Henri Selmer

It’s not jazz as we know jazz here in America.

A good bassist determines the direction of any band.

If you’re going to make a mistake, make it loud so everybody else sounds wrong.

When you begin to teach jazz, the most dangerous thing is that you tend to teach style…I had eleven piano students, and I would say eight of them didn’t even want to know about chords or anything – they didn’t even want to do anything that anybody had ever done, because they didn’t want to be imitators. Well, of course, this is pretty naive…but nevertheless it does bring to light the fact that if you’re going to try to teach jazz…you must abstract the principles of music which have nothing to do with style, and this is exceedingly difficult. So there, the teaching of jazz is a very touchy point. It ends up where the jazz player, ultimately, if he’s going to be a serious jazz player, teaches himself.

Art should teach spirituality by showing a person a portion of himself that he would not discover otherwise.

Jazzmen are our surrogates for the unpredictable, our paladins of constant change.

I try to teach by example and not force ideas on a young musician. We’re here to be part of a process of exchange.

Jazz music is our original American culture.

If it ain’t fun, I want no part of it man. That’s the reason I play.

I’ll always remember when I first heard Lester [Young]. I’d never heard anyone like him before. He was a stylist with a different sound. A sound I’d never heard before or since. To be honest with you, I didn’t much like it at first.

I felt like I was making a record under the radar, and that is my favorite way to do anything.

My singing evolved with a feeling of intense relaxation, always using my diaphram and breathing specifically through my nose.

When Hank Jones had his night off, I would get somebody to take my place as intermission pianist and I’d play the show with Ella, so I would get a chance to play with Ray Brown and Charlie Smith as well.

I adore extravagance but I abhor waste.

The jazziest American contribution to the vocabulary of English is Jazz itself.