Don Cherry

When people believe in boundaries, they become part of them.

The thing to judge in any jazz artist is, does the man project and does he have ideas.

It’s up to the individual to keep up with the times.

Nothing else will ever capture the democratic process in sound as perfectly as Jazz.

Jazz without the Blues is like BBQ without the sauce.

Art should teach spirituality by showing a person a portion of himself that he would not discover otherwise.

I heard someone say ‘What’s that kid doing here? Call your piano player and let’s get started.’

If T-Bone Walker had been a woman, I would have asked him to marry me. I’d never heard anything like that before: single-string blues played on an electric guitar.

It made no sense to ignore them and to continue writing as if they did not exist. I felt that it was worth the effort to see if I couldn’t say what I had to say in the simplest possible terms.

My life is music, and in some vague, mysterious and subconscious way, I have always been driven by a taut inner spring which has propelled me to almost compulsively reach for perfection in music, often -in fact, mostly -at the expense of everything else in my life.

The high note is not the only thing.

I’ve found you’ve got to look back at the old things and see them in a new light.

So much of Jazz doesn’t have an audience other than music students or musicians.

Hipness is not a state of mind, it’s a fact of life.

Other than conversation, no other art form can give the satisfaction of spontaneous interaction like Jazz.

Django was the definitive genius on the guitar, and the depth of his gift was so spectacular.