Charlie Parker

Don’t play the saxophone. Let it play you.

I can play all I know in eight bars.

Music is your experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn.

You’ve got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail.

The time is now.

Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn. They teach you there’s a boundary line to music. But, man, there’s no boundary line to art.

If one were asked to name one musician who came closest to composing without human flaw, I suppose general consensus would choose Johann Sebastian Bach.

Jazz is like wine. When it is new it’s only for the experts, but when it gets older everybody wants it.

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.

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

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write to ultimately be at peace with himself.

I don’t like to look back because the whole point in Jazz is doing it now.

Monk encouraged me to emancipate the drums from their subservient role as timekeepers.

[On Louis Armstrong] You can’t play nothing on modern trumpet that doesn’t come from him, not even modern shit. I can’t even remember a time when he sounded bad playing the trumpet. Never. Not even one time. He had great feeling up in his playing and he always played on the beat. I just loved the way he played and sang.

Jazz is a very accurate, curiously accurate accompaniment to 20th century America.

People who are meant to be drawn to your music will find you.

I’ve been married twice. Most women would rather not be married to a traveling blues singer.

There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind.

The beauty of Jazz is that it’s malleable. People address it to suit their own personalities.

If someone thinks that peace and love are just a cliche that must have been left behind in the 60s, that’s a problem. Peace and love are eternal.

Music is a verb.