Wes Montgomery

When I got pretty good I went on the road with a group. We starved.

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

Regardless of what you play, the biggest thing is keeping the feel going.

To me, the guitar cuts through. It carries more than the organ, but the organ has got more guts.

A melody is not merely something you can hum.

Music washes away the dust of every day life.

A great teacher stimulates his student’s creativity enough so that they go out and find the answers themselves.

There’s a spiritual satisfaction that one gets from listening and playing good Jazz.

When I sing, I play in my mind; the minute I stop singing orally, I start to sing by playing Lucille.

I know what I’ve done for music, but don’t call me a legend. Just call me Miles Davis.

In our local Baptist church, I sang in the choir and formed a gospel quartet. When our minister caught me messing with his guitar, he taught me three positions – one, four and five. After that, I taught myself to play.

In my opinion, I think sarcasm and humor in a song, without turning it into a novelty song, is really charming.

There’s a lot of recreational Jazz going on, where cats learn a particular style and become sharks on somebody else’s language.

The point of Jazz is, you do something and then you go on.

I use the audience as my color palette, my instrument.

Jimmy (Wakely) told me, ‘I don’t want you to sound so much like Dinah Washington.’ So, I thought, ‘How can I get around this?’ And one of the people I really dug was Patti Page. So I thought, ‘Oh, I’m going to sound like her.’ I actually did with a couple curly-cues thrown in for effect, but, that’s how I started getting away from the predominant Dinah influence, and getting my own style together.

I worked hard learning harmony and theory when I was growing up in Chicago in the 1920s.

Music is the tool to express life – and all that makes a difference.

Jazz music has always been a place where anything is possible.