Ken Burns

By its very nature, no one person can ever be the center of Jazz.

The genius of our country is improvisation, and jazz reflects that. It’s our great contribution to the arts.

Jazz is a spectacularly accurate model of democracy and a look into our redemptive future possibilities.

You know the actor John Garfield? In one movie he walked up to this train station, the ticket booth, and the guy says, ‘Yes, where are you going?’ And he says, ‘I want a ticket to nowhere.’ I thought: that’s it. The freedom to do that. I want a ticket to nowhere.

Jazz is not a what, it is a how.

In music the passions enjoy themselves.

Nothing is out of the question for me. I’m always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up in the morning and see the light…Then I’m grateful.

Forget about upholding the tradition and just play who you really are.

If you’re making money people don’t think you’re playing Jazz. When you’re not making money they think you’re a great Jazz musician.

My singing evolved with a feeling of intense relaxation, always using my diaphram and breathing specifically through my nose.

If a guy is gonna to play good bop, he has to have a sort of a bop soul.

It is evidently known, beyond contradiction, that New Orleans is the cradle of Jazz and I, myself, happened to be the creator in the year 1902.

Gratitude is when memory is stored in the heart and not in the mind.

I’m always looking for ways to develop as a Jazz artist, to find different ways of using my voice.

End phrases where you feel they should end. Don’t look for resolutions you don’t feel because the books call for them.

My music had roots which I’d dug up from my own childhood, musical roots buried in the darkest soil.

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

She’s Dynamite’ was a 100 years ago, and I recorded that song because the company thought that it was a great song and it was hot. That was the beginning of rock n’ roll, and I guess they thought it would be a BB King version of rock n’ roll.