Charlie Parker

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

In Kansas City joints ran 9pm-5am. Pay was a $1.25 a night but somebody special like Count Basie could command $1.50.

I kept thinking there’s bound to be something else? I could hear it sometimes, but I couldn’t play it.

It’s not all smoke and mirrors. Some of it comes from books.

You’ve got to learn your instrument.

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.

I hate to think of Jazz as black and white, something political.

If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn.

If a song’s about something I’ve experienced or that could’ve happened to me it’s good. But if it’s alien to me, I couldn’t lend anything to it. Because that’s what soul is all about.

The emotional reaction is all that matters.

If a player is pushing their ability, a certain amount of failure is inevitable. Maybe even desirable.

Music can’t save the world, but can make one a little calmer.

The reward for playing Jazz is playing Jazz.

Music is an extraordinary vehicle for expressing very powerful emotions. That’s what draws people towards it.

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

There is something about music that keeps its distance even at the moment that it engulfs us. It is at the same time outside and away from us and inside and part of us. In one sense it dwarfs us, and in another we master it. We are led on and on, and yet in some strange way we never lose control.

When you just get mixed up and there’s too much going on, then it’s time to pick up your guitar.

All I wanted was to be big, to be in show business and to travel… and that’s what I’ve been doing all my life.

After you’ve done all the work and prepared as much as you can, what the hell, you might as well go out and have a good time.

People now have been conditioned to believe they should only buy one song at a time, that nobody can make an entire record that would merit you paying, you know, $7, $8, $10 when CDs in the ’90s were $18, $19 and people bought millions and millions and millions of them.

I realized by using the high notes of the chords as a melodic line, and by the right harmonic progression, I could play what I heard inside me. That’s when I was born.