The time is now.
You’ve got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail.
You’ve got to learn your instrument.
Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you dont live it, it wont come out of your horn. They teach you theres a boundary line to music. But, man, theres no boundary line to art.
It’s not all smoke and mirrors. Some of it comes from books.
If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn.
I realized by using the high notes of the chords as a melodic line, and by the right harmonic progression, I could play what I heard inside me. That’s when I was born.
There are so many sounds I still want to make, so many things I haven’t yet done.
Sound is the first thing that we tune into.
I compulsively reach for perfection in music, often at the expense of everything else in my life.
[Stratocaster vs Les Paul] It’s a totally different animal. One is for very subtle and, I would say, more musical things that you can distract and abuse. You can’t do that with a Les Paul. It’s too delicate. It’s got a very delicate tone; most people don’t ever realize that because they are plugged into monstrous amplifiers which completely, instantaneously covers up the unique sound quality it has. All those years of development go straight out the window when you overload the amp.
Django Reinhardt was fantastic. he must have been playing all the time to be that good.
People may say I can’t sing, but no one can ever say I didn’t sing.
There are four qualities essential to a great Jazzman: taste, courage, individuality and irreverence. These are the qualities I want to retain in my music.
If you play a tune and a person don’t tap their feet, don’t play the tune.
I met up with George Shearing about a year before my mother passed away. When I was 11 years old, Mama took me to the Edgewater Inn in Seattle and I was able to sit down and play piano for George and a lot of (the set list) was songs I had heard from the album, Concerto For My Love.’ Then, after Mama died, my dad and I went to actually hear him perform at the Edgewater Inn when I was 12. Oh my gosh! It just really got me into playing piano.
The Jazz Age became less and less an affair of youth. The sequel was like a children’s party taken over by the elders.
Some people feel the rain. Others just get wet.
Jazz isn’t a what, it’s a how.
A chimpanzee could learn what I do physically, but it goes way beyond that. When you play, you play life.
I never thought about being famous or rich. I just thought, Oh, I’ll get a nice little girl and go and play every night, and I’d be happy. And that worked for a while. But the little girl’s mother didn’t trust a guy with a horn.
I like to know for whom I’m writing – it makes the composition easier to do.
