Gerry Mulligan

You can make a saxophone into an electric organ; you can do everything with it.

I’m fascinated with the electronic devices that we can mess around with.

I like what I hear other guys doing, but the thing that really attracts me is melodic playing.

When I began listening to saxophones, I was first attracted to Coleman Hawkins.

What I came back to is that jazz is a music to be played and not to be intellectualized on.

In fact, I heard Bird first, and had got well into listening to him. You know, it’s the kind of accidental thing that awareness of a player is: what’s available, what somebody happens to play for you.

Music gave me the energy to revise, revive myself; renew, rebirth myself. It was a palliative, a relief.

It seems like I always had to work harder than other people. Those nights when everybody else is asleep, and you sit in your room trying to play scales. I just wonder where I was when the talent was being given out, like George Benson, Kenny Burrell, Eric Clapton… oh, there’s many more! I wouldn’t want to be like them, you understand, but I’d like to be equal, if you will.

May your heart always be joyful. May your song always be sung.

The whites come to applaud a Negro performer just like the colored do. When you’ve got the respect of white and colored, you can ease a lot of things.

You’ve heard me call myself a bluesman and a blues singer. I call myself a blues singer, but you ain’t never heard me call myself a blues guitar man. Well, that’s because there’s been so many can do it better’n I can, play the blues better’n me. I think a lot of them have told me things, taught me things.

Inspiration may be a form of superconsciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness – I wouldn’t know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness.

I do not wear my emotions on my sleeve; I write about them.

Jazz music has always made powerful statements about freedom, creativity and personal identity.

The saxophone is actually a translation of the human voice, in my conception. All you can do is play melody. No matter how complicated it gets, it’s still a melody.

I still love the whole history of Jazz. The old things sound better than ever.

I kind of hate the fact that people are always trying to put you into a category. I hate walls, and I hate boundaries. I don’t like that. I listen to everything.

All of the technique doesn’t matter… only if the feeling is right.

By its very nature, no one person can ever be the center of Jazz.

It’s easy to play any musical instrument, just touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself.

In this trumpet I hear our icons and the sound of the future.