Hank Jones

When you listen to a pianist, each notes should have an identity, each note should have a soul of its own.

I still insist that American performers are the best performers in the world.

Jazz is an art form that depends on its antecedents. There must be respect for the people that have gone before.

Jazz is a music to be played and not to be intellectualized on.

After I left Texas and went to California, I had a hard time getting anyone to play anything that I was writing, so I had to end up playing them myself. And that’s how I ended up just being a saxophone player.

I think the most important thing about playing is to walk out with confidence, look the people right in the eye and say ‘Here I am,’ and go and do your thing. As soon as they know you’re confident, they’re confident. As long as you adjust to them you’re not in trouble. You should eyeball them, find out what they want, and give it to them. They didn’t pay to come out and look at the tapestries.

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

I think Ive done the best I could have done. But I keep wanting to play better, go further. There are so many sounds I still want to make, so many things I havent yet done. When I was younger I thought maybe Id reached that peak. But Im 86 now, and if I make it through to next month, Ill be 87. And now I know it can never be perfect, it can never be exactly what it should be, so you got to keep going further, getting better.

I never practice my guitar. From time to time I just open the case and throw in a piece of raw meat.

Rather than say I play Jazz, I simply say I play music.

How can I turn emotion into knowledge? That’s what I try to do with my horn.

I have won several prizes as the world’s slowest alto player and a special award in 1961 for quietness.

Well if I could play like Wynton Marsalis, I wouldn’t play like Wynton.

I think that it is important to try to sound like someone, especially early in your development.

I’ve never recorded anything I didn’t like.

Jazz standards are our contribution to music history.