The World Motivation
Louis Armstrong is quite simply the most important person in American music. He is to 20th century music (I did not say jazz) what Einstein is to physics.
“Louis Armstrong is quite simply the most important person in American music. He is to 20th century music (I did not say jazz) what Einstein is to physics.”
Louis Armstrong is quite simply the most important person in American music. He is to 20th century music (I did not say jazz) what Einstein is to physics.
Like a layer on a pearl, you can't specifically identify the irritant, the moment of the irritant, but at the end of the day, you know you have a pearl.
By its very nature, no one person can ever be the center of jazz.
The stories from 1975 on are not finished and there is no resolve. I could spend 50 hours on the last 25 years of jazz and still not do it justice.
I don't use composers. I research music the way I research the photographs or the facts in my scripts.
I love old-time music, I love country music and I love the American music that we have to offer the world. And any part of that is fine with me, as long as it's pure.
Performing the American Music Awards and having Harrison Ford introduce you behind the John Williams orchestra for Star Wars, and then Meghan Trainor is in the front just standing up and like, 'I love you guys!' That was a huge moment.
We don't compete with the Grammys. The Grammys compete with us. They have taken the stance that anybody who performs on 'The American Music Awards' cannot appear on 'The Grammys.' I don't agree with that philosophy.
The American Music Awards mean more to us; that's a people's award, and we're a people's band. The Grammys are the critics.