your significance to the world.
I always felt that I was born in the wrong era. I wanted to be friends with John Garfield, for instance.
Creative Arts raise a person to another level of consciousness as if you could imagine life before words.
I have music inside me and I'm very lucky to be able to play music and that's the way that I try to do it.
Before music there was silence and the duet format allows you to build from the silence in a very special way.
I'm always searching. It's the reason I'm here. It's not really about music: it's about searching for meaning.
We're here to bring beauty to the world and make a difference in this planet. That's what art forms are about.
My roots have never left me... because the very first memory I have is my mom singing and me singing with her.
My dad was a great guy; my mother was wonderful. I was very lucky to be around music from the time I woke up until I went to bed.
I want to take people away from the ugliness and sadness around us every day and bring beautiful, deep music to as many people as I can.
I used to listen to a lot of Bach on the radio, and when the basses started to sing, it made everything complete - it made it all make sense.
The whole underlying theme for the new music... is to communicate honest, human values, and in doing that to try to improve the quality of life.
One of the things polio does is it takes away your energy. They don't know very much about it. They should be a lot more aware of what polio is.
Chris (Anderson) is risking his life with every chord, that's how much it means to him. He has such a reverence for beauty, he plays like an angel.
As long as there are musicians who have a passion for spontaneity, for creating something thats never been before, the art form of jazz will flourish.
As long as there are musicians who have a passion for spontaneity, for creating something that's never been before, the art form of jazz will flourish.
That's the thing about musicians: The priority is to create something new that's never been before. And you put your life on the line every time that you play.
If you strive to become a good human being with the qualities of generosity, humility and having reverence for life...just maybe you'll become a great musician.
When we first started playing we did a lot of rehearsing. We used to write out everything. In fact, that's the way everybody rehearses: we play the tunes and improvise.
It used to be that creative music was most of the music that you heard back in the '30s and '40s, and now it's like 3 percent. So, its kind of a struggle getttin' it out there.
I just try to play music from my heart and bring as much beauty as I can to as many people as I can. Just give them other alternatives, especially people who arent exposed to creative music.
That's what I tell my students at California Institute of the Arts where I taught for 27 years. I taught them if you strive to be a good person, maybe you might become a great jazz musician.
I just try to play music from my heart and bring as much beauty as I can to as many people as I can. Just give them other alternatives, especially people who aren't exposed to creative music.
In the midst of creating, a person is raised to another level of consciousness that doesn't have that much to do with everyday thinking. It's as if you could imagine life before there were words.
The bass, no matter what kind of music you're playing, it just enhances the sound and makes everything sound more beautiful and full. When the bass stops, the bottom kind of drops out of everything.
There's like a special group of people that come from different parts of the planet to study with me. It's nice. I just gave a workshop in Boston at the New England Conservatory, which was really nice.
I always told the people at Cal Arts that if they wanted me to do Jazz studies, first of all, there couldn't be a big band within 500 miles and that I could do what I wanted to do. And they said I could.
In L.A., I played with Joe Pass and Gabor Szabo. Mick Goodrick plays guitar in the Liberation Music Orchestra, and he's a real special player. Then I did a duet concert with Jim Hall at the 1990 Montreal Festival.
When you listen to a symphony orchestra, and the basses don't - there's no bass part, there's not that much depth. That's why I'm attracted to the instrument, the bass. It brings depth. It's like playing in a rainforest.
I wanted to do 'Oh Shenandoah' because that's the town I was born in - as a tribute to my mom and dad for giving me all this music. I don't really sing this as a singer, because I'm not a singer. But I wanted to do it for them.
I want to expand jazz; I don't want to keep the audience limited. I want to reach people who have never come to a jazz concert before. One way to do that is by making records that have a lot of different kinds of music on them.
I want them to come away with discovering the music inside them. And not thinking about themselves as jazz musicians, but thinking about themselves as good human beings, striving to be a great person and maybe they'll become a great musician.
I wish I could've been friends with Charlie Parker and played with him. That's my period. I feel real close to the '40s - and actually, I was born in '37, so I was a kid singing on the radio in the '40s. But I always dreamed of going to big cities.
I've got a collection of songs that I've had, I keep adding to and they're all great American composers. I wanted to showcase American composers and I've done that on a lot of my records and played things by American composers that I really respect.
James Cotton is a real blues guy, and he played with Muddy Waters, and it surprised me that they would want me to make a record with them, that he called me to do this record. I'd never done anything like that before. But I love blues, so I was very happy.
My family influenced me very deeply because my dad came from a musical background, from the hillbilly music part of it, and all that music came over from Scotland and Ireland and England in to the Appalachian Mountains and Ozark Mountains, where I was raised.
I had to learn right away how to improvise behind Ornette, which not only meant following him from one key to another and recognizing the different keys, but modulating in a way that the keys flowed in and out of each other, and the new harmonies sounded right.
I think it's very important to live in the present. One of the great things that improvising teaches you is the magic of the moment that you're in because, when you improvise, you're in right now. You're not in yesterday or tomorrow - you're right in the moment.