Nicholas Payton

Jazz music is haunted by its own hungry ghosts.

The louder they [the band] play the softer I sing.

In Jazz, improvisation isn’t a matter of just making any ol’ thing up. Jazz, like any language, has its own grammer and vocabulary. There’s no right or wrong, just some choices that are better than others.

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

Its all about finding the right note at the right place and knowing when to leave it alone.

I bought my first electric guitar when I moved to Memphis; a Gibson with a DeArmond pickup which I used with a small Gibson amplifier.

I wanted to do the music, but not at the expense of being happy.

Even when you write it, someone’s got to play it. So if you can play it and bypass all the rest of the things, you’re still doing as great as someone that has spent forty years trying to find out how to do that. I’m really pro-human beings, pro-expression of everything.

Let my children have music.

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

And if I had a preference, it would be to be able to not be in the studio until 4 in the morning.

I, myself, came to enjoy the players who didn’t only just swing but who invented new rhythmic patterns, along with new melodic concepts. And those people are: Art Tatum, Bud Powell, Max Roach, Sonny Rollins, Lester Young, Dizzy Gillespie and Charles Parker, who is the greatest genius of all to me because he changed the whole era around.

Well, for me it’s – music is the instrument of life.

By giving the public a rich and full melody, distinctly arranged and well played, all the time creating new tone colors and patterns, I feel we have a better chance of being successful. I want a kick to my band, but I don’t want the rhythm to hog the spotlight.

In music the passions enjoy themselves.

Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of someone else.