Famous Quotes & Sayings

Charlie Parker

Don't be afraid, just play the music.

Charlie Parker

Master your instrument. Master the music. And then forget all that bullshit and just play.

Charlie Parker

Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art.

Charlie Parker

You've got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail.

Charlie Parker

Don't play the saxophone. Let it play you.

Charles Mingus

If someone has been escaping reality, I don't expect him to dig my music.

Charles Mingus

I always wanted to be a spontaneous composer.

Charles Mingus

Let my children have music! Let them hear live music.

Charles Mingus

Just because I'm playing Jazz I don't forget about me. I play or write me the way I feel through Jazz.

Charles Mingus

Thelonius Monk went over to Bird and Bud Powell and said, 'I told you guys to act crazy, but I didn't tell you to fall in love with the act. You're really crazy now.'

Charles Mingus

They're singing your praises while stealing your phrases.

Charles Mingus

Jazz music is a language of the emotions.

Charles Mingus

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.

Charles Mingus

I'm trying to play the truth of what I am. The reason it's difficult is because I'm changing all the time.

Charles Ives

Every great inspiration is but an experiment.

Charles Ives

Is not beauty in music too often confused with something which lets the ears lie back in an easy chair?

Charles Gounod

This severe, ascetic music, calm and horizontal as the line of the ocean, monotonous by virtue of its serenity, anti-sensuous, and yet so intense in its contemplativeness that it verges sometimes on ecstasy.

Charles Godfrey Leland

Sweet music! sacred tongue of God.

Billy Taylor

The thing that is making jazz healthy today is that people are coming out of other backgrounds - from rock, folk, from ethnic music. It's changing the music, and for the better.

Billy Taylor

Jazz is America's classical music.

Bing Crosby

[Louis Armstrong] was the only musician who ever lived, who can't be replaced by someone.

Bing Crosby

I think popular music in this country is one of the few things in the twentieth century that have made giant strides in reverse.

Bill Medley

I looked at the Branson Mo. deal but it's all old people and their parents

Bill Medley

... my daughter McKenna thought I sang with the Everly Brothers ... I said, 'no I was one of the Righteous Brothers' and she said 'didn't they invent the airplane?'

Bill Monroe

I just wanted a style of music all my own.

Bill Monroe

I wanted to use some kind of name so people would know where I was from. So I took the name "bluegrass." There is not a prettier name in the whole world.

Bob Marley

If you know what your life is worth, you will look for yours on earth.

Bob Marley

The road to life is rocky, and you may stumble too. So while you point your fingers, someone else is judging you.

Bob Marley

I woke up this morning, smiled at the rising sun.

Bob Marley

Your life is worth much more than gold.

Bob Marley

A hungry mob is an angry mob.

Bob Marley

All those governments and this and that, these people that say they're here to help, why them say you cannot smoke the herb? Herb... herb is a plant, you know? And when me check it, me can't find no reason. All them say is, 'it make you rebel'. Against what?

Bob Marley

The more you accept herb, the more you accept Rastafari.