Nelson Riddle

All I wanted was to be big, to be in show business and to travel… and that’s what I’ve been doing all my life.

Jazz music has always made powerful statements about freedom, creativity and personal identity.

Whenever I’m in Kansas City, I think back to all the jazz-blues greats who played the blues here – like Count Basie, Charlie Parker and Jay McShann. I watched those guys jam in different places and heard a lot of things – but I couldn’t do what they did. They were too good.

When you know the lyrics to a tune, you have some kind of insight as to it’s composition. If you don’t understand what it’s about, you’re depriving yourself of being really able to communicate this poem.

It doesn’t matter all that much. It’s just that when you’re playing, Stephane, you’ve got both Chaput and me backing you, but when I’m soloing I’ve only got one guitar behind me!

The truth is I never gave it much thought. I just played what I had to play.

New artists can own their content and completely build their base and their following without having to sell or be owned by anybody and it creates such a diversity.

I never set out to find a style of my own, it just happened.

When you are so strongly drawn to music, you can’t ‘not’ be a musician.

I hate straight singing. I have to change a tune to my own way of doing it. That’s all I know

I want the music to connect to people; reach people every time I perform.

We’re more popular than Jesus Christ now. I don’t know which will go first; rock and roll or Christianity.

Jazz is a very accurate, curiously accurate accompaniment to 20th century America.

I prefer no one to teach me. I prefer to swing on my own.

I am a devout musician.