Stan Getz

I played in rhumba bands, mickey mouse bands; all kinds of bands.

If you like an instrument that sings, play the saxophone. At its best it’s like the human voice

Life is too full of distractions nowadays. When I was a kid we had a little Emerson radio and that was it. We were more dedicated. We didn’t have a choice.

There are four qualities essential to a great Jazzman: taste, courage, individuality and irreverence. These are the qualities I want to retain in my music.

I compulsively reach for perfection in music, often at the expense of everything else in my life.

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.

It’s not the notes you play, it’s the notes you don’t play.

Well, if you find a note tonight that sounds good, play the same damn note every night!

You compose because you want to somehow summarize in some permanent form your most basic feelings about being alive, to set down some sort of permanent statement about the way it feels to live now, today.

Anything I do has to be directly related to my music. If it isn’t, I don’t really see a point to it.

It’s the group sound that’s important, even when you’re playing a solo. You not only have to know your own instrument, you must know the others and how to back them up at all times. That’s jazz.

I want a kick to my band, but I don’t want the rhythm to hog the spotlight.

One of the problems of people who live with pain is that they spend the whole day thinking about it, and it’s exasperating. But even when I am having a bad moment and I can’t get myself together, I get on stage and for an hour or two the pain becomes super-small. It’s about controlling the mind, telling the pain to step aside. Music does that. It’s the most fantastic drug in the world.

10% of musicians make 90% of the money, while the remaining 90% of musicians make the 10% that’s left.

The spirit of Jazz is the spirit of openness.

The deeper you get into the music allows the ability to appreciate art and all other forms of expression.

Don’t settle for style. Succeed in substance.

Other than conversation, no other art form can give the satisfaction of spontaneous interaction like Jazz.

Jazz has such great feeling and emotional content it really doesn’t require technical understanding.

Hell, nobody knows where jazz is going to go. There may be a kid right now in Chitlin Switch, Georgia, who is going to come along and upset everybody.

When I speak of the gifted listener, I am thinking of the nonmusician primarily, of the listener who intends to retain his amateur status. It is the thought of just such a listener that excites the composer in me.