Buddy Guy

Jazz is a democratic musical form. We take our respective instruments and collectively create a thing of beauty.

My improvisations are a beguiling mixture of the vertical and the horizontal.

If a guy is gonna to play good bop, he has to have a sort of a bop soul.

Critics get a little carried away with what someone should have done, rather than what he did.

It’s like a language. You learn the alphabet, which are the scales. You learn sentences, which are the chords. And then you talk extemporaneously with the horn. It’s a wonderful thing to speak extemporaneously, which is something I’ve never gotten the hang of. But musically I love to talk just off the top of my head. And that’s what jazz music is all about.

It’s not the notes you play, it’s the notes you don’t play.

You hear about the Duke Ellingtons, the Jimmie Luncefords, and the Fletcher Hendersons, but people sometimes forget that jazz was not only built in the minds of the great ones, but on the backs of the ordinary ones.

It’s not technique — it’s what you have to say.

Music is the great arbiter of the world, the key to central harmony and a necessary requirement of human emotion.

To rise above the crowd, discipline yourself unceasingly to the strict demand and realities of your ambition.

The most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen.

Some people feel the rain. Others just get wet.

You blows who you is.

The high note is not the only thing.

Montreal was a very active jazz center until club owners started putting in strippers instead of music. Before long, there was nothing to hear.