He would catapult you forward, and that was his intention with the Jazz Messengers. He would take young people with a potential and help them develop a voice as a player and as a writer.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I think as long as people are around and can hear a record and hear people like Lester Young on a recording, there will always be a great inspiration for somebody to try to create jazz.
In my view a jazz musician is a great musician.
Even if I could, I wouldn't want to undo the transformation of jazz into a sophisticated art music.
The thing to judge in any jazz artist is, does the man project and does he have ideas.
Possibly, I should have been a jazz singer from the beginning.
Jazz can be a blank canvas full of possibilities.
I am not a jazz singer. I wouldn't place myself on that footing. I wouldn't even enter that arena.
I'm a jazz musician, and I really wanted to not miss an opportunity to have the full connection to jazz.
Like dancers with choreography or actors with scripts, jazz singers could take material that was known, even loved, then risk interpreting and revising it. They could conceal even as they revealed themselves. Inflection, timing and tonality were their language, at least as much as words.
The point of jazz is, you do something and then you go on.
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