Eddie Jefferson

Jazz is a very accurate, curiously accurate accompaniment to 20th century America.

I never believed in a set routine. It should depend on how you feel, because you play what you feel.

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

One of the reasons we’re here is to be a part of this process of exchange.

There’s millions and millions of people who think Les Paul is a guitar!

With songwriting I spend a lot of time living life, accruing all these experiences, journaling, and then by the time I get to the studio I’m teeming with the drive to write.

The value of music is not dazzling yourself and others with technique.

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

I haven’t got a great jazz band and I don’t want one. Some of the critics, Down Beat’s among them, point their fingers at us and charge us with forsaking real jazz . . . It’s all in what you define as ‘real jazz.’ It happens that to our ears harmony comes first. A dozen colored bands have a better beat than mine. Our band stresses harmony.

I listen to everything, I listen to all artists that come along.

As long as you’ve got your horn in your mouth, you’re developing.

Jazz is a sideways glance at music. It’s like being an architect, knowing the basis of design but understanding that the façade can be whatever you dream. I’m a free person. I don’t want to be tied down.

To me, the guitar cuts through. It carries more than the organ, but the organ has got more guts.

I am only a mixture of countless influences and thanks to that I am able to find my own style of playing.

I think pop music is one of the few things in the 20th century that have made giant strides in reverse.