We’re here to have a ball.
If you feel like tapping your feet, tap your feet. If you feel like clapping your hands, clap your hands. And if you feel like taking off your shoes, take off your shoes. We are here to have a ball. So we want you to leave your worldly troubles outside and come in here and swing.
It takes an intelligent ear to listen to Jazz.
When it comes to music, don’t lie to yourself; just tell yourself the truth.
A name doesn’t make the music. It’s just called that to differentiate it from other types of music.
People will hire you and then tell you not to do what you were doing when they heard you.
If you feel like tapping your feet, tap your feet.
If you got up on the bandstand at Minton’s and couldn’t play, you might get your ass kicked.
It became a kind of a game, to remember the things that had happened five minutes ago. I would start making notes about the things I was doing, on an instrument that was foreign to me, the guitar, so it was just a fun way of doing cognitive therapy. I was none the wiser to it until I began to improve and my ability to speak began to come back.
The whole thing of being in music is not to control it but to be swept away by it.
Every symphony, for example, is a sonata for orchestra; every string quartet is a sonata for four strings; every concerto a sonata for a solo instrument and orchestra.
Give it a good go, try to have fun at it, try to pass on some good notes and some good sounds to your fans, and I don’t think you will have wasted your time.
All of the technique doesn’t matter… only if the feeling is right.
If I’m not saying it in four choruses or less, then I’m not saying it.
When you sing, always tell the truth.
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.
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 wasn’t interested in practicing Bach; I was too busy digging Horace Silver!
There are a million good tunes.
Stop before you’re done.
Play the music not the instrument.
Music must be an innovation.
