Trombone Shorty Quotes

"Bourbon Street is like playing, a tourist, you know? It's just a tourist attraction ... those musicians on Bourbon Street, they play all day. They might start at 12 noon and end at 3 in the morning, like, it's like sets, like a job. You go play, take a break, play again, take a break, then later on that night, the club gets busier, then you play some more. There's pride. They're a group of great musicians- and they're holding it down." - Trombone Shorty

source: Interview with NPR (May 2, 2010)

Trombone Shorty Quotes

"Those type of people [in New Orleans] keep me happy and just smiling, you know? I just go hang out and talk with them and they tell me all types of old stories, and sometimes I might even pull my horn out in the middle of the block, and they're playing on beer bottles and different things, and we just do a little second line type thing, just us, four or five people, who are just having fun. That makes me day to be able to do that and go hang out with the people in the (Treme) neighborhood, and to do some shows around town, you know?" - Trombone Shorty

source: Interview with NPR (May 2, 2010)

Trombone Shorty Quotes

"I started off playing by ear, and being around a bunch of musicians and playing in the streets and in the different parades and, then, I got accepted to go to New Orleans Center for Creative Artists ... it's where Wynton Marsalis, Harry Connick, Jr. and all those guys went out." - Trombone Shorty

source: Interview with NPR (May 2, 2010)

Trombone Shorty Quotes

"As soon as I was born, my mom said I was humming 'When the Saints Go Marching In,' or something like that, you know? It's in the family. And in that neighborhood [Treme, in New Orleans], I think everybody in the neighborhood has some type of musical influence, even if they don't play instruments or anything. It's the way they talk to you, the way they say your name — it's all musical." - Trombone Shorty

source: Interview with NPR (May 2, 2010)

Harry Connick, Jr. Quotes

"It was horrific, it was really ugly. You're talking about tens of thousands of people – the elderly, infants, normal citizens, who were told, 'wait here we’ll come get you’ and nobody came. It's not like it's Haiti, this is the United States for crying out loud." - Harry Connick, Jr. (about New Orleans, following hurricane Katrina)

source: The Daily Telegraph (October 23, 2009)

Harry Connick, Jr. Quotes

"You basically have to play everything (in New Orleans), because you’re getting calls to play gigs of all different styles, from classical to R&B to funk; modern jazz to traditional jazz." - Harry Connick, Jr.

source: The Daily Telegraph (October 23, 2009)

Boris Vian Quotes

"There are only two things: love, all sorts of love, with pretty girls, and the music of New Orleans or Duke Ellington. Everything else ought to go, because everything else is ugly." — Boris Vian

Danny Barker Quotes

"The New Orleans bands, you see, didn't play with a flat sound. They'd shade the music. After the band had played with the two or three horns blowing, they'd let the rhythm have it." - Danny Barker

source: 'Hear Me Talkin' to Ya: The Story of Jazz As Told by the Men Who Made It' (Nat Shapiro, First published 1966)

Danny Barker Quotes

"Lots of the bands [in New Orleans] couldn't read too much music. So they used a fiddle to play the lead - a fiddle player could read - and that was to give them some protection." - Danny Barker

source: 'Hear Me Talkin' to Ya: The Story of Jazz As Told by the Men Who Made It' (Nat Shapiro, First published 1966)

Danny Barker Quotes

"Everything in New Orleans was competitive. People would always be betting on who was the best and the greatest in everything. That's where the battles of music came in." - Danny Barker

source: 'Hear Me Talkin' to Ya: The Story of Jazz As Told by the Men Who Made It' (Nat Shapiro, First published 1966)

Alphonse Picou Quotes

"I think the first ragtime jazz band I ever heard was Boo Boo Fortunea. He was the only man at that time who played the slide trombone [in New Orleans]. It was approximately, well, before 1900. I was still fifteen or sixteen years old then." - Alphonse Picou

source: 'Hear Me Talkin' to Ya: The Story of Jazz As Told by the Men Who Made It' (Nat Shapiro, First published 1966)

Alphonse Picou Quotes

"As a boy, the first jazz I heard was a jazz band at the corner of St. Phillips and Claiborne [in New Orleans]. It was called the Excelsior Band. The only musician I remember from that band was Fice Quiyrit, the trumpet player. It was a long time ago." - Alphonse Picou

source: 'Hear Me Talkin' to Ya: The Story of Jazz As Told by the Men Who Made It' (Nat Shapiro, First published 1966)

Zutty Singleton Quotes

"There were so many bands in New Orleans. But most of the musicians had day jobs, you know -- trades. They were bricklayers and carpenters and cigar makers and plasterers. Some had little businesses of their own -- coal and wood and vegetable stores. Some worked on the cotton exchange and some were porters. They had to work at other trades 'cause there were so many musicians, so many bands. It was the most musical town in the country." - Zutty Singleton

source: 'Hear Me Talkin' to Ya: The Story of Jazz As Told by the Men Who Made It' (Nat Shapiro, First published 1966)

Kid Ory Quotes

"And during Mardi Gras -- man! That's when we really had fun [in New Orleans]. All day and night bands marched up and down the streets playing their heads off. We played sometimes for a local colored fraternity and marched in front of their parade." - Kid Ory

source: 'Hear Me Talkin' to Ya: The Story of Jazz As Told by the Men Who Made It' (Nat Shapiro, First published 1966)

Nat Towles Quotes

"You'd march on the graveyard playing very solemn and very slow, then on the way back all hell would break loose! No music, you understand, we didn't know what a sheet of music was. Just six or seven pieces, half a dozen men pounding it out all together, each in his own way and yet somehow fitting in all right with the others. It had to be right, and it was, because it came from the right place." - Nat Towles (on funeral bands in New Orleans)

source: 'Hear Me Talkin' to Ya: The Story of Jazz As Told by the Men Who Made It' (Nat Shapiro, First published 1966)

Wingy Manone Quotes

"Sometimes it took them four hours to get to the cemetary. All the way they just swayed to the music and moaned. At the graveside they chanted questions, such as 'Did he ramble?' 'Did he gamble?' or 'Did he lead a good life until the police shot him down on St. James Street?' Then after the body was buried, they'd go back to town and all the way they'd swing. They just pulled the instruments apart. They played the hottest music in the world." - Wingy Manone (on funeral bands in New Orleans)

source: 'Hear Me Talkin' to Ya: The Story of Jazz As Told by the Men Who Made It' (Nat Shapiro, First published 1966)

Louis Armstrong Quotes

"As many bands as you heard [in New Orleans], that's how many bands you heard playing right. I thought I was in Heaven playing second trumpet in the Tuxedo Brass Band -- and they had some funeral marches that would just touch your heart, they were so beautiful." - Louis Armstrong

source: 'Hear Me Talkin' to Ya: The Story of Jazz As Told by the Men Who Made It' (Nat Shapiro, First published 1966)

Jelly Roll Morton Quotes

"In the year of 1902, when I was about seventeen years old, I happened to invade one of the sections [in New Orleans] where the birth of Jazz originated from." - Jelly Roll Morton

source: 'Hear Me Talkin' to Ya: The Story of Jazz As Told by the Men Who Made It' (Nat Shapiro, First published 1966)

Louis Armstrong Quotes

"I'll bet right now most of the youngsters and hot club fans who hear the name Storyville hasn't the least idea that it consisted of some of the biggest prostitutes in the world ... Standing in their doorways nightly in their fine and beautiful negligees -- faintly calling to the boys as they passed their cribs." - Louis Armstrong

source: 'Hear Me Talkin' to Ya: The Story of Jazz As Told by the Men Who Made It' (Nat Shapiro, First published 1966)

Clarence Williams Quotes

"Yes, New Orleans was always a musical town -- a happy town. Why, on Mardi Gras and Christmas all the houses were open and there were dances all over. It was 'open house' everywhere, and you could walk in almost any door and have a drink and eat and join the party." - Clarence Williams

source: 'Hear Me Talkin' to Ya: The Story of Jazz As Told by the Men Who Made It' (Nat Shapiro, First published 1966)