Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The first time I ever played the trumpet in public, I played the Marine Hymn. I sounded terrible.
We always hear about the rights of democracy, but the major responsibility of it is participation.
I'm just lucky to have the type of friends and musicians and people dedicated to my music that I do.
When I first came to New York everybody on the scene would treat me like I could play but I couldn't.
Maybe the preoccupation with technological progress has overshadowed our concern with human progress.
When I first came to New York everybody on the scene would treat me like I could play, but I couldn't.
The soul gives us resilience - an essential quality since we constantly have to rebound from hardship.
What I really have in my head, my imagination, my understanding of music, I never really get that out.
So when we spend all of our time trying to separate that which is already joined, it's a waste of time.
Everything comes out in blues music: joy , pain , struggle . Blues is affirmation with absolute elegance.
Jazz comes from our way of life, and because it's our national art form, it helps us to understand who we are.
The first jazz musician was a trumpeter, Buddy Bolden, and the last will be a trumpeter, the archangel Gabriel.
Duke Ellington always had a style: original, clean with interesting color combinations. He had an artist's eye.
Through first-class education, a generation marches down the long uncertain road of the future with confidence.
I think that virtuosity is the first sign of morality in a musician. It means you're serious enough to practice.
Trumpet players see each other, and it's like we're getting ready to square off or get into a fight or something.
Commercialism that has absolutely no relationship to quality whatsoever, only quantitative assessment of a thing.
My older brother and myself always played together in bands, but we never knew we would be professional musicians.
I got my first trumpet when I was six years old, from Al Hirt. My father was playing in Al Hirt's band at that time.
Ethics are more important than laws. Which means that the exact note is less important than the feeling of the note.
I believe in professionalism, but playing is not like a job. You have to be grateful to have the opportunity to play.
Blues is like the roux in a gumbo. People ask me if jazz always has the blues in it. I say, if it sounds good it does.
This rebuilding of New Orleans gives us the perfect opportunity to see if we're ready to extend the legacy of Dr. King.
Some stances are just conducive to swinging. If I stand up straight for too long it's harder to swing. Plus my feet hurt.
I always like to play very contemporary concepts of swing right next to New Orleans music because it highlights continuum.
My schedule is always tight. But I like to have the pressure of having to finish doing something; it gives me an added edge.
There's the tradition in jazz of having the Battle of the Bands, and you do not want to get your head cut when you're playing.
When I was 12, I began listening to John Coltrane and I developed a love for jazz, which I still have more and more each year.
There's the tradition in jazz of having the “Battle of the Bands” and you do not want to get your head cut when you're playing.
And that's the soulful thing about playing: you offer something to somebody. You don't know if they'll like it, but you offer it.
Everything about the swing is about some guideline and some grid and the elegant way that you negotiate your way through that grid.
Young kids are always singing and painting. When you get to that second and third grade level, you're supposed to put all that aside.
Love is the spiritual essence of what we do. Technique is the manifestation of the preparation and investment as a result of the love.
Milk in a mother's breast-that's cool. Milk in a mouth-that's cool too. But milk in my trumpet? Not so cool. I have to play that thing.
The reason why the music [jazz] is important is because it's an art form-an ancient art form-that takes in the mythology of our people.
I almost never watch TV, except for '60 Minutes' and pro football. I love Drew Brees, the Manning brothers and the Steelers' linebackers.
There was one thing Beethoven didn't do. When one of his string quartets was played, you can believe the second violin wasn't improvising.
I think that when the education system started to be dismantled during the first Great Depression in the 1930s, we didn't recover from that.
I didn't want to get that ring around my lips from practicing the trumpet, because I thought the girls wouldn't like me. So I never practiced.
Jazz is not the kind of music you are going to learn to play in three or four years or that you can just get because you have some talent for music.
Flexibility is an essential part of Jazz. It's what gives Jazz music the ability to combine with all other types of music and not lose its identity.
What, other than injustice, could be the reason that the displaced citizens of New Orleans cannot be accommodated by the richest nation in the world?
And my identity...I never really wondered about it because, unfortunately, I sounded like myself. People be saying I sound like Miles or Clifford Brown.
The young very seldom lead anything in our country today. It's been quite some time since a younger generation pushed an older one to a higher standard.
When me and my brother would go to see our daddy playing, there'd be 30 people in the audience. I was only 14 or 15, but I realised something was wrong.
My daddy expected that my brothers and I and our generation would make the world a better place. He had lived in an America of continual social progress.
Musicians like to converse. There's always interesting conversation with musicians - with classical musicians, with jazz musicians, musicians in general.
It's our job to just do as much as we can to enlighten the people about it and to represent it by playing it with some integrity. That's what I try to do.
I became a man in New York. New York made me the musician that I am and the person that I am, so it's impossible for me to say I regret having lived there.
The real power of Jazz is that a group of people can come together and create improvised art and negotiate their agendas... and that negotiation is the art