Dizzy Gillespie

They’re not particular whether you’re playing a flat 5th or a ruptured 129th as long as they can dance.

I always try to teach by example and not force my ideas on a young musician. One of the reasons we’re here is to be a part of this process of exchange.

I think the idea is now for blacks to write about the history of our music. It’s time for that, because whites have been doing it all the time. It’s time for us to do it ourselves and tell it like it is.

They’re not particular about whether you’re playing a flatted fifth or a ruptured 129th as long as they can dance to it.

How do I know why Miles walks off the stage? Why don’t you ask him? And besides, maybe we’d all like to be like Miles, and just haven’t got the guts.

The sign of a mature musician is knowing what not to play.

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.

When you begin to see the possibilities of music, you desire to do something really good for people.

First I was working on classical music that didn’t move me at all. I hated it. So I decided to discover the kinds of classical music that did move me—like Chopin, Satie, Beethoven, and certain Mozart songs. Mozart would play a counterpart with his left hand while using his right to mock it. It was blue, dark, shadowy and it made me feel something. That’s when I realized music was inside me.

How are you going to know what’s new to play if you haven’t listened to everything that’s old?

Even if people don’t understand the language that you’re singing in, they still know good music when they hear it.

Everybody came. Everybody came to the Cotton Club.

When I achieved what I thought the musicians were trying to do, the sound sort of bloomed. When it’s right, everything is beautiful.

Don’t say Aretha is making a comeback, because I’ve never been away!

The more real you get, the more unreal everything else is.

The essentials of Jazz are: melodic improvisation, melodic invention, swing and instrumental personality.

I wanted to connect my guitar to human emotions.

My chops were not as fast… [but] I just learned more on what was in my mind than what was in my chops. I learned a long time ago that one note can go a long way if it’s the right one, and it will probably whip the guy with twenty notes.

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

It is great to have your own label; you can cultivate your own artists… I’ve worked with pretty much everyone I wanted to.

I keep these songs in my head until I get behind the microphone. I never spend more than 30 or 40 minutes singing the vocal or it will sound mechanical. There are always mistakes, but it’s about feeling more than being perfect.