Phil Woods

I never thought about being famous or rich. I just thought, Oh, I’ll get a nice little girl and go and play every night, and I’d be happy. And that worked for a while. But the little girl’s mother didn’t trust a guy with a horn.

Your accompanist has a lot to do with how you sing, so experiment and choose your partner wisely.

If you want to play somebody’s music, you’d better go into his house.

I don’t like to hear someone put down Dixieland. Those people who say there’s no music but bop are just stupid; it shows how much they don’t know.

Dizzy used to tell me I’m playing too hard. He’d say to not give everything. Miles told me that too.

It was when I found out I could make mistakes that I knew I was on to something.

You only go around once and this ain’t no rehearsal.

Breathe…. breathe a lot!

No one is original. Everyone is derivative.

Everyone is working who should be.

A Jazz Diet will make you hipper, thinner, taller, smarter, richer, happier and more attractive to members of both sexes.

I heard Mr. Wild Bill Davis. I heard him play in 1930 and he told me that it would take me fifteen years just to learn the pedals, the pedals of the organ and I got mad.

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

There’s a sadness to all kinds of music if you want to hear it. There’s also happiness to it if you want to hear it. Blues was started by the slaves and I think everybody thinks that it all should be sad… even some of the slaves had fun with it.

There’s such a cynicism about the phrase ‘I laughed all the way to the bank.’ It’s as though money is what you’re doing, rather than playing music. If you’re playing a money game, why not get into banking?