Lee Morgan

There are no natural barriers. It’s all music.

With the birth of the first artist, came the inevitable afterbirth… the first critic

I could see that Bukka was born to be a bluesman, and I wondered if the same was true of me. I worried that I didn’t have his talent – or the talent of someone like Blind Lemon or T-Bone. I felt something beautiful inside Bukka’s soul. Even if I didn’t follow his style, I was moved by his sincerity. He loved telling stories, and used his blues to tell them. His blues was the book of his life. He sang about his rough times and fast time and loving times and angry times. He’d entertain at a party for two hundred people with the same enthusiasm as a party for twenty. Bukka gave it his all. His music had a consistency I admired. Like all the great bluesmen, he said, I am what I am. I wondered if I could be that steady and strong.

A great song can pull me out of a slump and lighten my heart.

The hidden things, the subconscious that lies in the body and lets you know: You feel this, you play this.

You should never be comfortable, man. Being comfortable fouled up a lot of musicians.

I have no one style.

No two people on earth are alike, and it’s got to be that way in music or it isn’t music.

I always make it a point to pick songs on which players really shine.

True music must repeat the thought and inspirations of the people and the time. My people are Americans and my time is today.

The audience should feel they are hearing the future, arriving just on time.

If I don’t practice for a day, I know it… for two days, the critics know it… three days, the public knows it.

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.

In the world of Art there are no wrong choices.

Find the best teachers, listen to the finest playing and try to emulate that. Be true to the music.

Anyone who doesn’t give [his debut album, The College Dropout] a perfect score is lowering the integrity of the magazine