Jimmy McGriff

Musicians should never forget we’re blessed. We have a special gift that people enjoy through us.

Music should enrich the soul; it should teach spirituality by showing a person a portion of himself that he would not discover otherwise. It’s easy to rediscover part of yourself, but through art you can be shown part of yourself you never knew existed. That’s the real mission of art. The artist has to find something within himself that’s universal and which he can put into terms that are communicable to other people. The magic of it is that art can communicate to a person without his realizing it.

The day of the great jazz improviser who doesn’t know how to read music is over.

Jazz has such great feeling and emotional content it really doesn’t require technical understanding.

Music’s a good thing, it calm the beast in the man.

Jazz musicians have some outlaw in them somewhere.

You don’t have to be Picasso or Rembrandt to create something. The fun of it, the joy of creating, is way high above anything else to do with the art form.

I don’t believe music can be free unless it has something to be free from.

I’m creating music – it doesn’t matter if anyone else likes it.

I don’t compose. I assemble materials.

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

A band ought to have a sound all of its own. It ought to have a personality.

What I learned the most from Prince was putting art first, being creatively ambitious, and putting creativity at the forefront of what I do.

Jazz improvisation is the art of drawing without an eraser.

Improvisation is the most widespread of all musical activities. Why did so many people spend so long pretending it never happened?