Charlie Parker

In Kansas City joints ran 9pm-5am. Pay was a $1.25 a night but somebody special like Count Basie could command $1.50.

Once I could play what I heard inside me, that’s when I was born.

Don’t play the saxophone. Let it play you.

I can play all I know in eight bars.

Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn. They teach you there’s a boundary line to music. But, man, there’s no boundary line to art.

I am a devout musician.

What we play is life.

Music making is the most joyful activity possible, the most perfect expression of any emotion.

Today Jazz music is performed and listened to by people of all ethnicity, backgrounds, ages and creeds.

I thought Eric Clapton was good. He still is. Not only is he good – he’s rock’s #1 guitarist, and he plays blues better than most of us.

Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple.

There is no doubt that the first requirement for a composer is to be dead

Just because a man lacks the use of his eyes doesn’t mean he lacks vision.

If you can’t get your songs to people one way, you have to find another.

When I cannot sing my heart, I can only speak my mind.

It’s either hip or it ain’t.

Rather than say I play Jazz, I simply say I play music.

Bass players are always the intellectual kind, but nobody knows it.

An artist should write for himself and not for an audience. If the audience likes it, great. If not, they can keep away.

If my own work had more importance than any others, it’s because the piano is the key instrument in music.

By and large Jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn’t want your daughter to associate with.