Jazz? has no boundaries.
It is people’s hearts that move the age.
It’s not exclusive, but inclusive, which is the whole spirit of jazz.
I try stuff. I synthesize what’s of value with some of the other things I have at my disposal.
When I was coming up, I practiced all the time because I thought if I didn’t I couldn’t do my best.
The true artform is being a human being.
It pulled me like a magnet, jazz did, because it was a way that I could express myself.
The thing I always default to is that I’ll always be here to write songs.
Whenever I’m in Kansas City, I think back to all the jazz-blues greats who played the blues here – like Count Basie, Charlie Parker and Jay McShann. I watched those guys jam in different places and heard a lot of things – but I couldn’t do what they did. They were too good.
I’m a big fan of music, a student. I just wanna learn and keep enhancing my education about Jazz.
[In 1972] At the moment, we’re getting the same thrill from seeing the Eagles, Jackson Browne, Jo Jo Gunne, and Judee Sill happen It’s as hard to do it with Jackson Browne as it was to do it with Joni five years ago.
It seems like I always had to work harder than other people. Those nights when everybody else is asleep, and you sit in your room trying to play scales. I just wonder where I was when the talent was being given out, like George Benson, Kenny Burrell, Eric Clapton… oh, there’s many more! I wouldn’t want to be like them, you understand, but I’d like to be equal, if you will.
Jazz is a work in progress. We’ll be defining traditions in Jazz for 200-300 years.
If it sounds good and feels good, then it IS good!
I’ve always liked the Freddie King/B. B. King rich tone, and at the same time, I like the manic Buddy Guy/Otis Rush Strat tone. So I’m always caught in the middle of the Gibson and Fender sounds. If I’m playing my black [Fender] Strat, and I’m in the middle of a blues, I kind of wish I was playing a [Gibson] Les Paul. Then again, if I was playing a Les Paul, the sound would be great, but I’d be saying, Man, I wish I had the Stratocaster neck!
A chimpanzee could learn what I do physically, but it goes way beyond that. When you play, you play life.
When there was vinyl, I just loved opening a record and smelling that wonderful smell.
When rock came in, people didn’t know what to do. Even Sinatra, he didn’t know what to do. The music was changing. And it’s changing now.
I expect the audience to come up to my level.
The true musician plays what he/she hears. That cannot be a mistake.
If music is sound and came from silence, then silence is potentially greater than sound.
I think that those elements – light and sound – are beyond democratic. They’re into the creative part of life.
