Dexter Gordon

Jazz to me is a living music. It’s a music that since its beginning has expressed the feelings, the dreams, hopes, of the people.

Darlin… be-bop is the music of the future.

What I’m doing, I prefer to call that jazz, because it is a beautiful word – I love it.

Jazz is a living music; since its beginning has expressed the feelings, dreams and hopes of the people.

Music is a reservoir… of sounds.

If you can’t play the Blues you might as well hang it up.

My life is music, and in some vague, mysterious and subconscious way, I have always been driven by a taut inner spring which has propelled me to almost compulsively reach for perfection in music, often -in fact, mostly -at the expense of everything else in my life.

Your own music comes out of your head and emotions, but it’s not etched in your system.

Anything I do has to be directly related to my music. If it isn’t, I don’t really see a point to it.

I don’t pop my cork for every man I see.

A Jazz performance centers upon the process of creation. The final objective is not only the finished product, but the path and process taken towards it.

Music does not come to you. You have to come to it and you’ll walk away with something you didn’t have before.

I am very aware that so little has happened to the electric guitar from the time that it was conceived to now; where there are so little changes made where there should be drastic changes made. If we were to put our heads together and start thinking about modern technology we would be much more advantaged with the electric guitar than we are. I think that we’ve been stagnant for many years.

I think I love it more as I get older because I keep getting better on drums, vibes and piano.

Music and life are all about style.

I haven’t got a great jazz band and I don’t want one. Some of the critics, Down Beat’s among them, point their fingers at us and charge us with forsaking real jazz . . . It’s all in what you define as ‘real jazz.’ It happens that to our ears harmony comes first. A dozen colored bands have a better beat than mine. Our band stresses harmony.

I’m very shy, and I shy away from people. But the moment I hit the stage, it’s a different feeling I get nerve from somewhere; maybe it’s because it’s something I love to do.

It’s not the style that motivates me, as much as an attitude of openness that I have when I go into a project.

T-Bone was, to me, that sound of being in heaven.

The fact that an artist is experiencing the joy of creation makes me feel like we’re in it together.

I don’t have a definition of Jazz. You’re just supposed to know it when you hear it.