Benny Goodman

One way or the other, if you want to find reasons why you shouldn’t keep on, you’ll find ’em. The obstacles are all there; there are a million of ’em.

Too many young musicians today want to win polls before they learn their instruments.

If a guy’s got it, let him give it. I’m selling music, not prejudice.

Sometimes when you start losing detail, whether it’s in music or in life, something as small as failing to be polite, you start to lose substance.

As soon as it was understood that we could handle things in our own way, it was the thrill of my life to walk out on that stage with people just hemming the band in.

You have to look good.

[Ben Taylor] He is an interesting combination of the two of us. His voice box is more like mine but the way his tongue sits in his mouth, and the way he pronounces words, is just like James Taylor.

You have to understand the styles and it’s good to study those that came before us.

One of the problems of people who live with pain is that they spend the whole day thinking about it, and it’s exasperating. But even when I am having a bad moment and I can’t get myself together, I get on stage and for an hour or two the pain becomes super-small. It’s about controlling the mind, telling the pain to step aside. Music does that. It’s the most fantastic drug in the world.

I like an element of chaos in music. That feeling is the best thing ever.

Music happens to be an art form that transcends language.

The guitar and the dog, in order not to be separated from man, have submitted themselves with resignation to the worst alterations of size and appearance.

Music should always be an adventure.

I think you have to leave a lot to the imagination!

Love is sweeping the country.

Music is what I hear and something that I live by.

I’ve always wanted a C trumpet on top, to have that same kind of facility without shouting.

Music can’t save the world, but can make one a little calmer.

Somebody asked me once, ‘Do you think that swing will ever come back?’ And I said, ‘Do you think the 1938 Form will ever come back?’

I have a nice car, a Mercedes. And then I have an old El Camino truck that I’m crazy about. I like to get in that truck and go up in the hills near where I live, in Vegas, and take my camera. That, to me, is Heaven, being out in nature, taking pictures of the wildlife.

We recorded to document ourselves, not to sell a lot of records.