Music is interior decoration.
The word “jazz” means to me no category, but when you get stuck into wanting to do something the way it was with the “jazz emblem” or logo chained around your neck, you play in a frozen moment in time and you keep fermenting the ‘fifties saying jazz should be this way or that. Well, if jazz to me means no category, then I’ve got the green light And if it sounds like.. sounds like.. sounds like, and keeps crossing over, it’s what I wanted to do in the first place. I like the way Stravinsky and those guys did things. They expressed something, if not themselves. In fact, some people talk about expression, but expression really doesn’t mean anything to me because there’s a lot of work which goes into building a drama and then it’s up to other people to offer “expression.” Expression is such a nebulous thing.
Your humanity is your instrument.
A series of vibrations. What does it matter, the source of the catalyst?
Music should not have any mandates. Jazz is not supposed to be something that is required to sound like jazz.
I always think of music as interior decoration. So, if you have all kinds of music, you are fully decorated!
You know the actor John Garfield? In one movie he walked up to this train station, the ticket booth, and the guy says, ‘Yes, where are you going?’ And he says, ‘I want a ticket to nowhere.’ I thought: that’s it. The freedom to do that. I want a ticket to nowhere.
People who like Jazz feel the depth and soul and intelligence that the music expresses.
No one remembers who wrote the tune, putting pen to paper in some lonely place. They remember who had the hit.
I don’t think anybody steals anything; all of us borrow.
You can’t sing about love unless you know about it.
A name doesn’t make the music. It’s just called that to differentiate it from other types of music.
A melody is not merely something you can hum.
Art is a subject that is inundated with opinions. In fact, that’s all it is about is opinions.
Get around, be on the scene, play it clean, be seen, be keen and be over eighteen.
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.
I think I had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to sound like a dry martini.
When you are so strongly drawn to music, you can’t ‘not’ be a musician.
Jazz speaks for life. This is triumphant music.
I still do what I love, and I dont really think about it. I try to make a beautiful show, so people go home happy. Thats my biggest aspiration: to make people happy.
Other than conversation, no other art form can give the satisfaction of spontaneous interaction like Jazz.
I think of guitar players in terms of doctors: you have the doctor for your heart, the cardiologist, then one that works on your feet, your leg. But I believe George Benson is the one that plays all over. To me, he would be the M.D. of them all.
