Stop before you’re done.
Bebop was about change, about evolution. It wasn’t about standing still and being safe.
I’ll play it first and tell you what it is later.
Play what you know and then play above that.
Music and life are all about style.
It’s always been a gift with me, hearing music the way I do. I don’t know where it comes from, it’s just there and I don’t question it.
I don’t care if a dude is purple with green breath as long as he can swing.
A beat is a moment in the life a groove.
Jazz music has become academic. Sometimes that doesn’t feel right to me.
Trying to play the new concept with a outward bound feeling.
There’s always room for improvisation or changes of expression.
I think the idea is now for blacks to write about the history of our music. It’s time for that, because whites have been doing it all the time. It’s time for us to do it ourselves and tell it like it is.
The thing I always default to is that I’ll always be here to write songs.
Art [Blakey] would take young people with a potential and help them develop a voice as a player and as a writer.
Jazz is an idea that is more powerful than the details of its history.
My Strat is another arm, it’s part of me. It doesn’t feel like a guitar at all. It’s an implement which is my voice.
I’m more careful about my hands than about what I eat and most anything else, because my hands have been my living. My hands have been able to help me learn. My hands have taken me around the world. So I’m very proud of my hands.
My music is the spiritual expression of what I am: my faith, my knowledge, my being.
I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music.
The main thing is to be satisfied with your work yourself. It’s useless to have an audience happy if you are not happy.
I was unfashionable before anyone knew who I was.
The jazziest American contribution to the vocabulary of English is Jazz itself.
