Hubert Laws

If your dreams don’t scare you they’re not big enough!

There are no natural barriers. It’s all music.

If the bass plays the root, a pianist superimposes a Maj7 built on the 5th and the sax plays the 13th, will hot women notice?

End phrases where you feel they should end. Don’t look for resolutions you don’t feel because the books call for them.

The drummer; he inspired me to play like no one else I have ever met.

The more real you get, the more unreal everything else is.

I first fell in love with the piano, I knew it was me. I was dying to play.

Jazz and love are the hardest things to describe from rationale.

Jazz attracted me because in it I found a formal perfection and instrumental precision that I admire in classical music, but which popular music doesn’t have.

I say this because it’s a good message to give to young talents who feel as I used to. You hear musicians playing with great fluidity and complete conception early on, and you don’t have that ability. I didn’t. I had to know what I was doing. And ultimately it turned out that these people weren’t able to carry their thing very far. I found myself being more attracted to artists who have developed through the years and become better and deeper musicians.I believe in things that are developed through hard work.

You can’t listen to what people who aren’t musical have to say. When Anytime was released, I had bad reviews, and at first I was hurt. Your songs are like your children. You don’t want to hear, ‘Your kid is ugly.’ But I knew the record was good and it would sell.

Jazz is a spectacularly accurate model of democracy and a look into our redemptive future possibilities.

[on B. B. King] Very seldom does he talks about the way he play, man. He always wanna talk about young women. And I fuss at him sometimes, I say, ‘Man I wanna know what did you do here!’

I was probably six years old when I first sang before an audience.

Give it a good go, try to have fun at it, try to pass on some good notes and some good sounds to your fans, and I don’t think you will have wasted your time.