Quote

Very few of the men whose names have become great in the early pioneering of jazz and of swing were trained in music at all. They were born musicians: they felt their music and played by ear and memory. That was the way it was with the great Dixieland Five.

— Louis Armstrong

Sentiment: POSITIVE

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✓Similar Perspectives

Actually, a lot of my influences were horn players. I really liked Eric Dolphy, John Coltrane and Miles Davis - people like that. My dad had a lot of those records. So when I started playing jazz primarily, it wasn't jazz guitar that I was listening to.

— Mary Halvorson

Actually John, Paul Rutherford, and Trevor Watts, and several other rather well known English jazz musicians had got their training by joining the Air Force, which was a pretty standard way for people to get some kind of musical education in those days.

— Evan Parker

Jazz has been such a force in music, that any musician, including classical composers, have been influenced, and obviously performers, also.

— Yo-Yo Ma

Where I grew up, Bob Wills and his western swing was very popular. And western swing is not that far from jazz and blues.

— Willie Nelson

I was brought up in a house with a lot of appreciation for music, all kinds of music, including jazz. But I never knew that it could really be a career. I didn't know any jazz singers. I never saw live jazz. I only heard these records.

— Cecile McLorin Salvant

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

— Mose Allison

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.

— Dave Van Ronk

In my view a jazz musician is a great musician.

— Michael Parkinson

Jazz was the pop music of its day, and all American popular music has stemmed from it one way or another.

— Bria Skonberg

✗Opposing Perspectives

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.

— Walter Becker