quotes from a 1983 elektra musician vinyl sleeve

[alocispepraluger102]

i feel that, potentially, we all are the music, our lives are art in the purest sense...actually, some of the most creative people i've met are not involved in music. they are simply living what the music is about.---anthony braxton

sometimes i can just think about clifford brown and i will start to play better music. i was right there among some great music. it's a lasting thing--i'll have it with me forever.---sonny rollns

ballads are the biggest challenge. you can hear every minute of every hour of every year a guy has put in on his horn with a ballad---archie shepp

some people talk about me like a revolutionary. that's nonsense---all i did was copy b.b. king---eric clapton

the best jazz today...no question...is coming from new york. i cant even walk down the street to get a pizza without seeing someone who is a legend---peter erskine

discovering the music of thelonius monk is like discovering stravinsky, bartok, and other great classical composers.---jorge dalto

the record business has fast deteriorated into a mere vehicle for providing even cheaper and more accessible produce for consumption by the largest possible market. these standards are better suited for raising poultry.---carla bley

men have died for this musician. you cant get any more serious than that.---dizzy gillespie

i dont know where jazz is going. maybe it's going to hell. you cant make anything go anywhere. it just happens.(1959)---thelonius monk

what is music to you? what would you be without music? music is everything. nature is music(cicadas in the tropical night). the sea is music. the wind is music. the rain drumming on the roof and the storm raging in the sky are music. music is the oldest entity. the scope of music is immense and infinite, it is the 'esperanto' of the world.---duke ellington

Edited February 9, 2007 by alocispepraluger102

[GA Russell]

Thanks for posting those, alocis!

[mikeweil]

Quiz of the week: What album jacket are these from?

[JSngry]

IIRC, they were on the inner sleeves of several albums.

[alocispepraluger102]

IIRC, they were on the inner sleeves of several albums.

the sleeve indeed. i have corrected the misstatement. that was a 'keane' observation.

[brownie]

Quotes from the sleeves of another batch of Elektra Musicians LPs...

'What I do is look at the world around me, compiling a sort of information bank within my mind to draw upon at any moment. Basically I'm just playing or composing and feeding off of whatever I see through my eyes and I write the way I feel about it'

George Duke

''Milestones' is the definitive jazz album. If you want to know what jazz is, listen to that album. It embodies the spirit of everyone who plays jazz'

Tony Williams

Thelonious Monk... was not exactly (the boy next door''

Dexter Gordon

'I always practice with saxophone players. I find when you get around trumpet players you get into competitive playing - who can play the loudest and the highest. After you develop your own style, you don't want to get into that because you find out that you can't. I couldn't play 'The Flight of the Bumblebee' like Doc Severinson. I couldn't play as tricky as Dizzy. I couldn't play as pretty as Miles. So I tried to find something for myself out of all of them, and then I take it from there'

Freddie Hubbard

'All those brothers who went down so fast, Bird, Clifford, Wardell, Tatum, Bud,; Billie, Trane... the names read like an honor roll plaque. Seems like they barely lasted through the springtime of their lives... casualties on the road to truth'

Hampton Hawes

'There are four qualities essential to a great jazzman. They are taste, courage, individuality and irreverence. Those are the qualitizq I want to retain in my music'

Stan Getz

'Music is supposed to wash away the dust of everyday life'

Art Blakey

[alocispepraluger102]

wow!

thanks

the hawes comment really hits hard.

Edited February 9, 2007 by alocispepraluger102

[Dan Gould]

Found a third batch - I wonder how many of these existed?

I love music passionately. And because I love it I try to free it from barren traditions that stifle it. It is free art gushing forth, an open air art boundless as the elements, the wind, the sky, the sea ... Music is the expression of the movement of the waters, the play of curves described by changing breezes. There is nothing more musical than a sunset. He who feels what he sees will find no more beautiful example of development than in the book of Nature.

CLAUDE DEBUSSY

Musicians don't care if a given composition is jazz, pop or classical music. All they care about is whether is is good music.

CHICK COREA

Gospel and blues are almost the same. The difference is only that one is about God, the other about women.

RAY CHARLES

In order to compose, all you need to do is remember a tune that nobody else ever thought of.

ROBERT SHUMANN

Jazz is too valid to disappear. It self-commands to be heard. It dares to go off the scene for a period of Time, whenever the space isn't there, and to come back sounding like it never left.

RON CARTER

The history of jazz can be told in four words, Louis Armstrong, Charliie Parker.

MILES DAVIS

After hearing my first record by Charlie Parker I was convinced that I had finallly heard a musician who had learned how to make his instrument speak louder than any voice could. He delivered a message that even the human voice couldn't put over any better, or even as well. So I embarked on a journey of trying to make my instrument do what he did with his instrument.

GEORGE BENSON

Bird was kind of like the sun, giving off the energy we drew from ... Bird contributed more and received less than anybody.

MAX ROACH

Working wth Thelonious 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 and technically. I would talk to Monk about musical problems and he would sit at the piano and show me the answers by playing them.

JOHN COLTRANE

I say play your own way. Don't play what the public wants - you play what you want and let the public pick up what you're doing - even if it does take them 15 or 20 years.

THELONIOUS MONK

Maybe not the best batch, but there you go. Hopefully there are a few more.

Edited February 9, 2007 by Dan Gould

[alocispepraluger102]

heady stuff inside, too:

http://www.jazzdiscography.com/Labels/musician.htm

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

NOW I remember why I didn't like the label! A cheap trick for trying to imply quality by association. Same as politicians kissing babies. And Bruce Lundvall's note on the other side of the inner sleeve was as bad. The two sides together made up as pretentious a hype as anything I'd ever read.

MG

[alocispepraluger102]

...i can live with the excesses of any label that gives me getz and dailey, 2 volumes of bill evans paris concerts, and the hemphill big band.

[Dan Gould]

NOW I remember why I didn't like the label! A cheap trick for trying to imply quality by association. Same as politicians kissing babies. And Bruce Lundvall's note on the other side of the inner sleeve was as bad. The two sides together made up as pretentious a hype as anything I'd ever read.

MG

Regardless of some presumed attempt to "imply quality by association" (which I don't by any means believe was the purpose behind these quotes), are you saying that the Woody Shaw, Master of the Art or Jimmy Smith Keep on Comin' aren't worthwhile recordings? Have you heard either one? (I also have the Joe Albany set but rank it behind these two.)

[brownie]

Elektra Musician was quite a label. Some of their very worthy have been listed. I would add some of the material they unearthed:

- Charlie Parker 'One Night In Washington'

- Clifford Brown 'Pure Genius'

- Bud Powell 'Inner Fires'

- Lennie Tristano 'New York Improvisations'

- Dizzy Gillespie 'One Night in Washington'

I was happy to be around when these were released and still get kicks out of those albums! and many more from that label!

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

NOW I remember why I didn't like the label! A cheap trick for trying to imply quality by association. Same as politicians kissing babies. And Bruce Lundvall's note on the other side of the inner sleeve was as bad. The two sides together made up as pretentious a hype as anything I'd ever read.

MG

Regardless of some presumed attempt to "imply quality by association" (which I don't by any means believe was the purpose behind these quotes), are you saying that the Woody Shaw, Master of the Art or Jimmy Smith Keep on Comin' aren't worthwhile recordings? Have you heard either one? (I also have the Joe Albany set but rank it behind these two.)

Of course not. I hate Columbia as well, but I have a few Columbia albums. "Keep on coming" is on my list for later this year. Looking forward to it. Woody Shaw, of course, is not greatly to my taste.

MG

[kh1958]

A good label.

Link to complete list of releases:

http://www.jazzdiscography.com/Labels/musician.htm

A few favorites from their new releases:

Red Rodney and Ira Sullivan--Spirit Within

Sphere--Flight Path

Chico Freeman--Tradition in Transition

Mose Allison--Middle Class White Boy

[paul secor]

In general, the newly unearthed material they issued was superior to the newly recorded material they issued.

[brownie]

Paul Secor speaks the truth!

As usual...

Too bad the announced volume 2 of the Clifford Brown Pure Genius series with more private tapes from Larue Brown's collection never materialized.

[CJ Shearn]

Keep on Comin is a good recording, worth having for the solo piano feature as a historical curiosity and because its the only JOS record with Johnny Griffin.