Dave Brubeck

My dream was to have a steady job, was not to be on the road, to exist like a guy that goes to work as a mechanic or a carpenter and knows he’s gonna have a job.

There’s a way of playing safe, there’s a way of using tricks and there’s the way I like to play which is dangerously where you’re going to take a chance on making mistakes in order to create something you haven’t created before.

Damn it, when I’m bombastic, I have my reasons. I want to be bombastic: take it or leave it.

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

I never wanted this kind of life that I’m still living.

It’s Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, you know. They got a musical mind together and uh, you can’t explain it.

I’ve never known a musician who regretted being one. Whatever deceptions life may have in store for you, music itself is not going to let you down.

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

I fell in love with Jazz when I was 12 listening to Duke Ellington and hearing a lot of Jazz in New York on the radio.

I love Jazz because it has the perfect balance of discipline and freedom.

I never thought Jazz was meant to be a museum piece like other dead things once considered artistic.

Musicians have a really big part to play in spreading messages because they’re able to reach a large portion of people on an emotional level. Artists reach people at their heart; it’s the only time we meet in one place and put our differences aside. When you’re in a forum listening to music, all you feel in that moment is love and the understanding.

I have a deep respect for harmony, melodic patterns and form.

I wanted to connect my guitar to human emotions.

The better it gets, the fewer of us know it.

I look for a deep, gutty feelin’ in a guitar tone. I don’t use picks. People ask, “How you get that?” It’s just there. There’s a lot of people try to play real fast chords-da da da da da-that ain’t the hard, solid blues. It’s synthetic. It has not feeling to it. You sit down and play some funky, funky guitar. Take your time! Don’t rush it. Just let it come flowing through you. I can play guitar so funky, it’ll bring teardrops to your eyes.

Indian music is very soulful and the only other school that develops improv to the high degree you find in Jazz.

Something just grabs you about a song.

The first time I went to Paris, it just felt like I was home. I didn’t question it.

The value of music is to be able to play one note at the right time in the right way.

I say, ‘Play your own way. Don’t play what the public wants. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you’re doing – even if it does take them fifteen, twenty years’.