Cannonball Adderley

A young tenor player was complaining to me that Coleman Hawkins made him nervous. Man, I told him Hawkins was supposed to make him nervous! Hawkins has been making other sax players nervous for forty years!

I’d solo on my guitar; then sing; then solo; then sing some more. one stopped when the other started. That way I felt a continuity, not a conflict, like a wheel that keeps turning. Both sounds – guitar and voice – were coming out of me, but they issued from different parts of my soul.

Music is an addiction.

We really never know what we’re gonna play when we get on stage.

As long as there are people trying to play music in a sincere way, there will be Jazz.

I’m an experimenter. It’s rich because every album I’ve done, except for a couple of techno-y records, are different. Really you’ve got to hand it to the Fender Strat, because there are songs in that guitar. It’s a tool of great inspiration and torture at the same time because it’s forever sitting there challenging you to find something else in it, but it is there if you really search.

People involve themselves with the superficiality of Jazz without digging for its soul.

I’m trying to play the truth of what I am. The reason it’s difficult is ’cause I’m changing all the time.

I can tell whether a person can play just by the way he stands …If they act too hip, you know they can’t play shit.

The people who know nothing about music are the ones always talking about it.

The way I think about the practicing, it is my undercover work.

The first time I went to Paris, it just felt like I was home. I didn’t question it.

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.

I saw a vibraphone for the first time and knew immediately I had found my means of expression.

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

When the music changes, so does the dance.