Eddie Condon

Finally Beiderbecke took out a silver cornet. He put it to his lips and blew a phrase. The sound came out like a girl saying ‘yes.’

The boppers flat their fifths. We consume ours.

Talent is cheap, and many talents treat themselves cheaply.

What makes my approach special is that I do different things. I do jazz, blues, country music and so forth. I do them all, like a good utility man.

Jazz is freedom. You think about that.

After I left Texas and went to California, I had a hard time getting anyone to play anything that I was writing, so I had to end up playing them myself. And that’s how I ended up just being a saxophone player.

When I started playing, I was playing just the harmonica. We’re back in the prohibition days. Like down a dark alley somewhere, you’d play for an illegal club that was probably right behind a police station, and what I’d do is sing and play the harmonica. It didn’t take me long to work out that I needed something more, and that was the guitar. So when you added the guitar, the harmonica and my voice, you would be talking with people mainly in the bar, or in the restaurant, or the people in the pub.

I hope my recordings of my own works won’t inhibit other people’s performances. The brutal fact is that one doesn’t always get the exact tempo one wants, although one improves with experience.

I just think swing is a matter of some good things put together that you can really pat your foot by. I can’t define it beyond that.

How can I turn emotion into knowledge? That’s what I try to do with my horn.

Jazz is an art form that depends on its antecedents. There must be respect for the people that have gone before.

I still insist that American performers are the best performers in the world.

I’m a fan first. I believed Duke Ellington when he said there’s no bad music, just some of it is presented badly. As a kid, hanging around Church Street, the presentation of music was so powerful, I couldn’t help but jump for joy. I had discovered art, or truth, or whatever you want to call it; I had seen a light I’d follow forever.

I start in the middle of a sentence and move both directions at once.

You can be beyond yourself, better than your technique, better than most of your usual ideas.

Once I could play what I heard inside me, that’s when I was born.

Life is too full of distractions nowadays. When I was a kid we had a little Emerson radio and that was it. We were more dedicated. We didn’t have a choice.