Art Blakey

You can’t seperate modern jazz from rock or from rhythm and blues – you can’t seperate it. Because that’s where it all started, and that’s where it all come from – that’s where I learned to keep rhythm – in church.

Music washes away the dust of every day life.

It takes an intelligent ear to listen to Jazz.

When it comes to music, don’t lie to yourself; just tell yourself the truth.

[On the word Jazz] There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s only a word. What’s in a name? Nothing! Cats say, Call me Muhammed so-and-so. But what’s the difference? A name doesn’t make the music. It’s just called that to differentiate it from other types of music. Jazz is known all over the world as an American musical art form and that’s it. No America, no jazz. I’ve seen people try to connect it to other countries, for instance to Africa, but it doesn’t have a damn thing to do with Africa.

People will hire you and then tell you not to do what you were doing when they heard you.

Music isn’t just learning notes and playing them. You learn notes to play the music of your soul.

Everybody came. Everybody came to the Cotton Club.

Music gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and charm and gaiety to life.

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.

I don’t believe music can be free unless it has something to be free from.

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.

The emotional reaction is all that matters.

The high note is not the only thing.

When I achieved what I thought the musicians were trying to do, the sound sort of bloomed. When it’s right, everything is beautiful.

Eliminating the piano means that I’ve always worked closer with the bass than most players.

Music is the great arbiter of the world, the key to central harmony and a necessary requirement of human emotion.

The spirit of Jazz is the spirit of openness.

Every day when I sit down to play, I learn something new.

New artists can own their content and completely build their base and their following without having to sell or be owned by anybody and it creates such a diversity.

For years the Trio did nothing but play for musicians and other hip people. We practically starved to death.