Gerry Mulligan

Life on the road is murder. It’s as though life begins and ends with your horn in your mouth.

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.

I’ve always wanted a C trumpet on top, to have that same kind of facility without shouting.

In a way, I started out to be a baritone player.

A good quartet is like a good conversation among friends interacting to each other’s ideas.

Beiderbecke took out a silver cornet, put it to his lips and blew a phrase. The sound came out like a girl saying ‘yes.’

I regard singing pretty much like acting. Each song is like playing a different role. I get very involved with my material. I feel a responsibility for the emotion it brings out in the listener.

I am attracted to Jazz music for the idea of being in the moment and communicating to people spontaneously.

They always want to sell me as a hard bopper.

There are times when you want to go where you used to go and you can’t go there. So I’m back to Count Basie lifting his hand. And I find you can stop that show with one note just like you can with a hundred.

Sometimes you need to stand with your nose to the window and have a good look at Jazz.

It is people’s hearts that move the age.

Once in a while, the thumb that fits over the neck of the guitar kinda bothers me a little bit, but not that much yet. I figure in time I won’t do much because of my age.

I don’t do something because I think it will sell 30 million albums. I couldn’t care less. If it sells one, it sells one.

In fifteen seconds the difference between composition and improvisation is that in composition you have all the time you want to decide what to say in fifteen seconds, while in improvisation you have fifteen seconds.

Jazz music is collective creativity.

One can be very happy without demanding that others agree with them.

In classical music, only two people are important, the composer and the conductor. Everybody else is a serf. In jazz, a thing of beauty is created collectively with everybody getting to express an idea. And that reflects what democratic society is – or should be.

In Europe, they like everything you do. The mistakes and everything. That’s a little bit too much.