To work is to feel alive.
I still insist that American performers are the best performers in the world.
Just give a drum roll, announce my name and I come out and sing. I have a contract that says I’m a singer. So I sing.
If you follow your passions, you’ll never work a day in your life.
One of the advantages of growing older is you learn what to leave out.
Being a singer is a natural gift. It means I’m using to the highest degree possible the gift that God gave me to use. I’m happy with that.
Start well and end well. The middle will look after itself.
A great symphony is a man-made Mississippi down which we irresistibly flow from the instant of our leave-taking to a long forseen destination.
It’s up to the individual to keep up with the times.
When I achieved what I thought the musicians were trying to do, the sound sort of bloomed. When it’s right, everything is beautiful.
The emotional reaction is all that matters.
We’re not like pop musicians who have to perform the same top ten tunes every night of a tour.
Keep on listening and tapping your feet.
I, myself, came to enjoy the players who didn’t only just swing but who invented new rhythmic patterns, along with new melodic concepts. And those people are: Art Tatum, Bud Powell, Max Roach, Sonny Rollins, Lester Young, Dizzy Gillespie and Charles Parker, who is the greatest genius of all to me because he changed the whole era around.
Don’t give up trying to do what you really want. Where there is love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong.
To play piano is a significant part of my life, my existence. It fulfills a very physical and spiritual need for me.
Always look ahead, but never look back.
Critics get a little carried away with what someone should have done, rather than what he did.
I don’t intend to be a performing flea anymore. I was the dreamweaver, but although I’ll be around I don’t intend to be running at 20,000 miles an hour trying to prove myself. I don’t want to die at 40.
I think when my brother (Claude who founded vocal sextet Take Six) got his deal and I saw him on the Grammys that was when I said, ‘oh, you know what? If he can do it then maybe I can do too’ and that’s when I really focused on trying to make it in this business.
