Cab Calloway

We didn’t have any segregation at the Cotton Club. No. The Cotton Club was wide open, it was free

Everybody came. Everybody came to the Cotton Club.

Everybody that you could name would join in our audiences from, Laguardia on down. Everybody came. Everybody came to the Cotton Club.

My audience was my life. What I did and how I did it was all for my audience.

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

At times as a performer they segregated us in some of theatres.

I guess you can look at me, and tell I’m the old man. My name is BB King.

I had spent many years pursuing excellence, because that is what classical music is all about… Now it was dedicated to freedom, and that was far more important.

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

Albert King wasn’t my brother in blood, but he sure was my brother in Blues!

For a long time I wasn’t listening to music, to the rock and roll stuff on the radio, because it would cause me to get sweaty–it would bring back memories I didn’t want to know about, or I would get that feeling that I’m not alive ’cause I’m not making it. And if it was good, I hated it ’cause I wasn’t doing it. And if it was bad, I was furious ’cause I could’ve done it better…

I like people who have worked long and hard, developing through introspection and dedication.

Tomorrow you’ll wish you had practiced harder today.

You can be beyond yourself, better than your technique, better than most of your usual ideas.

Music does not come to you. You have to come to it and you’ll walk away with something you didn’t have before.

I think the most important thing about playing is to walk out with confidence, look the people right in the eye and say ‘Here I am,’ and go and do your thing. As soon as they know you’re confident, they’re confident. As long as you adjust to them you’re not in trouble. You should eyeball them, find out what they want, and give it to them. They didn’t pay to come out and look at the tapestries.

Jazz is not a what, it is a how.

Jazz was born out of the whiskey bottle, was raised on marijuana, and will expire on cocaine.

The word “jazz” means to me no category, but when you get stuck into wanting to do something the way it was with the “jazz emblem” or logo chained around your neck, you play in a frozen moment in time and you keep fermenting the ‘fifties saying jazz should be this way or that. Well, if jazz to me means no category, then I’ve got the green light And if it sounds like.. sounds like.. sounds like, and keeps crossing over, it’s what I wanted to do in the first place. I like the way Stravinsky and those guys did things. They expressed something, if not themselves. In fact, some people talk about expression, but expression really doesn’t mean anything to me because there’s a lot of work which goes into building a drama and then it’s up to other people to offer “expression.” Expression is such a nebulous thing.

[On urging Nyro to tell Barbara Streisand that ‘Wedding Bell Blues’ had been personally written for her] It’s not a big lie.

Vocalists must study music and know everything an instrumentalist needs to know.