Jo Stafford

I’m on some singer’s record date for a demo and I get a note to call Miles Davis. Of course, I didn’t believe it, but I wasn’t going to take a chance by not calling, and it was Miles. He said, ‘I’ve got a session in an hour over at Columbia, can you make it’

Being a singer is a natural gift. It means I’m using to the highest degree possible the gift that God gave me to use. I’m happy with that.

Audiences are smart. They are not going to come out to see you unless you are honest.

I love Jazz because it has the perfect balance of discipline and freedom.

It’s not jazz as we know jazz here in America.

I like the interplay in the music.

I’m a musician at heart, I know I’m not really a singer. I couldn’t compete with real singers. But I sing because the public buys it.

People don’t want to suffer. They want to sound good immediately and this is one of the biggest problems.

Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.

[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.

The melody is generally what the piece is all about.

Jazz is there and gone. It happens. You have to be present for it. That simple.

I’ll play it first and tell you what it is afterwards.

Music washes away the dust of every day life.

You hear about the Duke Ellingtons, the Jimmie Luncefords, and the Fletcher Hendersons, but people sometimes forget that jazz was not only built in the minds of the great ones, but on the backs of the ordinary ones.