Don’t bullshit, just play.
Jazz music is the power of now.
I wanted to make somebody feel like Coltrane made me feel.
A beat is a moment in the life a groove.
Music does not come to you. You have to come to it and you’ll walk away with something you didn’t have before.
Don’t settle for style. Succeed in substance.
Jazz isn’t the kind of music you’re going to learn in 3 or 4 years or get because you have talent for music.
My neighbors always listen to very hip Jazz… whether they like it or not.
I’ve been married twice. Most women would rather not be married to a traveling blues singer.
Playing the guitar is like telling the truth – you never have to worry about repeating the same [lie] if you told the truth. You don’t have to pretend, or cover up. If someone asks you again, you don’t have to think about it or worry about it because there it is. It’s you.
One very important thing I learned from Monk was his complete dedication to music.
My singing evolved with a feeling of intense relaxation, always using my diaphram and breathing specifically through my nose.
Man, if you gotta ask you’ll never know.
Jazz without the Blues is like BBQ without the sauce.
I have no one style.
I used my mother’s radio as a PA system. I’d take the telephone, the speaking part, and take those two leads off and lead them into the radio and the sound would come out of the speaker.
Eliminating the piano means that I’ve always worked closer with the bass than most players.
Rather than say I play Jazz, I simply say I play music.
Jazz attracted me because in it I found a formal perfection and instrumental precision that I admire in classical music, but which popular music doesn’t have.
Jazz music is our original American culture.
Art [Blakey] would take young people with a potential and help them develop a voice as a player and as a writer.
Nobody has ever been able to define Jazz satisfactorily. This is probably because anyone who was capable of doing so never really wanted to, knowing how much you would have to leave out of the definition.
