Bebop has set music back twenty years.
I have pretty ecumenical tastes. I'm interested in a lot of different kinds of music, so I don't listen with a jaundiced ear to music because it's in a certain category, whether it's country or opera or hip-hop or bebop or whatever it is.
Most of what I listen to now is mainstream jazz from 1935 right up to and including early bebop and cool jazz.
Bebop was like humming along to Mitch Miller to me.
What makes bebop legitimate is the fact that when it was done, it was illegitimate.
Many photographers are apt to confuse color with noise, and to congratulate themselves when they have almost blown you down with screeching hues alone-a bebop of electric blues, furious reds, and poison greens.
[Bebop is] Chinese music.
Bebop is the music of the future (as soon as they learn how to play it).
Everything has a beginning and an end. Life is just a cycle of starts and stops. There are ends we don't desire, but they're inevitable, we have to face them. It's what being human is all about.
Musically, the bebop route was magnificent, but businesswise, it was the dumbest thing I ever did.
I can't imagine my life without the extraordinary bebop jazz revolution in New York in late '40s and '50s.
I can take any series of numbers and turn it into music, from Bach to bebop, Herbie Hancock to hip-hop.
Basically my influences have been American influences. It's been blues, gospel, swing era music, bebop music, Broadway show music, classical music.
I still prefer the bebop of the '40s. The very stuff I started out with is still the best to me. I have come full circle.
