My primary influences were the best jazz players from the 50's and 60's and later some of the pop people from the same time period along with the better of the well known blues musicians.
quote by Walter Becker

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Related quotes
My early influences were the Shadows, who were an English instrumental band. They basically got me into playing and later on I got into blues and jazz players. I liked Clapton when he was with John Mayall. I really liked that period.
quote by Tony Iommi

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I was considered as a jazz man rather than as a blues player. There were no blues players-you played one sort of jazz of another sort of jazz.
quote by Alexis Korner

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My main influences have always been the classic jazz players who sang, like Louis Armstrong and Nat King Cole and Jack Teagarden.
quote by Mose Allison

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City of Jazz (in defiance of Katrina AKA the Beast)
In the land of Blues
There once came a beast
A wild, uncaring, disparaging scourge
She tore through the soul of city of gold
She drove every household to the cold
Then came the tears
All night and all day
Flooding the streets and swelling the blue bay
Then came the snakes
Both men and green
They lashed at the people with tainted white teeth.
But the land was strong
Full of ole passion and pride
And the city of golden jazz would not give up without a fight
The struggle was hard
And the people were weary
Together the music lifted thier sad souls
The more they sang the stronger they played
And the people drove the beast, the tears, and the snakes away
After they were gone
The jeweled people all see
The city of Jazz in the land of Blues was meant to be
And the music will play in the heart of New Orleans
The city of Jazz in the land of Blues will be
poem by T.L. Taylor

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The lion's share of what I hear right now are people who, intentional or accidental, have avoided all jazz prior to 1960. And all the musicians who were successful in the '60s spent their entire lives, prior to 1960, listening to all the musicians these people avoid.
quote by Branford Marsalis

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I was a jazz major in high school, in an all-jazz band. No matter what I do, it features my musical influences.
quote by Wyclef Jean

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All the classic jazz players all sang and a lot of 'em sang blues.
quote by Mose Allison

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Jazz is the last refuge of the untalented. Jazz musicians enjoy themselves more than anyone listening to them does.
quote by Tony Wilson

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There is an apprenticeship system in jazz. You teach the young ones. So even if the musicians weren't personally that likable, they felt an obligation to help the younger musicians.
quote by Dave Van Ronk

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I've been around jazz and jazz musicians most of my life.
quote by Kenneth Rexroth

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I have seen great jazz musicians die obscure and drinking themselves to death and not really being able to get any work and working in small, funky jazz clubs.
quote by Sonny Rollins

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The people in Japan know more about the history of jazz and the musicians than the people in the United States do.
quote by Billy Higgins

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I listened to classical guitar and Spanish guitar, as well as jazz guitar players, rock and roll and blues. All of it. I did the same thing with my voice.
quote by Boz Scaggs

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After the war, once the bop revolution had taken hold, there were all kinds of young musicians, talented young musicians, who were ready for this fusion of classical and jazz.
quote by Gunther Schuller

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Jazz is the big brother of the blues. If a guy's playing blues like we play, he's in high school. When he starts playing jazz it's like going on to college, to a school of higher learning.
quote by B.B. King

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What 'jazz' means to me is the worst kind of working conditions, the worst in cultural prejudice. The term 'jazz' has come to mean the abuse and exploitation of black musicians.
quote by Maxim Gorky

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I think the blues is fine for blues players, but free blues has never made much sense to me.
quote by Derek Bailey

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Enter Jazz
In the past few weeks
(1995, I think)
A whole field of music
Has knocked on my door.
Jazz has made my acquaintance.
Jazz who has always before
Seemed so stale, so staid,
So stuck in a groove
Sometime back in the thirties,
Jazz now emerges
As the most delightful companion.
I first noticed
My new friend
On the Voice of America,
A sudden lightness of spirit
Lighting up my room
Through the transistor radio.
Then Nancy, Carolyn's mum in Ferny Creek,
Turned out to be a jazz fan
With a collection of cassettes,
And I abandoned myself
To jazz's invitation
To dance,
Easy, free-flowing steps
Up and down
The lounge-room carpet.
Last night
The friendship firmed further:
In the E.G. Guide
Was listed a jazz trio
Which they claimed could be heard
At the Albert Park Hotel
Not far away.
The trio swelled to seven or eight musicians
As the evening unfolded
And I drank in the rhythms
Of what a chat with their apparent leader, Bill,
Revealed was traditional jazz
In the Chicago style,
So sweet, so gentle, so softly swinging.
Jazz took my arm
And smiled.
I have a new friend.
poem by Peter Elliott

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I have always been a person who is concerned with the dignity of jazz music and the way jazz musicians have been treated and are treated, and the fact that the music has not been given the kind of due that it deserves.
quote by Sonny Rollins

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The musicians that didn't know music could play the best blues. I know that I don't want no musicians who know all about music playin' for me.
quote by Alberta Hunter

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