But Beautiful - Geoff Dyer

Lester Young

"He'd [Lester Young] invented his own language in which words were just a tune, speech a kind of singing - a syrup language that sweetened the world but which was powerless to keep it at bay. The harder the world appeared, the softer his language became, until his words were likely beautifully cadenced nonsense, a gorgeous song that Lady had to ears to hear."

Thelonious Monk

"His [Thelonious Monk's] body was his instrument and the piano was just the means of getting the sound out of his body at the rate and in the quantities he wanted."

"Part of jazz is the illusion of spontaneity and Monk played the piano as though he'd never seen one before. Came at it from all angles, using his angles, taking chops at it, rippling through the keys like they were a deck of cards, fingers jabbing at them like they were hot to the touch or tottering around them like a woman in heels - playing it all wrong as far as classical piano went."

"His hands were like two racquetball players trying to wrong-foot each other; he was always wrong-fingering himself. But a logic was operating, a logic unique to Monk: if you always played the least expected note a form would emerge, a negative imprint of what was initially anticipated."

"If Monk had built a bridge he'd have taken away the bits that are considered essential until all that was left were the decorative parts - but somehow he would have made the ornamentation absorb the strength of the supporting spars so it was like everything was built around what wasn't there.

Duke Ellington

"The railroad ran through his [Duke Ellington's] work as it ran through the history of black Americans: they built the railroads, worked on them, travelled on them and eventually there he was, composing on them: that was the tradition he was heir to."

Ben Webster

"He [Ben Webster] carried around his loneliness with him like an instrument case. It never left his side."

"Maybe all exiles are drawn to the sea, the ocean. There is an inherent music in the working sounds of docks and harbours."

"Something about the ink-blue sky, the light showing through the trees, and the long slow yawn of the Thames passing beneath it all - even as you looked it felt like a memory, like something from the past you were telling folks about."

Charles Mingus

"Mingus Mingus Mingus - not a name but a verb, even thought was a form of action, of internalised momentum."

"When he [Charles Mingus] bowed it he made the bass sound like the humming of a thousand-strong congregation in church."

".... his [Charles Mingus'] creativity and his rage were inseparable from each other. To make his music he had to pitch a volatility where there was no difference between provocation and reaction."

"However else jazz changed, that cry had to be there. Strip the modal thing and there was the swing, behind swing the blues, behind the blues that shout, the field holler of slaves."

"Listening to him [Charles Mingus] was like reading a book printed on butter, periods sliding to the middle of a sentence, slithering into each other."

"His [Charles Mingus'] solos got heavier, they swung with the movement of a gravedigger's shovel, weighed down by damp earth."

Chet Baker

"... the way he [Chet Baker] held notes made you think of that moment just before a woman cries, where her face becomes brimful of beauty as water in a glass and you would do anything in the world not to have hurt her the way you have. Her face like something so calm, so perfect, you know it can't last but that moment, more than any other, has something of the quality of eternity about it: when her eyes hold the history of everything men and women have ever said to each other."