Jazz music is the real deal.
Jazz standards are our contribution to music history.
Jazz music is our original American culture.
There’s a spiritual satisfaction that one gets from listening and playing good Jazz.
Jazz is not to be sliced into bites by mass marketing geniuses who assume we are mindless cattle.
Apparently Jazz is now considered high art and the average person has trouble understanding it.
The expression of freedom that is Jazz improvisation mirrors the ethos of the best parts of society.
I used to play a place in Twist, Arkansas… It used to get quite cold in Twist. And they used to take something that looked like a big garbage pail and set it in the middle of the floor, half-fill it with kerosene. They’d light that fuel and that’s what we’d use for heat… But this particular night, two guys started to fighting and one of them knocked the other one over onto this container. When they did it spilled on the floor. Now, it was already burning so when it spilled it looked like a river of fire. Everybody ran for the front door including yours truly. But when I got on the outside then I realized that I’d left the guitar inside. I went back for it. The building was a wooden building and it was burning so fast that when I got my guitar it started to collapse around me. So I almost lost my life trying to save the guitar. But the next morning we found that these two guys who were fighting were fighting about a lady. I never did meet the lady but I learned that her name was Lucille. So I named my guitar Lucille to remind me not to do a thing like that again.
Your own music comes out of your head and emotions, but it’s not etched in your system.
Kinship doesn’t come from skin color. It’s in your soul and your mind.
To keep creating you have to be about change.
Lionel Richie told me forget about the critics. But if you come back with hit after hit, you don’t have to worry about anything.
The high note is not the only thing.
I really feel like I made it a great record. I really feel good about it. In this day and age to make a record that you say, This is different,’ that’s a tough nut. I did it by accident but it got done. I don’t know what I’m doing, but I know how to do it.
I would like to thank my father who discouraged me from playing the violin at an early age.
I like the music. I love it and live it in fact, but for me the business part just plain stinks.
If I don’t learn something new every day, it’s a day lost
I’ve had the pleasure of playing with the baddest Jazz cats on the planet.
Ah music… a magic beyond all we do here!
I’ve found you’ve got to look back at the old things and see them in a new light.
I’m now a legend, whether I want to be or not.
What are you going to do when you love music? You can’t stop.
