What we play is life.
Never play anything the same way twice.
You will never know what the meaning of Jazz is if ask what it means.
If I don’t practice for a day, I know it… for two days, the critics know it… three days, the public knows it.
Man, all music is folk music. You ain’t never heard no horse sing a song, have you?
I don’t need words. It’s all in the phrasing.
You blows who you is.
I’m not like a legend that – so I’m sort of in the middle in this sort of gray area where, you know, I’m creating music, and I’m not saying there isn’t an audience, because there is; because all of those people go out and spend $80 to $150 on a concert ticket.
I sing like I feel.
Listening is the key to everything good in music.
I don’t pop my cork for every man I see.
When I write songs that touch on social relevance, all you have to do is pick up a newspaper.
I think the idea of a love song has changed. Most of the love songs we all loved as kids would be classified as funeral dirges now, you know, really super slow. I think nowadays the ballad has changed. It can have some up-tempo, some drums, some other things. Forever’ would still be considered a ballad, I guess, but the tempo is probably more of a mid-tempo. The content is love song. I don’t know how to write anything else.
Music represents nature. Nature represents life. Jazz represents nature. Jazz is life.
I wanted to make somebody feel like Coltrane made me feel.
I’ve worked with jazz artists, country artists, classical artists, pop artists. I never wanted there to be categories, because when I was a kid there weren’t.
Play the way you’d like to be and soon you’ll be the way you play.
I came from an era when we didn’t use electronic instruments. The bass wasn’t even amplified. The sound was the sound you got.
A melody is not merely something you can hum.
Music is my mistress and she plays second fiddle to no one.
Three months. I was playing the organ for three months. It was a challenge for me in the beginning.
Music is an extraordinary vehicle for expressing very powerful emotions. That’s what draws people towards it.
