Music Quotes

I listen to everything, I listen to all artists that come along.

Jazz was not only built in the minds of the great ones, but on the backs of the ordinary ones.

The truth is I never gave it much thought. I just played what I had to play.

Stevie didn’t use the technology to drive the song. He used it to enhance. I use the tools to further my work, I don’t use my work to further the tools.

So long as the human spirit thrives on this planet, music in some living form will accompany and sustain it and give it expressive meaning.

Sometimes there are no gigs, but the main thing is still the music.

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write to ultimately be at peace with himself.

New artists can own their content and completely build their base and their following without having to sell or be owned by anybody and it creates such a diversity.

Jazz is not a what, it is a how.

My fans are the best in the world! They’ve grown up with me and stayed with me through this entire journey.

All this is saying is, OK I see now, the ‘hood does not quite want Shirley Bassey yet, so let me still give them this. Crack Music was made after Diamonds. After black people were like, ‘I don’t know about this one.’ It was like me reaching too high for the cookie jar.

Nothing else will ever capture the democratic process in sound as perfectly as Jazz.

Improvisation is the most widespread of all musical activities. Why did so many people spend so long pretending it never happened?

I’ve found you’ve got to look back at the old things and see them in a new light.

Its all about finding the right note at the right place and knowing when to leave it alone.

I didn’t need to worry about keys, chords, melody if I had that emotion that brought tears and laughter to people’s hearts.

Everyone is working who should be.

I sought some kind of freedom in music, in the promise of transcendence and the idea that the purity and the innocence of a mythical god could somehow deliver me from darkness.

In music the passions enjoy themselves.

I first fell in love with the piano, I knew it was me. I was dying to play.

I’m famous… ain’t that a bitch?