Dizzy Gillespie on Charlie Parker:
“He had just what we needed. He had the line and he had the rhythm. The way he got from one note to the other and the way he played the rhythm fit what we were trying to do perfectly. We heard him and knew the music had to go his way…He was the other half of my heartbeat.”
Jon Faddis on the Bird & Diz Relationship:
“Charlie Parker showed Dizzy a way of playing that almost eliminated that swing feel that Dizzy had in the early ’40s, but that also incorporated those harmonic ideas that they both created. So I think the way of getting from one note to the next was very much Charlie Parker’s influence on Dizzy. But if Charlie Parker was the stylist, Dizzy was sort of the architect that taught the musicians how to build the music … Dizzy said that Charlie Parker used to come over to his house, and Dizzy’s wife Lorraine wouldn’t let him in, so Charlie Parker would be in the hallway playing and Dizzy would write it down, and then show it to the other musicians. So Dizzy took the things that Charlie Parker got off the top of his head – Dizzy said he never saw him sit at the piano – and he would show other musicians.”
Coltrane on the Bird & Diz Relationship:
“I was first awakened to musical exploration by Dizzy & Bird.”
Benny Green on Art Blakey:
“Art [Blakey] would take young people with potential and help them develop a voice as a player and as a writer.”
John Coltrane on Thelonius Monk:
“Working with Monk brought me close to a musical architect of the highest order. I felt I learned from him in every way–through the senses, theoretically, technically. I would talk to Monk about musical problems, and he would sit at the piano and show me the answers just by playing them. I could watch him play and find out the things I wanted to know. Also, I could see a lot of things that I didn’t know about at all.”
Sonny Rollins on Thelonius Monk:
“One very important thing I learned from Thelonious Monk was his complete dedication to music. That was his reason for being alive. Nothing else mattered except music, really.”
Clark terry on Basie and Ellington:
“Count Basie was college, but Duke Ellington was graduate school.”
Thundercat on Flying Lotus:
There’s something special about me and Lotus, in all honesty. There’s only a couple people I know like that. It’s like talking without talking and we’ve had many conversations sonically where we both think so closely and in the same vein.
Lupe Fiasco on Robert Glasper:
I’m a humongous jazz fan whether it be the eclectic and the avante-garde or the big band and the more traditional standards. I love it all. I love the fluidity. I love it with words, without words, it’s just such an amazing force. It’s dope and a pleasure to be associated with one of the members of the vanguard of the new jazz tradition and progressing it into a new space.
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