My music is Jazz.
External instruments are only extensions of the biological instrument.
They’re not particular whether you’re playing a flat 5th or a ruptured 129th as long as they can dance.
I had a really good time in New Orleans, although I had some very tragic times in Baton Rouge. Some guys beat me up and threw my horn away. ‘Cause I had a beard, then, and long hair like the Beatles.
Just because I’m playing Jazz I don’t forget about me. I play or write me the way I feel through Jazz.
I’m not much on gimmicks. I never have been because they don’t last.
If you’re going to make a mistake, make it loud so everybody else sounds wrong.
What makes my approach special is that I do different things. I do jazz, blues, country music and so forth. I do them all, like a good utility man.
Don’t say Aretha is making a comeback, because I’ve never been away!
Last time I saw Count Basie, he was in a wheelchair. They wheeled him up onto the stage, he sits down at the piano, and he gives the downbeat, and that band played like they were in heaven. And right in the middle, the band cuts. He had to take one hand and put the other on it, and he comes down with one note. And it was the greatest note I ever heard in my life.
You don’t know what love is, until you’ve learned the meaning of the blues, until you’ve loved a love you’ve had to lose.
The hippest thing you can do is not play at all. Just listen.
Jazz Improvisation means that practice is not as straightforward as it would be when you simply have a score to play.
But I have always suspected that one could substitute the Minuet of Haydn’s 98th symphony for the Minuet in Haydn’s 99th symphony without sensing a serious lack of coherence in either work.
I think that those elements – light and sound – are beyond democratic. They’re into the creative part of life.
Talent is cheap, and many talents treat themselves cheaply.
I was walking down the street, and I saw a sewer digger on his lunch hour open his lunch pail, dig out a harmonica, knock out the cracker crumbs, and play a bunch of tunes on it. I was fascinated by that harmonica, so I stared the guy out of it. I just stared at him. He said, ‘Here, kid, take it. Get out of here.’
